Hello everyone. I am Rob from Naples Fl. In addition to ponding I enjoy gardening as well as running. As a child I had aquariums, both fresh and salt water. I enjoyed raising fish and spending my allowance each week on a new critter. As an adult I still appreciate a home aquarium, although I no longer have one, my mother now uses my last tank for a guinea pig for my two boys. I enjoy taking my boys to a local nursery that sells koi out of large stock tanks. I have my best luck at buying the smallest fish usually around five dollars a pop. When I buy the bigger fish I tend to lose them to a blue Heron that visits twice a year for a few weeks at a time. Last year I purchased a large liner online and made the biggest pond I could with regard to volume. Before this I purchased small liners from Lowe's but the fish and I quickly outgrew them. I estimate the total volume to be about 6,000 gallons. I have two Skippy type filters with two 5K gallon per hour pumps. My smaller pond is about 500 gallons and I have three lilies as well as platys to eat the mosquitos. The platys are prolific breeders. I started with ten in the Spring and I am close to one hundred. I joined the forum to get ideas and share some of my knowledge with other hobbyists.
