Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi. I have a small outdoor pond I would like to put some gold fish in, I put a thermometer in the water today and at the hottest part of the day the water hit 82F Will a temp that high be ok for the fish?

as long as you have lots of aeration and a decent filter it should be fine. try and get some cover plants or maybe position plants over it so theres plenty of shade at different times of the day. the deeper the pond then the cooler it will be at the bottom.

Well there in itself is the problem. Those temps were taken at the bottom of the pond. I may just forget about the whole idea of puting fish in it, As far as shade gose I dont think plants will help me at all as the pont is compleatly covered by shade all day. Its not verry deep at all, Maybe 12-18" at most. Thanks for the help thus far

the pond needs to be deeper. is it hand made or one of the pre cast kind? adding extra air should help as well, or maybe adding a waterfall effect could cool the water down.

I think it would be fine if as oranda says, you have some water movement. Mine are in a clawfoot bathtub with some floating leaf plants. I rigged the filter so the outlet goes to the other end, up a couple of concrete blocks and over those like a waterfall. I also float a plastic dish of plants on the surface and that makes a place they can find DEEP shade. When I water, I also put a little cold hose water in the tub. They are doing great and BREEDING like crazy.
You can plumb the filter with drip irrigation tubing and make almost anything into a waterfall.
That 82 isn't so bad when we have the outside temps running at 101 for weeks on end as it has been this year.