Containers suitable for pond use.

With summer coming - oh yes it is!! - you may be considering building a pond. If you do not want, or are unable, to build a pond and you do not like, or can’t afford, the pre-formed ones available, here are a few ideas.

Check out your farming or plumbing supplier for stock troughs. These come in a wide variety of sizes, colours, and materials and are relatively inexpensive. Concrete ones may be a bit hard to carry but they also have fibreglass and heavy duty plastic. The pond above has a plastic trough with a formal brick surround.

Old bath tubs are often given away. I have two of them in my garden. One is used to keep my driftwood waterlogged and the other has 4 goldfish in it. Baths are ideal to waterlog driftwood because of their length. A whole log will fit underwater at once. They are also good for growing live daphnia for feeding your fishes.

Wine barrels are available from a variety of places - often the wineries themselves or local clubs sell them for fund raising. These need to be lined, not like the ones you can buy in garden shops. They look like wine barrels but were specifically built as water containers, and are not the real thing, so are already sealed safely. This photo (right) is a shop bought barrel.

A few mussel floats cut in half lengthwise make lovely small ponds or a safe haven to put fry to grow unmolested by larger fishes. Be careful though as the black absorbs the heat so it pays to keep these ponds out of as much direct sunlight as you can.

A lot of ’tropical’ fish will breed in ponds over the summer months in many parts of NZ. White clouds (Tanichthys albonubes) which tolerate cold and tropical water, and barbs like the cherry (Capoeta titteya), golden (Barbus sachsi) and rosy (Barbus conchonius) will grow well outdoors in a warm position. Many of the barbs will breed in around 24ºC. Paradisefish (Macropodus opercularis) will breed in 20 - 24ºC.