Fish for a 45 Gal. barrel

Matak

Matak

Out of the blue!
Jun 18, 2002
1,133
0
36
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Near Toronto
I want to do the eco thing this summer and save rainwater for watering fruits & flowers. I have 5 plastic 45 gallon drums at the side of the house that collect rainwater from the roof. They are ganged together by siphon tubes. West nile is a potential problem so I need to keep mosquitoes from breeding in the barrels. I know that fish find the larvae a tasty meal so I thought about putting a fish in each barrel.

These fish must be:
  • able to stand water temps to 85°
  • small enough at maturity that I could keep 5 in a 30 gallon tank over winter
  • able to live solitary and in community. If I can find one that stays small as an adult I can put 2 or 3 in each barrel.
  • fairly hardy

Any suggestions?
 
Rosy barbs
 
I'd go with platties, white clouds or gouramies. The gouramies have the benefit of being able to tolerate the lower oxygen levels that come with the warmer waters. For platties, they'll end up breeding in the winter (as the white clouds may!), but are very hardy. White clouds, you could put 2-3 in each barrel comfortably. I would probably add a power head, or bubbler in eash tank, just to help keep the oxygen levels up if you go with anything other than the gouramie.
 
Just go and catch a few sunfish from your local water hole every year. and the end of the summer you can let them go and recatch them next spring. Think might be more fun than just stickin some tank fishes in there. Just a thought.
 
Hmm, Sunfish. Or any small local fish like crappies or pumkinheads. They get pretty big (for a fish to eat mosquitoe larvae).
I like the bubbler idea. My guess is that with that kind of volume and water turnover, ammonia and nitrite aren't really a concern. Correct?

I added goldfish in these barrels a couple of years back before I knew how to keep fish. Funny thing, all five fish ended up in barrel #5! They must have all swam through the 5' sections of siphon tubes (all 5 of them) and had a party. Go figure.
 
Check with your local DNR before transporting live fish, and before putting any fish into a local waterway. Not a good idea, and very possibly illegal.
 
my lfs sells mosquito fish. with a sign on the tank that says for ponds.
looks like a guppy.

Mosquito Fish ,Gambusia affinis.
 
At 85(f), I'd go for a kind of labyrinth fish. Most (not all) of these fish will do well in higher temperatures. They'll also thrive on M.L. ( with the odd supplement too).

I wouldnt go for white clouds, because - although they are extremly hardy - they prefer temps of around 55-77(f)
 
Down here most everyone keeps goldfish in their horse troughs. They just buy feeders. I know one guy that lives around the corner that put in four feeders five years ago and still has the same fish out there. Take this with a grain of salt as he is a farmer not an aquarist but he has never even fed them in the summer, let alone aerated the water. He throws some generic flake in the winter but never brings them inside. Of course I don't know what winters are like where you live.
 
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