Fish from backyard fountain!

[TomRoach]

Hi, everyone. This is my first post. I live in New Jersey and we have a small fountain in our backyard. We have a water plant in it that floats on the surface. One day this Summer, we saw tiny brown fish swimming around and they've been alive in there since! Today, we took the fountain out for the winter and I moved the fish into a big glass bowl I bought at a local pet shop, using the exact same water as was in the fountain. They've survived on the water plant but the plant is now in the garbage. They seem to be living off the algae from the sun and perhaps also the plant. There is still some algae in the water but I don't know what to feed them. I picked up some fish food with algae in it, from the local pet store, but don't think it will do for them. They are more likely to each tiny pieces of bread than this fish food, from what I can see.

Please see some attached photos I took with my cell phone today while they were still in the fountain:







I can use my regular camera to take much better photos if anyone needs me to. Please let me know. Thanks for any help anyone can offer!

[TheOldSalt]

Hmmm.. it's hard to tell what they are from the top.
Anyway, most wild fish can be trained to eat "fishfood" fairly easily. You may have t offer the good stuff for a bit first, like live blackworms or something, and if these like algae, then you can either grow them some in jars or get some spirulina flakes.

[mesapod]

Welcome to fishforums!

This iis very weird where did you buy the plant??

They srrt if look like a brown goldfish??
Was that fountain always there or did you set it up?
Are you sure no one put or bought any fish for the fountain?
How many were in the fountain?

[TomRoach]

I bought the Spirulina fish flakes at the pet store and since the fish are so small, I grinded them up in my palms as I put them into the fish bowl. Two of the four fish eventually went for a couple of the fish flakes.

My mom bought the plant at a landscaping place called Living Landscapes. It is a floating water plant, and the fertilized eggs were already in the plant! They hatched some unknown amount of time after being placed into our fountain and my mom first noticed the little brown fish swimming around when they weren't hiding under the rocks. It really is cool and I'd like to feed them whatever they like most. Fish food from the pet store is not nearly as good as a more natural food they would likely have in nature.

Thanks again and I'll take a better photo tomorrow.

-Tom

[TomRoach]

Originally Posted by mesapod

Was that fountain always there or did you set it up?

My parents bought it and set it up on our backyard patio.

Originally Posted by mesapod

Are you sure no one put or bought any fish for the fountain?

No one put any fish into the fountain. The fertilized eggs were in the floating water plant my mom bought at the landscape store.

Originally Posted by mesapod

How many were in the fountain?

Originally, I thought there were five but now there are four. It was always hard to tell because they liked to hide under the rocks, especially when startled when they saw me or heard me approaching.

[Betta1]

Tom, your gonna need to learn about the nitrogen cycle if you want the best health possible for these fish. Since you just put them in a bowl theres no biological storeage. In short an aquarium works off bacteria, it acts as a way to eat the waste produced by fish by eating it and turning it into less toxic forms. The major benefit of a filter in an aquarium is infact the places it can store this bacteria and not the carbon contained in the filter. More then likely these fish survived due to being hardy and being in a large enough space to have this bacteria build up on rocks and what not (I know virtually nothing about natural and outdoor setups). But now that you've got them in an even more artificial and confined space your going to have to reproduce the environment that let them survive and this would be some sort of active filtration.

Your options would be
Under gravel filtration: This is a tray placed under the gravel with a tube sticking through it, an air pump produces a stream of air that travels up the tube and causes a slight current to travel down through the rocks (another good place for bacteria to live) and thus helps eat the ammonia produced.

Sponge filter: This is essentially the same thing with a sponge used to allow bacteria growth instead of the rocks

Active filtration: This would be your standard filter that attachs to an aquarium, a pump circulates water through filters and through bio pads, both are good places for bacteria to build up and again eat ammonia.

In all three the general idea is to get water moving past some sort of material (gravel sponge or filter) where it can allow more bacteria to grow and eat the ammonia. The more water getting to more surface for bacteria to grow the more waste you can deal with.

One more thing you should know about the nitrogen cycle, in your new tank there is none of this bacteria and therefore ammonia is going to build up and cause harm to your fish. The simple presence of ammonia will cause this bacteria to begin growing but it takes time.

I hope that was helpfull if not to long

[Kyoberr]

You don't happen to know the name of the plant do you? That is really cool by the way! I love seeing little fish in ponds, its exciting (: And Welcome!

[Scuba Kid]

Its not that far fetched....

It was probably water hyacinth....a very common "floating water plant" bought for decorative fish/koi ponds. Its not uncommon that eggs were brought with them, as goldfish and koi, for example, do commonly lay their eggs in the roots of water hyacinth. When she bought the plant, it may have been kept in a pond with a breeding group of fish.
My goldfish spawn all the time in our pond, and the eggs are most always attached to the water hyacinth roots. At the beginning of the summer, I gave a friend some water hyacinth for her pond and since then has found five baby goldfish....she had no goldfish in the pond prior to me giving her the water hyacinth.

The nitrogen cycle is a very important aspect of fish-keeping that you need to know if you want these fish to thrive. A bowl is by no means a good housing for most any fish other than a betta.
In order to identify the fish, you should try to take some more pictures of not only the tops of the fish, but the sides as well. Once we know what the fish are, we can help you determine the proper housing for them and their needs.

[TomRoach]

I took several photos this evening of the fish in their new home. They are very active so their quick movement made no flash impossible even though I used a tabletop tripod. The first one has no flash but shows their natural color the best. The last three have flash. The floating plant is the last remaining piece of the water plant they were born in. It was originally green and is now brown.









Please help me identify what type of fish these are. I need to feed them and get them in the right kind of tank or at least put the right kind of filter and bacteria in the fish bowl. They're really zippy and keep swimming into the glass, so maybe they need a much wider tank? Thank you all for your help!

[Scuba Kid]

They are definitely goldfish. They will need a very large home when full grown....preferably a large pond.

[mesapod]

you could probaby feed them goldfish flakes.
for those 4 gold fish youd need like a 40gallon tank. You dont need a heater though.

[Ice Prince]

Until you have a real filter you can put some rocks from the fountain in the bowl to seed it with some of the bacteria you need depending how long its been since the fish were in there, because after a while the bacteria will die.

[Fishfirst]

I would suggest going and buying one of those big horse troughs from fleet farm. like a 75 gallon or so.

[neilfishguy]

or an old bathtub could work I bet

[Scuba Kid]

Originally Posted by mesapod

you could probaby feed them goldfish flakes.
for those 4 gold fish youd need like a 40gallon tank. You dont need a heater though.

Not very sound advice. 40 gallons for four fancy variety goldfish perhaps which dont get very big. However, I'm willing to bet that these are common/comet goldfish and will get very large and very active.

[redpaulhus]

I agree with much of the above - they are comet type goldfish, they will get big (bigger than a football) , and they do great in outdoor ponds.
If you want to keep all 4 indoors for life, I'd go with a big tank.

Personally I like about 20g per fish, although you can start a little smaller at first (maybe 10g per fish for the first 6 months or so).
However - I also don't like to do water changes more than once a week.
If you don't mind doing lots and lots and LOTS of water changes, you could go with a smaller tank

[TigerBarb12]

How big is the fountain they were in? Couldnt you keep them in that?? If not, a horse trough or old bathtub arent terrible ideas, but you could use a freezer, like the ones without a fridge, just the big freezer chest, IF someone is throwing one out, that would be pretty cool.

[TomRoach]

I got a 10-gallon tank from my sister and cleaned it well. I then filled it with filtered water from my refrigerator and let the water adjust to room temperature over two days. I then took the better part of 45 minutes trying to get my four fish out of their small glass bowl, using a net I bought last week. The first fish came out easily but the last three took time, and I took breaks while watching "Jumanji" on TV

I temporarily put them into a smaller bowl while I transferred the rocks in their big bowl into the new tank. Then, I poured them into their new home. I also bought a nice filter system for the new tank prior to putting them in.

My question is about the bacteria. Someone here recommended I put bacteria in, or grow my own. Does anyone suggest I just let bacteria form naturally? The tank is near a nice big window with sunlight coming in.

Thanks again to everyone,
Tom

[Betta1]

Bacteria simply forms when there is ammonia present, all you need is a source. The best thing you could do is provide a source other then your fish, this is called fishless cycling. This is done with pure ammonia (diluted) or a raw shrimp rotting or by feedint the tank as if there were fish allready there though there isn't. Since you allready have fish in there your options for fishless no longer exist unless you can get them into a space capable of processing ammonia. The problem with using fish to cycle is it takes time for the bacteria to form, in this time (2-4 weeks) the ammonia builds up and causes damage to the fish and can even kill them (a white cloudy tank is associated).

There are two things you can do since you aren't going fishless to reduce the stress on your fish. Firstly find a product called "cycle" (theres another similar just forgot the name) this is bottled bacteria and adding a cap a day will speed up the process of forming bacteria in your bio-filter. The second thing you can do would be to get a product which neutralizes ammonia, here the idea is to keep the ammonia from spiking while at the same time keeping it from dropping to low, essentialy keep the level from causing damage while allowing bacteria to properly form.

Of course the 10g you've got is by no means a permanent home, it could last you until summer but I'd bet money it won't even house one next winter. So keep the words "fishless cycle" in mind for your next tank

[Shaggy]

Tom, are you parents going to start up that fountain again in the summer? If so, if your fish are still alive by then, the smartest thing would be is to put them back in the fountain. They would do much better there, but I guess that all depends on the size of the fountian and the size of the fish when you decide to put them in.