Brackish water artificial pond?!?
Alrighty… I’m rambly and I’ve got ideas going through my poor little brain, and going out today with my mother and aunt for this little local backyard garden pond tour thing that was going on got the gears cranking to the point that I think I’m smelling smoke… (ok, ok, that ~could~ be something else, but bear with me)
Couple questions lately have made me really start thinking about my brackish water tank that I want to set up one day, but looking at these koi ponds today was just…. WOW!!! (some people have waaaaay too much money and should give me some is all I got to say about that…) Some of these ponds if they had been set up brackish instead of fresh could easily have held legal size reds and snook rather than silly ol’ koi, and at first I was thinking “Why not bluegill and bass rather than koi?” but there was one right on the river… Just the stones used for this pond… no, waterfall, stream, terraced landscaping, little pond, another waterfall, more stream, a little bigger pond, another little waterfall and stream down to the big pond at the bottom… jeeze, not to mention the dry-stacked wall along their property line… I don’t even want to think about it and that’s JUST THE STONES!!! Anyway, koi just don’t belong within spitting distance of brackish water as far as I’m concerned. (I know, this is fishing section, not gardening or pet fish section, but bear with me, I like everyone here better)
Anyway, there’s a point here somewhere… Ah, there it is… Considering you can catch reds in insanely shallow water, would it be feasable to set up, rather than a brackish water fishtank, a brackish water backyard pond? get one of the big preformed things from the hardware store, the primo filtration system you need for things like that, just fill it with good ol’ IRL water with maybe a layer of lagoon floor on the bottom, get some seagrasses going…. These were all gorgeous ponds, and gave me so many nifty ideas, but for some reason it always goes back to brackish water for me…. start with a little barely-keeper red, maybe a little seatrout… toadfish, horseshoe crab or three, little stingray, come on people, you gotta admit, it would rock…
Don’t care if they reproduce… just want something decent enough to keep a few alive and happy without feeling bad about putting them in a little tank… Even if I avoid the gamefish and just go with “trash” fish… little school of sailor’s choice… or… oooo…. forget sailor’s choice or reds or any of the larger species! I could stock it with mangrove snapper! err… no… don’t think it would be deep enough or the right kind of structure…
I’m still thinking… I need a yard before this can even begin to happen… and a bigger house before I can think about even a tank….
*sighs* maybe I could be like that rancher dude who just won the powerball…
See, this is my problem, and it’s always been my problem, I’m great with coming up with ideas that ~need~ to be shot down.
As if I could come anywhere ~near~ affording any type of waterfront property, much less riverfront, and thanks on the salinity issues… the way my brain was seeing it was “Well, the salinity levels of my area of the river fluctuate wildly and there’s still fish and everything does fine…” not thinking that it will wash ~out~ of the pond (probably killing off most any vegetation planted around it if I’m not careful about that… see… my other idea has been a bog garden, which would actually enjoy the overflow of a good FL rain…)
Still gonna have a garden pond one day, but maybe it will be bluegill and bass (or I was also looking at my neon tetras before the snapping turtle ate all of them, thinking how neat they’d be to see swimming in some big school somewhere tropical fishpond
LOL…. don’t worry, I WILL have a pond, fish or otherwise, it’s just that we’re renting right now and I don’t really want to put time, effort and money into putting a pond in a yard that’s not mine….
We’re looking, and there’s houses in our price range, it’s just that most of them lately haven’t been in the kind of neighborhood I want to deal with… a few pop up here and there, but people are so eager to get rid of them for whatever reason that they’re just taking the first offer to come along… or they’re covering up major problems with the houses, things like that… One that we nearly got was a cute little place that I would have been happy with until our termite guy came to look at it… and my father’s buddy from back in his roofing days came to do the inspection… jeeze, if these people had done as much work actually ~fixing~ the problems as they did covering them up it would have been a great house…
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It would rock!
And I really like how you said
“(I know, this is fishing section, not gardening or pet fish section, but bear with me, I like everyone here better)”
I’m just not sure you could get the fish to reproduce, sometimes they can be really picky.
I’m building a nonconventional log cabin in the woods in the swamp, and that’s going well, I belive if you have enough effort, creativity, and unfortunately a little green. Then it can be done.
Get donations to the “blah blah blah fish” experiment.
Well….mmmm…the “salt water issue” would come up first.
When it rains, (and Lord knows it rains a bunch in Fla), it would F-up the salt to freshwater mix. Reds can live in almost completely fresh water, (as can Snook, Tarpon, & Black Drum), but it takes them time to “adjust”.
A hard rain shower would “instantly” mess up the “mix” and the fish would get stressed perty bad, (probably killing them).
BUT, if you could pipe in some ICW water (Will your pond be near/on the ICW?), and allow “new” water ,(say at high tide), to flow into your hypothetical pond you could easily solve that “mix issue”.
OR, you could put some Reds, Snook, baby Tarpon, or Drum in a 75 gallon tank and slowly ,(over a period of a week or 2), mix out the salt content. Once they are totally “freshwater”, Viola! You’ve got some freshwater critters!
I’ve spent plenty of time around different Springs in Fla and you see Jacks, Reds, Snook, Tarpon, Drum swimmin’ right alongside Bass & Brim. In fact , many Snook and Tarpon migrate to Springs in the Winter to get away from the cold.
The above species can “acclimate” to Freshwater. However, I think you’d have problems with Mangroves, Sailors Choice, Etc; they require a higher salt content and can’t acclimate as well.
Problem #2???- Depth and O2- Your pond would need to be deep enough that the fish don’t “broil” in the Fla Sun! Say 6-8 FT in one section tapering to 1-2FT. Perhaps some shade plants and logs for the fish to hide out of the Sun?……In any regard you’d def need some awesome filtration! A fountain in the middle of the pond would help the O2 and keep the water moving which also cools the water down……
Problem #3???- Food- Bigger fish need bigger food. You could go broke feeding a bunch of hungry Tarpon, Snook & Reds! (lol) They would have to be fed “live” bait- Shiners, Mud-Minnows, Shrimp, Etc. That type of food isn’t cheap!
I once had as a pet a 3 1/2-4 LB Largemouth Bass. That guy could eat 2-3 six inch Shiners EVERY day! Needless to say, I ended up letting him go…..(lol). At the time 6-8″ Shiners were $1.50 a piece and you had to buy at least a half dozen. Do the math…….(lol).
The main reason everyone gets Koi is they are colorful, hardy AND they are trained at birth to eat dry fish food.
Don’t get me wrong, this hypothetical pond is totally do-able. It just depends on how much time you’ve got to “fuss” with it!
Heck Gimme, you know fish-tanks as well as (or better) than most of the idiots in the Pet section! (lol)
Well, hope this has helped ya somehow…………I think you could get a pond started a heckava lot easier than trying to find some land to put the pond on. Florida property has gotten so dang EXPENSIVE!
UPDATE: Heck! If I were you, I’d go catch some nice Bluegill and a couple small Bass. A Brim & Bass can live in 4FT of water and are easy to take care of. Don’t give up on your pond yet!
If you want a killer pond, give Brandon (he’s gonna love me for suggesting this! LOL) a shovel and make him dig you a 4FT deep, 10 X 10 yard hole. Fill it with three layers of heavy poly; put a sprinkler/fountain in the center on a raised rocky dais; add sand and gravel to the bottom and your fav freshwater water plants and VIOLA! You got yourself a pond!
Heck, Brandon could rent a small excavator for the day (around $100) and have that pond dug in 1 day!
Making a small freshwater pond is something Brandon (and you) could put together in a couple 3-4 days! And it’s not that expensive. Figure the poly, gravel, water-pump, and misc rocks would not cost more than $200-$300. Altogether,(with the rental excavator), you could have your dream pond for under $500.
And if the fish die (which they won’t- Bass and Bluegill live in ditches in Fla), it could still be a very attractive “reptile” pond. Knowing you (and B), it wouldn’t take long before a baby Gator might just “appear” in your pond….(hint).