Gold fish info

[StirCrazy]

Originally Posted by Beverly

Steve,

I would be concerned about the wood deteriorating and causing water quality problems, and probably wouldn't put fish in the barrel. Perhaps run it this summer and see if water quality will be an issue. The wood might also cause low pH. If there aren't water quality and pH problems, I would put fish in it next year.

It probably gets cold enough in your location that you would have to overwinter your fish indoors, unless you can manage to heat just enough for there to be no ice forming. At such cool temps, you won't have to feed the fish all winter.

We had a 110g indoor gf pond a few years back. Had the pond running for over two years. It was stocked with four fish if I remember correctly - 1.5" shubunkin and at least one feeder gf. All grew like crazy while we had them and were over 3.5" long when we found new homes for them because of a house move.

Hey Bev, the average winter temp is 5 here but I plan on shutting down the system in the winter anyways. another thing I was wondering about is it is a coopered barrel, if anyone doesn't know what coopering is it is the process of charing the barrel's inside to seal the wood but that also means the barrel is chared on the inside so I am going to scrape it down a but, but I cannot remember if burnt wood releases anything.

There would be some tannins released into the water but I know this isn't a problem for most fish and as for other stuff, would we make wine in barrels that would release poisions? Good point about PH I will let water sit in it for a couple weeks and see what happens there but I am starting with a PH of about 6.5 anyways, maybe I could put a couple hunks of dead coral in the bottom to bolster the water hardness and PH a bit?

Steve