Cold Water Fish Options

C

Colombian_Shark

King Catfish
Jan 23, 2006
82
0
0
I'm thinking of having a full-fledged pond built (not a small decorative one) and stocking it with fish that do not usually live in my area. Since its more of a natural setup, I'm steering clear of goldfish and koi. The winters in my area can get well below freezing, so I need to find fish that are "cold water" in every sense of the term.

So far, the only non-goldfish species I've found to tolerate winter weather is the white cloud mountain minnow. What would be some other good options?
 
Where do you live? You said you didn't want any native species in your pond so you might have to see if it is illegal to import native species from other temperate climates. Other than goldfish, koi, and whitecloud i can't really think of any either. If you want to go native you can fill it up with various sunfish, perch, crappie and depending on how big your tank is maybe a bass or something. But you said you didnt want native fish. I really don't know
 
What do you mean by a full fledged pond? How big? How deep? Most likely if it is a big pond, you won't hardly ever see the fish anyways, you might as well stock it with bass and bluegill and minnows so you can go fishing. If it's any bigger than a large display pond without a liner then the pond will get stired up and get cloudy as well as get algea and unless you have a dug out place on the side of the pond with a piece of plexiglass for viewing then you will most likely never see your fish. Besides, it's gona take a lot of white clouds to fill a pond. Depending on where you live, if the water stays cold all year long you could try rainbow and brown trout.
 
I live in North Carolina. It stays warm most of the year, but the winters can get pretty cold. As for the "full-fledged" pond term, I mean a pond large enough to sustain its own ecosystem - large enough to fish out of. I would not try to stock it exclusively with mountain clouds; they'd just be a unique touch. As for viewing the fish, minnows tend to come into shallow water, which provides ample viewing time.

Another thing I had in mind is that I'd have my own aquarium fish supply. Should I desire to setup a tank, I could simply walk outside with a wide net. Even though it wouldn't bring much money, it would also be fun to provide cold water species to the local pet shops (they accept locally bred fish).
 
cold water

Well thers plenty of people here in ct that keep koi and golf fish with no problem with the cold and newengland gets cold many mornings at o left my wrx out one night and radiator froze .
 
Well, other than koi and gold fish, white clouds are all I can think of. I guess you could stock bass and bluegill in there too if you stock enough white clouds. I had a pond in ohio that contained: largemouth bass, bluegill, catfish, and fathead minnows. You could replace the fathead minnows with white clouds, that would be cool. I don't know how well white clouds breed though, if you can get them to breed in the pond they should stay well established even though some will get eaten. You could also introduce some local crayfish to help lighten the feeding on the white clouds. bass really love the crayfish. Sounds like a good idea, now you can fish and have an aquarium at the same time. Also, you could keep a few koi in there with the bass, etc. That would be a cool pond. I wonder were you could get white clouds in bulk? Let us know what you decide to do.
 
heres an odd idea, and nobody here will probably like it and find something wrong with it. which is good ;)

if the pond was large enough you could buy live trout, salmon or something from a local grocery store and put them in. they live a long time, and i know they survive the lakes freezing over.

then again, you wanted fish that arent local.. those fish are natural but most likely local.
 
CBTF said:
heres an odd idea, and nobody here will probably like it and find something wrong with it. which is good ;)

if the pond was large enough you could buy live trout, salmon or something from a local grocery store and put them in. they live a long time, and i know they survive the lakes freezing over.

then again, you wanted fish that arent local.. those fish are natural but most likely local.
Click to expand...
Hmm.... sounds familier, oh yeah, 'cause you took that from my first post. :mad2: :joke:
 
Rosie Reds will do fine. I've had them in my pond for years. They breed like crazy.
A side note, If the pond is going to be a full size pond, you probably won't be able to stop local native fish from finding there way into it. My sister had a pond dug a couple of years back and by the end of summer, they had bluegill. they never added them. The best we can come up with is that the eggs got into the pond from ducks that landed in it. Food for thought

Abraham
 
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