Catfish for a pond?

[ecto1]

Is there any kind of catfish I can put in an outdoor pond? I would probably take it inside during the winter (in an indoor pond in my heated garage), I live in Minnesota where we get snow during the winter months.

It's quite a large pond, probably in the range of 2500+ US gallons, with a filter and a large waterfall.

I don't want koi in the pond, because that's so... normal. I would contact the DNR to find out rules on catching my own fish to put in the pond, but I'm a crappy fisherman.

 

[wrs]

channel catfish are cold water, and get to be 4 foot, they should be fine in there.

 

[Paul_MTS]

you can find them in albino version which are very attractive, i recently saw a couple at 1ft in a local water garderner place.

 

[wrs]

oh, minosota, that means US, then you can get some small ones at petsmart.

 

[ecto1]

All the catfish at Petsmart are tropical, and even if they weren't, I wouldn't take my business to that horrible pet slaughterhouse.

 

[bunjiweb]

Nicely said! lol.

Look into fish such as "Sterlets" the small version of sturgeons. There are many native american catfishes you could keep which are quite large, just be careful if you do decide to catch your own, its illegal to catch some fishes.....

You should possibly look into heating the pond, this way you could fit some brilliant fish such as red tailed catfish, shovelnose, clarius cats etc.

Heating for a pond would probably cost you about $100-$150, depending how you do it. You could have inline heating in your filter or floating heaters on the surface of the pond, which stops freezing.

Just remember, pond heating doesnt always mean you can keep the fish in over the winter.

Ben