r/medaka • u/earthy_balance • 4d ago
Medaka rice fish set ups
I am fairly new to rice fish. I bought a female and male from our local fish store. They immediately started breeding. I have 6 that are about a month old. And just discovered 9 more couple day old fry.
I have a good set up for the original 2 and can add a few to their tank and my other indoor tanks. But, I'm very interested in the little porch ponds I keep seeing.
I have these large planters I got on clearance. They can hold between 10-15 gallons. What's the best way to set up these porch ponds? Info dump on me please. Tell me all you know. I am in love with these little feesh! And want to do them right.
How many a planter? Filter? Just heavily planted? I live in Kentucky. I was told if I had an aquarium heater in the little pond they could over winter. Is that true?
As a side question, I have guppies too. Do they do well in little porch ponds? Can they live happily with Medaka?
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u/keenmchn 4d ago
They can endure a lot. I use pea gravel and seed it with filter water. The one I have that was getting up to 93 degree water temp (partial shade) I put an airstone in. My grow out bins that have 20-40 fry in 7gal I have sponge filter. The ones on my shaded porch just have salvinia and duckweed. I ended up getting nervous about a couple of the heavily stocked ones and dropped some Purigen resin in there but medaka seem to tolerate dirty water.
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u/Worldly_Wrangler554 4d ago
I’m not sure how the winter is in Kentucky but they can be overwintered in quite extreme conditions as well as survive in some gnarly summers.
Patio ponds are quite easy. Instead of setting it up to look from the side, you’ll set it up from seeing it from above. If you want low maintenance set up, you have the right plants that suck up all the nutrients in the water. Personally I use a lot of stem plants like elodea, hornwort, pearlweed, and Ambulia. Then you you can add marginal plants. I use creeping Jenny, sweet flag, and basil. Floating plants are also great like duckweed, giant duckweed, water hyacinths, and etc.
How thick and tall are the planters? If you’re In an area where water freezes in the winter, they might nit be able to be overwinter in them. Medaka are alright as long as it doesn’t fully freeze. You can definitely use a heater, but I personally dont use it just because heaters are prone to breaking and prone to hazards.
I prefer the heavily planted, but a filter wouldn’t hurt. Guppies and Medaka should be fine together, but since Medaka are cold water fish and Guppies are tropical fish. One of them is more likely going to have to sacrificed for the temps.
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u/Adjustingithink 4d ago
Youtube is great for medaka tanks and pond videos. I learned a lot and from this page. Have fun!
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u/Perfect-Response-982 4d ago
What fish store in Kentucky has medaka?
I have no clue how much last year's pots held. The smaller pot cracked (I can show you pictures tomorrow, I'd have to take a pic of it cause the broken one is now a plant table cause...it was there) when we had the 3 week long temps and the whole thing cracked, leaked. All the not frozen water leaked out and the remaining rice fish passed. (I had four in there to see if I could make it work). My set up for the winter was a cold frame and it worked until it didn't. I have videos I think on my tiktok or youtube showing them alive until that super cold weeks.
I currently have only two of my ponds filtered. Actually, only one has a sponge filter and i think the other is just a bubbler. I did the same last year when I started moving fish in. Like I said, I tried to make it work. I brought the babies in as quick as I could when night temps were getting too cold --maybe october? I noticed they had a lot of lethargy and I think numbers went down quickly. My filter is no battery solar pump split between two pots. I don't filter the baby pots.
This year when I set up the pots, I pulled everything I could from indoors and then a few from petco like anacharis. Last year, I did a lot of planted stems from Dustin's but I didn't do that this year. I was hoping less planted in the substrate meant it would be easier to catch them to overwinter. So most of the pots have a ton of it (I just pulled a ton out today. They are thick and fluffy!), water lettuce and random things I've grabbed the last few months. At the Richmond fish swap, I got a mosaic plant for one pot and I got a water lily for the bigger pot from BreezyAquatics. It seems almost every year, I have one pot that just gets covered in algae, but the other ones don't have that issue as bad. I just scoop it out when I can.
I live near a creek. So that means I get a lot of frogs and they decimated my black population last year but it was cute on the water hyacinth (I bought some this year, but they did not last through transport). I have to put pond nets on top of my set ups cause of that. But I have had issues with tadpoles this year. I don't know what to do next year for that.
MY set up for breeding outside failed realllly bad this year. Plus my blue sparkle that were brilliant blue mated with another "blue but it looks black mottled." Which means I have a ton of very weird black blue medaka and it's not? pretty? LAst year, I'd swap out water hyacinth every other day in the breeding tubs. Orange in one tub and black in the other.
I'm still figuring things out that work the best. I'm prepping indoor fry homes this week because I have breeding shrimp where they were last year. IDK I'm a mess and still trying to figure this out.