« Goldfish in a Rain Barrel - Yellow Dog Rain Barrels - Toronto »

Goldfish in a rain barrel - update

10 November 2008
Written by: chris Posted under Rain Barrel Designs, Rain Barrels General

Well the goldfish experiment has been a great success! We decided that the fish would be better off as one big happy family in one big barrel so we transferred them from the smaller clean barrel. Not only have the fish been keeping the rain barrel free of mosquito larva they have almost all doubled in size. We still have 12 of the original 15 fish in the barrel, we have moved 2 to an inside fish tank and sadly we lost one when my son over fed the ones in his room.

Leaving the lid off the barrels has  lead to a couple interesting  problems that I had not really thought about when we started out. The biggest problem is that much of the debris from the roof has been making its way into the barrel.  When I build our rain barrels I always put double screening on the intake, a fine window screen to keep the bugs out and a stronger, wider screen to reinforce the bug screen so that if larger object landed on top the screen would not break. I have always thought of the screen as a way to keep bugs out but it is equally important for filtering the water so that you don’t end up with what I expect will be a big lump of sludge at the bottom of the barrel.

Another problem is that animals can get to the contents of the barrel if they really try. Ordinarily I don’t think that there is much that a raccoon would find interesting in one of these barrels but I suspect that once they find out that there is a fresh fish market in the backyard they may at least poke their nose in to check it out. Hopefully if one falls in he know how to swim.

If you are in Ottawa you know about the snow storm that we had at the end of October.  It turns out that the lid good for keeping snow out as well. I have a stick by the barrel to break ice but I did not have a plan for scooping out slush and snow.  This is important because we are feeding them now that the bug season is over so we need to keep some surface area to drop the food in. I am sure that this will become more of a challenge once winter really rolls in.

The plan for the winter is to move a few more inside to live in a regular tank and to tend to the remaining few outside by breaking ice and dropping in fish food daily.


Comments are closed.

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.