Year Round Guppy Pond Possible?

[DannyPritchett01]

My dream is to have a huge guppy pond wrap around my home similar to a wrap around porch. It would start next to ourporch and wrap around to our back of the house and end at the corner covering only 3 sides of the house. Id like to form it with cement blocks and put flagstone on the outside to make it look good. Just the front part of the house will be a 12x60 pond, another 26 ft down the side, and 100 feet across the back. I'm thinking 3 feet high. The back will get direct sun in the summer and the front will be full shade. Winter the whole thing would get full sun. I know Guppies are tropical fish. Would they survive year round outside in a pond of constant moving water without a pond heater. I'm thinking with a pond this size it would be almost impossible to keep at 76-78 during the winter. I have also thought about making it divided so each section would be about 1000 gallons but would still be one long pond. Each section containing a different strain of Guppy or All one sex. I would put floating plants as well as underwater plants as well. Anyone got some ideas?

 

[Heron]

I don't know how cold you summers and winter's are but guppies need to be kept above 22C ( 70F ), although they can cope with lower temperatures short term they wouldn't last like it for months. Pond heaters for larger ponds are very expensive to run and will only give a few degrees extra. I have never heard of guppies in a pond but then I live in a cold part of the world, I don't see why you can't though if your climate allows it

 

[DannyPritchett01]

We have a couple of days at freezing temps but most is in the high 30s to 40s. I wonder if I took a wood stove, wrapped a coil of tubing around it (aluminum or stainless as copper would be a bad idea) and heated the wood stove, cycled the water via a pump through the coil wrapped around the heater to pour the water back into the pond. Then have the pump plugged into a thermostat to cut off and not move water once the temps reach the temp needed. What about that idea?

 

[emeraldking]

I do keep guppies and other livebearers (tropical and subtropical) in outdoor tubs each year starting somewhere during spring and I'll harvest them mid October or (depending on the weather conditions) the beginning of November. I'm keeping livebearers like this for many years now. No mechanical filtration and no heater involved. Mostly, I will start off with juvenile specimens. For in general juveniles will acclimatize faster to new water conditions than adults. But that depends on the kind of livebearer, of course. Most swordtails, platies and goodeids do come from cooler waters originally. So, such fish are one of the first fish that will be kept outdoors in spring. And in general, goodeids that I'll put in the outdoor tubs in spring are mostly adults and no juveniles. For most of them are very strong species which are comfortable at low rates of temperatures. Guppies are able to withstand lower temperatures also. But this goes mostly for shortfinned fancy guppies and wildguppies. Large finned fancy guppies are mostly a bit weaker. But if you're using juveniles to start with, they'll get used to the fluctuations during the time period that they are kept outdoors. Note: Guppies are occurring in all kinds of places on this globe. They're one of those livebearers that have the ability to adapt pretty fast to other circumstances (which goes also for the temperature). That's why we are able to find feral guppies in colder regions as well. But sure, freezing cold is something that guppies won't survive. I still had happy guppies at 10°C water temperature. But those have been outdoors since spring and a majority have born outdoors and got so used to these fluctuations that it didn't seem to harm them. The only thing is that when you harvest them, you have to let them acclimatize to higher rates when put indoors.
I even had swordtails still reproducing outdoors at water temperatures of 12 - 14°C and no harm done to the adults and offspring.

 

[DannyPritchett01]

I may try it with some culls just in case I lose them their won't be a significant loss. I met a lady that had tubs outdoors everywhere and had guppies in them. They did say they brought theirs in during the cold months. I do hope to find someway as I think it would be amazing to have a pond with millions of Guppies instead of KoI or Goldfish.

 

[Jimmie93]

I have never had guppies in a pond but one winter I ran out of oil for my furnace and my whole guppy tank died within 2 days I didn't have a heater on the tank at the time as the room was heated.