I think I may be obsessed - any body of water needs a fish in it IMO.

We have - in various places round our ten acres - some large round concrete watertroughs in use for stock watering. They are 500 litres mostly but one would be 1000 litres at a guess and they are kept full with ballcocks which refill them every time an animal drinks.

I've been contemplating them for a while and have come to the conclusion they each need half a dozen goldfish (actually some shubunkins) and some plants.

Has anyone done this? One of my concerns is that on hot days they may get a 50% water change which may not be good for them (though as it will come out of the tank it should be the same temperature anyway). Also not that sure how they go on cow saliva...

Any thoughts?

The only problem with big water changes comes when the water you're doing the change with is significantly different than the tank(pond).

The only time this is likely to be the case is if you have a horrible messy tank and rarely do water changes.

If having large water changes alone was bad then fish in rivers would have a life span of...Well, I guess it depends how long it takes the water to travel the length of their body because that's when they'd get a 100% water change. Say...a quarter second?

I have done it when I had no other place to stash some big goldfish.

2 problems though. If you have a problem with the water supply (power cut etc ) the cows can drain the trough. Fish are left flapping about in 2cm of water

And having fish in the water doesn't help the water quality for the cattle :-?

Cow troughs do make good goldfish ponds though, but might be better to just get a couple of extra ones in the back garden for your fish

Cheers

Ian

thats what I was thinking Ian, Cattle drinking might disturb the fish too

Could be quite interesting too when a cow slurps up one of the goldfish...

I have had fish in water troughs when i lived on the farm. They were in the trough in the horses paddock which didnt get any checmicals added which all the other troughs on the farm did for the cows.

Assumeing that there are no chemicals added for animal health it will be fine.

If you did put fish and plants in the troughs around your property would you be able to enjoy them? I found i soon lost interest as i never saw the fish and the water soon goes a yucky green colour. I felt kinda silly showing mates my fish trough and they couldnt even see the fish.

Our troughs (for sheep) invariably get lumps of partially chewed cud in them. I can't imagine that would be very good for the water quality (fish wise).

Also I suspect your 'pond trough' plants would make a tasty snack for hungry moos but if you're after mosquito control maybe you could try some white cloud minnows. They won't pollute the water as much as goldfish.

We had a whole bunch of gold fish in a 1000L trough when we were making our pond deeper and larger. They lived happily in there for over six months untill we could move them back. We enven hasd a fresh water cray in there that grew to a nice size.

We didn't have any plants but then the sheep would have eaten those pretty quickly.

They do exceptionally well in troughs - so do daphnia!!

we had gold fish in a trough when I was a kid.... they grew REALLY well.

loved watching them swim around. It was a working one, think our cows like watching them too... they'd stand there following them swim. Really funny. :lol:

my granddad did have goldfish in hes troughs around the fram,they keep the troughs clean when the cattle wasnt use them.also there where larght goldfish in there he use to sell them to the pet store for beer money.if thats any help,

Just got back to this :-?

I did actually drop three little bronze comets into one trough about the beginning of December. They vanished into the murk and I didn't see them.

I then wondered if I had killed them when I wormed the horses as I read the instructions later about the wormer being toxic to aquatic life - in future will prevent any animal from drinking out of the trough until I am sure there is no residue stuck to the inside of its mouth.

Was peering into the depths today, wondering if the fish were on the bottom somewhere decomposing and reached over to pick a bit of clover out - up to the surface came a considerably larger fish (than last time I saw it) just starting to colour up, followed by a bronze one.

Not a mozzie larvae in sight either.

maybe a cattle proof (but not fish proof) net/grill a fish-height from the bottom would stop the cows drinking more than the fish (hope it makes sense... heres a pic... ok the comp just deleted the whole thing :evil: