Oversized fishtank

[Jeremy87]

Hey guys
I was think about turning our pool into a fish pond again (done it once before, it went well for about 18 months before we had a fish kill but i know what went wrong). I was thinking this time about putting a few species that can live in fresh and salt i.e. chucking a few fish in that i've caught down the local creek around the freshwater interface. So my question is how would one go about acclimatising something like a bream into full fresh water?

[Luc]

I've done it many years ago with butter bream.

I placed them in a fish tank (36x15x15 inches) filled with water (from where I caught them) then a couple of times a week I took out 5 litres of tank water and replaced it by the same amount of aged fresh water.

Slow and steady is the way to go.

Keeping the water slightly salty is a good way to keep most freshwater diseases away.

Luc

[Vindicator]

Yeah I've heard the same sort of thing. A guy I knew had a bream in a fish tank which he converted to fresh by taking out a cupful of water and replaced it with a cupful of fresh. I don't know what period it took but I think you'd need something bigger than a cup.

Cheers
Kezza

[cqfreshie]

With any fish that can migrate to the fresh ... bara, bass, eel etc, you should be able to change over wihin 24 hours by trickling in the fresh and draining out the salt via separate hoses. After all, they swim up into the fresh much quicker.

Bream may be another proposition ... correct me if I'm wrong, but don't they only go up as far as the brackish waters?

Cheers

[Cammy]

or you could just buy some freshwater bream from the pet store, but i would rather converting them myself, just so i can say i have done it before and it would be fun. im actually gonna do it for a friend soon, its gonna be interesting.

i recon give it a go i have heard stries about the same sorta thing ur doing and they turned out good.

cam

[bayfisher]

Fish like bream, jacks etc can be converted to fresh water quicker then most people think. I would say take half a day slowly converting the water by adding fresh water, but it probably could be done in half an hour if necessary. In the wild, fresh water flushes in creeks occur rather quickly and i would not think it would be unusual for a fish to swim from a salt brackish section of a river into a fresh section in a day.

Cheers Chris

[cbs]

So What's the problem of just keeping it salt water?

[Jeremy87]

So What's the problem of just keeping it salt water?

The pool is 66 000 litres, thats alot of salt. As stated above a bit of salt is always a benifit for fish anyway but i also might put some purely freshwater species in aswell.

[mik01]

so whats the plan Jeremy? when the weathers bad you fish in your own backyard??
fishing parties at Jeremy's place?

[loophole]

yeah this would be a rather good idea actually preety cool.

so with the breambos mate i actuaaly go cast nettin in a small creek which is brackish and other than the livies we get ive also picked up flathead and bream
so i would say keep em in a different tank then do a conversion there not fully till about 70% fresh.

then chuck em in ya pool. then invite me over so we can have a fish for em lol

[Horse]

Many estuary sp can be quickly adapted as Chris pointed out. They can go from high salinity to almost fresh by rising out of a deep hole when a river starts to run fresh. I have converted Mono's and a Flatty to pure fresh overnight.
Sounds like a great idea to me

[Jeremy87]

Thanks for the feed back guys, i've caught alot of estuary species in pure fresh and figured they would be fairly tolerant. I was planning on starting with a few bass, yellows and maybe some barra from a pet store that are already of a decent size and then adding whatever fish i catch in tinny creek as i catch them. So that could be jacks, bream, estuary cod, tarpon, flathead etc. Last time round i had spangled perch, bass, silver perch and barcoo grunter. But the algae built up to much and to cut a long story short i had and oxygen drop and they all went ass up, but this time round i wont be using any pellet food to keep the nitrogen levels down and have come up with a way that should be able to remove the algae.

Ok now so the next big question if i chuck in a 40cm jack (caught in the wild) and have a bunch of 15-20cm bass (bought from a pet store) how many can i expect to be undiggested the next morning? I plan on regualarly stocking the pool with guppies from the local water hole and going and netting poddy mullet on a regular basis as a food supply for the predatory fish, so if i keep the food levels up will they play nicely?

[loophole]

Jeremy jacks NEVER play nicely lol

i think if u got a jack in there with any fish half his size then hes gunna be boss

put ya barra and bass in first then introduce others you will need heaps of guppies and mullet in there to keep up the food source. u gunna have some structure in there for these guys?

[Jeremy87]

yeh mate last time i got some big plant pots and cut holes in them and weighed them down on the bottom aswell as adding in some lily pads and what not. I'll probably add in some tree branches and stuff aswell. At the moment the pool has only got about 5000-10000 litres in it and is home to a heap of tadpoles which i'm going to have to remove so they don't become fish fodder. I'm going to have to put the bottom drain plug back in tomorrow so i might have to drain some water out to do that. I'm then going to make the most of this rain and divert my roof run off via the rain water tank if it take a while to fill up i don't really mind. I've heard that mineral salt or sea salt should be added in to fresh water to keep algae down and improve the health of the fish. How much do i need to add in grams/litre.

[loophole]

yer all sounds good yer mate use the most of this rain and fill ya pond you will be surprised how much it will fill.

id say 10 grams per litre i really dont know i put a table spoon in my 400l tank