anone get those rosy red minnows from petsmart?

[MajorDan]

Liska, I think so. As you probably know my pond is nearing completion but I still have time to make final adjustments an if there is something I need to do to have fry, I would like to do that. My pond will only have shubunkins in it so I was expecting to end up with more than the initial 6 or so I put in. My pond kit is really supposed to be rocked in but I am only doing that on a few wall that you normally see when you look at the pond. Other walls are straight down from the top with no rocks on them. I guess the rocked ponds have lots of holes for fry to hide in. Or I could be lots of aquatics could also give them cover. So, that was why I was curious what your pond was like.

 

[Faebinder]

I've been breeding rosy reds in my garage/workshop for years. They are a sub species of the fathead minnow that was originally discovered in Arkansas I'm told. I have a breeder group in a 29 gal aquarium. I put six small clay flower pots on the bottom. When a male wants to breed he will take over one the pots and entice eggbound females into the pot. When the female extracts her eggs the male puts them in his mouth and sticks them on the top underside of the pot. I let him take care of the eggs for a day or so and then move the pots to five gallon tanks where the eggs hatch. When the young grow out a bit I transfer them to a larger 100 gallon grow out tank. Then when they put on some size I take them down to my bass pond where they meet their end inside a bass stomach.
I keep some in my koi pond where they do just fine in hot and cold weather. Their life span is about 18 months.

Then you'll be all surprised that I had until a month ago 7 rosey minnows.. lost 2 one accidently. The five are over 3 years old in a pond with mostly goldfish and 1 koi. They never reproduced but that's cause I don't feed the pond heavily and the goldfish im sure eating the eggs.

I'm not anti minnows... I just suggest a minimum of a month watch in a tank before introducing to a pond.

 

[Lisak1]

We have an eco-system pond. My only filter is a bog. No skimmer - but we have a negative edge that drops off into an underground 1000 gallon rain storage tank. We have lots of plants, all naturalized in the pond. The only thing in pots is the waterlilies. We have 8 koi and a gazillion goldfish/shubunkins. We started with just a handful of goldies, but they are good at reproducing.

We have some goldfish fry that survived this year - a few swam over into the rain exchange and I just left them there. I'm guessing the frogs that hang out there got them, as they disappeared. I still see two or three in the pond - which means there are probably more. Many are born black so they are hard to spot the first year.