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Summer Tubbing

It’s like magic! I wonder how many more you will have...

How is it so much easier to breed fish in a 150l outdoor tub than it is in a 150l tank - apart from the free infusoria and midge larvae, of course!?

Unsure if it is @Ray , it is so tiny as seen against the size of the frogbit leaf.

I don’t know if it’s just my eyes but that looks a lot more like a mosquito larvae rather than a fish. Anyone else think the same?

It’s not your eyes @Conort2 I’m leaning that way too. Young’uns apparently look like this:

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Obviously you don’t normally keep the parents in the tank you’re maturing the fry. If any make it it will be because they’re breeding more than they can consume so this is just a ‘trying your luck’ project. Even if it’s mosquito larvae it’s more food for the fish so sort of a win as well.

The fish are courting, spot that behaviour regularly so we’ll see.
 
@Geoffrey Rea I think you’ll be surprised, due to the continual supply of natural food and all the planted cover fish seem less likely to predate their fry in these outdoor tubs. Seen it before where a small shoal is added at the beginning of the summer and by the end of the season there are fish of all sizes in there.

Have you got any moss on the bottom? as that would be a great help for providing both food and cover.

Cheers

Conor
 
There’s moss, eheim ‘doughnut’ media (can’t remember what they call those ceramic tubes), course sponges and big patches of the riccardia that got evicted from the 1200. Also the Guyana in a 20cmx20cm tub which has nearly grown to the surface.

Try to keep the floaters at this sort of coverage:

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A few patches open, but having to remove a fair bit each day. Do inspect the roots of the frogbit to make sure I’m not literally throwing the babies out with the bath water.

The water is teaming with life so don’t feed apart from micro worms first thing. I know this is too large a food stuff for the fry to begin with. Could put some activated yeast in there for extra but relying on nature to provide really.
 
Hi all,Mosquito larvae.Another mosquito, but this time Black fly (Simuliidae) @zozo had them <"in one of his tubs">.

They are filter feeders.

cheers Darrel
Are these the evil little black flys that give me the nastiest bites?! These things are a 10 times worse than mozzies, can feel the bite instantly followed by a hot swollen bite. Nasty little b******s.

Cheers

Conor
 
Are these the evil little black flys that give me the nastiest bites?! These things are a 10 times worse than mozzies, can feel the bite instantly followed by a hot swollen bite. Nasty little b******s.

Not anymore they’re not. Just knocked them off into the water and the CPD’s gobbled them up 😂
 
Hi all,
Are these the evil little black flys that give me the nastiest bites?!
Could be, they are a bit nibbly . This is for the <"Blandford Fly">, which has now spread a bit more widely across S. England (possibly making use of water features), but they all bite and aren't easy to definitively ID.

If you live some-where with cold, wet soil (W. Scotland, N. Wales, Alaska etc) you are more likely to be get "no-see-um" <"Ceratopogonidae midges">.

cheers Darrel
 
If you live some-where with cold, wet soil (W. Scotland, N. Wales, Alaska etc) you are more likely to be get "no-see-um" <"Ceratopogonidae midges">.

Well acquainted with this one. Done a fair bit of yomping around the Scottish highlands. Most memorable toilet breaks ever.... You get your ass out and it’s midges buffet time 😂
 
Alway amazes me where they come from!

I always had the same feeling.. I live on a hill surrounded by several very nice natural ponds and a creek indeed a few hundred meters away. And still, they come all the way uphill to find my garden tub and stay in it for the entire summer. They definitively are explorative nomadic wanderers and funny is we never see them do it. As if they appear out of nowhere and then be gone again. It's a mystery to me why the heck would they leave a lush natural pond to go uphill for 500 metres crossing several streets to end up in a stupid tub in some garden.

What's also funny is i raised some tadpoles this year and all the baby frogs were gone a few days after transforming to a little frog. As if they instinctively need to leave the water they developed in. To be replaced by an adult from another area reclaiming that space. Obviously there must be some food to find why else would an adult frog stay for weeks. SO that can not be the reason for the baby frogs to move away. But they do.. I had 8 of them and all were gone within 3 days and never seen one again and find adults instead.
 
Frogs always amaze me. When I was younger we had a 8x4ft pond and as we were cleaning it out we caught over 200 adult frogs. We put them in a fish tank until we had finished and thought we had so many that they needed splitting up a bit and call the environment agency for advice (this was at the time they were widely dying from red leg disease). We were told they were fine to move so took a 3/4 of them to the local broads in lidded buckets hanging on our bike handlebars. My mum isn't to keep on frogs and a fish tank with a couple of hundred was the stuff of nightmares.

It's also weird every spring in our local woods when we start seeing all the frogs magically appear on their migration to the pond in the centre. You go the rest of the year not seeing one but suddenly thousands pop up probably half a mile from the pond. It's a bit like a biblical plague tbh.
 
Going to miss the frogs when they disappear. You pop out and there they are.

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This little one hops all over the garden and the kids love it. Definitely setting up a tub next year in the hope they’ll return.
 
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