Take that Algae!

We have been in discussions about how to better take care of the side of our pond, the rocks that fill it, and the new porous shells we dropped in for the frogs to hide. We were worried about the addition of a big fish like a Koi or an Oscar as these can occasionally become aggressive towards outward species, IE, frogs. And getting rid of mosquitoes is great and all, but they would also rid the pond of the frogs, which is a terrible crime.

Then we ran into the problem of Connor. What would he do to the fish? I mean this is a duck who is so territorial that he will beat birds to death then rip them apart in some gruesome manner. Not rarely, or occasionally, but normally, and on a semi regular basis. So tossing some fish into this pond that hang out near the surface is asking for trouble. Now I'm not saying he'd eat them, but I full expect there would be some beaten fish floating belly up by the time he finished.

Then we remembered back, there was the perfect fish we could get, a bottom feeding algae eater. A pleco.


We used these a lot when we had our 75 gallon fish tank. They never got really big because of the amount of other fish to food ration, but one thing they did do, was get fat off the algae produced. And they did a marvelous job, are durable fish, and kept to themselves and most importantly on the bottom.

So I bought three of them. Two mediums, who I named Jim and Pam, and a large one who I named Dwight. Dwight is about 8 or 9 inches and Jim and Pam are about 4, currently. But given that the pond is clocking in at over 500 gallons, they should have plenty of room for growth, and hopefully expansion (assuming they are boy and girl).

Here the new kids are.

This is Dwight, he is all of the images but one, which is Jim.





This is Jim, he looks huge because I was rocking the zoom, but he and Pam are only about 4 inches in length.





As you will notice Dwight is rather long. Which is good, I didn't want a ton of tiny suckers in there so I forked over the 30.00 and bought Dwight. There was a larger one, but he was 40.00, and in all honestly he was only darker in color and a little fatter. He wasn't 10.00 larger by any stretch. (And if you are wondering Jim and Pam were 9.00 apiece.)



You will notice Pam is not in any of the images. This is because she immediately took off around the pond like lightning, then hid in the stacked mass of rocks in the middle. Kudos to you Pam, you camera shy scamp.

As of this morning none were out and about, but I attribute this to them being twilight fish.