I have always liked it warmer than most people. My comfort zone is just in a different place than theirs!

I believe different folks are cold or hot tolerant. Mama was always too hot in the summer, and Daddy was always freezing in the winter. Virginia is too hot in the summer, 100 with 99% humidity, and too cold in the winter, 33 and raining, ugh! There are a few really nice days in the Spring, and a few in the Fall...

Everyone here is wearing sweatshirts! 77 days, brrrr.

Beautiful angelfish, and is that a electric yellow? Mine bashed everything so i put it out in my pond and it eventually died.
Oh Id love to be able to keep tropical fish in my outside pond. Did have 2 plecs outside for a year(not the one pictured) until winter and one died and i tried moving the other inside but it end up dying(probably from the change) and it doesnt get to cold here, barley a frost. They do need 26 deg cel. though and it drops to about 7-10 i think in winter. I have 2 cod in it and there doing fine. My goldfish are slowely disapearing though.
I'll have to stick to inside tanks...
my angel.

Beautiful Angel Fish, love the color. Also the pleco. Plecos are really silly fish, I enjoy watching them. My inside pleco is really shy, he sticks his head under a rock and thinks no one can see him. Here's a pick of him attached to his favorite food, zucchini slices. This was a year or so ago, he's a bit bigger now. I have noticed that he has slowed down on the growing which is really good.





Our air temp lows for the year are around 18°C but of course the water in the ponds doesn't get that cold. Generally in the winter we get that temp a few times at night when a cold front is passing. The good part about the concrete ponds is that they hold their temp really well and aren't subject to wide swings. The cattle trough on the roof is not so good, I think that is why nothing does as well up there as in the other ponds.

We do have a concrete pond but yeah it does get colder than that here. We have heaps of plecs in fishtanks and they dont seem shy, you can pet some of the bigger ones. I gotta push them out of the way when cleaning the tanks.
Heres our biggest normal plec the other i posted is bigger but is a Gibbosa which yours looks like as well. There a nicer colour.

That sure looks a lot like mine. The two I have in the outside pond, one of them is a lot bigger than the other. Do you know how to tell males from females? I imagine the Mollies and Guppies would eat any eggs they laid but it would be awfully cute to have baby plecos. The smaller of the 2 outside is more friendly, he will come up and let you feed him by hand. The Mollies will clean the dead skin off your feet and the smaller pleco gets into that as well. He's got quite a suction on that mouth. We put a rock near the pond so you can sit and have a fish pedicure There are salons here in the city that offer "special" fish in tanks for a pedicure, they charge a lot more. I don't know what kind of fish they have at the salons but the Mollies are quite good at it and the pleco, he almost takes the skin off. When he first started doing that, I was in the pond cutting the dead lily leaves and suddenly something attached to my skin above my knee. I almost walked on water out of the pond. I finally caught the littler pleco in the act, he sneaks up on you and starts sucking your skin. I have to bat him away when I'm in the pond. My feet are ok but not anything else

Jonna

I did not know they did that. It is kind of funny - must feel funny too.

I used to breed Angel fish and I would trade them in mainly for fish food - that was in the late seventies and up to about 1989. In those years I ran two 125 gallon tanks and numerous others ( including 4 connected 29 gallon tanks) So I also had Plecos. They sure get HUGE. In those years we also had a small pond in the backyard and one year we set Angelfish out for the Summer along with some Uarus. Unfortunately the season is just too short for tropical fish here in NJ.
Now having again the pond in the backyard, this year I only set out Paradise Fish, since they are really tough little fish( can take a bit lower temp in Spring and Fall than other tropicals). And since they are Anabantoids, I don't need a pump. ( I had dropped off the Golden Gouramies I held over the Winter also in the greenhouse, at my favorite Aquarium-store) I am now looking at several hundreds of babies, the fish started to breed the day I moved them from the greenhouse- aquariums into the pond outside. The babies are really cute, the largest ones are now over an inch. Fun.

hehe! I don't think many people have breed Plecs. Try bristlenose catfish, there smaller but breed very easy and can take cool water, our cod in our pond would eat them though.
So you just let the zucchini float around? i cut it side ways and stick forks in it to weigh it down so they can feed on the bottom and suck the middle out so all thats left is the skins.
albino baby bristlenose catfish and the mum is on top left if you can see her.

Yes, I just slice it and throw it in the pond. The plecos come up and usually attach to the bottom of the slice and just float around. Occasionally they will get it just right and be hanging vertically in the water but not often. They don't like the lettuce that I throw in for the cichlids but they can smell that zucchini immediately. Mine too suck out the middle of the slice and leave these floating circles of zucchini skin, if I leave it in there long enough the cichlids will eat the skin.

I got a small type of pleco for the roof pond. I put it in a small fountain pond I have on the terrace first as a quarantine. The dogs drink out of that fountain and although I never saw the little pleco come out from under the rocks, it was gone when I cleaned the fountain I'm afraid one of the dogs may have slurped it up. I felt responsible and now I don't want to get another. The other thing is that I worry about introducing something into my ponds so I very rarely add any fish and if I do I isolate them for weeks first.


Those baby albino catfish are precious. It would be really cool to have a tank with babies. My problem is I want all the pretty fish and they don't all get along or can handle my conditions. I really wanted some Discus but they just can't handle the hard water we have.