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Tubs been out about two weeks now. About half the plants have been out that long, and the others I just put out last week. Been doing the tubbin thing for about 10 years now. Its a great way to have some very nice plants, as well as a great way to breed fish. The fish will go out in them sometime around the first of June. Mostly I breed Australian Rainbows in my tubs. But, they are great for breeding all kinds of labarynth fish as well. And I have bred plecos and cichlids in my tubs too. Just put them out there and forget about them for a month or two. All the free live fresh foods the fish could ever want! When they come back in from the outdoors later in the Fall, they always look much nicer in color and have outgrown all that did not go outside, but stayed inside. The fry grow 2-3 times faster outside as well, vs inside raised for the few months. Everyone should try a tub!

Tubs can decorate a deck or the porch in the best ways!







Notice one of the 5 buds coming up to the surface. Can't wait to see these beautiful white blooms on this lilly!


And the yellow irises are pushing their way through as well!


Long distance shot from the sidewalk. The tubs are in the middle section there. You can see how they add to the appeal of the porch.


One of my newest additions, is this Chinese Lotus. Its a new root system I got from a buddy. Got 5 or 6 new leaves starting to work their way to the surface. Can't wait to see it in full bloom!


The third one set up outside right now.




And will be building an 800gal (approximately) in the middle of a new flower bed I am building. Will get some more pics of it when it is completed.

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There is always a bigger fish...

Here are some pics from past years;

40gal with all kinds of dwarf plants



150 gal tub with multiple plants on the deck



If you look really closely, you can see several baby Rainbowfish between the lilly leaf and the water surface. They are just little slivers, but notice their shadows.



There is the 675 gal tub (blue) in the background, and within all those plants and such, are actually 7 40gal tubs burried around the 150gal pond





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There is always a bigger fish...

very nice! do you add filtration of anything to the tubs? or do you add anything/do anything special? I might move my platies into a tub outside once the tempreature is stable and warm so that they stay healthier as well as rasie so plants to sell/trade to the LFS...

\\\\\\\"an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of the cure\\\\\\\"

The only filtration is the plants themselves. I do add something to move the water in anything under 50 or so gallons. Something being a powerhead or a fountain. Sometimes I use an airstone too. I have a piston pump for my fish room, and it is strong enough that I can run a hundred foot line of tubing through the window and out to the tubs. I usually do this when it gets really hot in July and August, and mostly just to the tubs that are in direct sunlight all day long.

As for feeding and such, I rarely feed the fish in the tubs. Maybe one a week or such I'll give em a treat of live black worms or something, but usually they get enough from the bugs.

If you are wondering about prices, that large dark gray tub in the pics is a 100 gal. And goes for about $70 at Tractor Supply Co. Its a RubberMaid. But you can find almost anything to use for a tub. Even the smaller sized ponds you can find at Lowe's and Home Depot.

The plants due most of the oxygenating. Especially the water hyacinth and water lettuce. But the other do also.

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There is always a bigger fish...

They look really fantastic. You sure like tubs.

I have to put a wire cover on my tub to stop kingfisher birds eating my fish, and to stop my dogs taking a dip in them.

I also have a solar light suspended over the pond to attract night insects which hopefully drop into the water and feed the fish.

Interesing that gouramis will breed for you. I am thinking maybe when summer comes here again I might free my betta pair outside or maybe my sparkling gouramis who refuse to breed for me inside.

The sparkling are very hard to breed, well very hard to raise the very tiny young. As for the rest of the gouramis, I have breed most of them. And all but one of them was done out in tubs.

As for the critters and such, the birds around here are not too bad. It is the racoons we have to worry about. I have most of my tubs placed in areas around motion detector lights, so it scares the critters away.

As for liking the tubs, well I used to set up about 30-40 each year. After all, put fish in them, come back in 3-4 months, catch the parents, then catch the fry. How easy is that, lol. And the plants, now grown large, are easily sold for a good profit as well. And they look great in the tubs! Yeppers, I guess you could say that I love my tubs, lol. And don't forget the cool calming sounds of the fountains and waterfalls that you can add to them.

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There is always a bigger fish...

Sweet job on the tubs

Do ya think you're getting slightly addicted ?

The Amazon Nut...

do the tropical fish do well in here year round? i live in ohio so it can get pretty cold do you winter them at all?



i like feesh

I too am in Ohio, West Central, near Indiana... I am curious, do you grow fully submersible aquarium type plants out in those tubs as well? I may try this, would save bucks on new plants... hmmm I might like to learn more about how you do this...

hmmm i am going to try one of these now that the weather is a bit warmer and the sun is out! we will have to see how it goes! hopefully the plants do well and i can get a few platies out there to keep the plants company and maybe a betta for poulation control... it is a really good idea and in most areas during summer it should work just fine!

\\\\\\\"an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of the cure\\\\\\\"

Wow! I am pretty impressed! I could easily see myself getting it that bad. This year I started up my first tub and I am pretty excited about it. Now I just need to wait a while before I add some more fish to it. I think the temperature is fluctuating too much still. I lost my three Mollies have having them in there for a month. I guess I will have to wait a couple more weeks.



55G Planted tank thread
19G Container Pond
[IMG]http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y118/Wingsdlc/Ric

As always, very impressive ACIDRAIN.
What fish have you got in there this time?
Also, where's the saltwater one? Surely you can count Mangroves as plants?

Mez, just put out two different species of madagascar rainbows.

As for the year round thing, no they are not left out all year. Because they are above ground, they have the ability to freeze solid. In the winter, I take the seasonal plants to my neighbors pond and place them under the freeze line. Then bring them back in the spring. Those that are tropical, and cannot handle the cold, are brought in the garage by the window in the large tub there.

As for aquarium plants, sure they will do well in the summer outside.

Also, for those of you from Ohio, I am just north of Cincinnati.

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There is always a bigger fish...

WOW,that is is top idea,id love to do something like that,the fish must love all them live foods theyd get!i think i mite give 1 of these a try when summer rolls back aroundany chance of some pics of the fish in em,or to tricky to get a good shot

Pics? lol. The tubs are dark, and you would have to be shooting down onto the top of the fish. Which most are cammo colored dark on top. But I can tell you this, when I bring them in, they are by far more colorful than the others of the same species still in the aquariums. The live foods and being out in the open like that, really makes them colorful!

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There is always a bigger fish...

mm i thought so,just asking but..

DARN!!!!!!!!

This almost makes me want to move below the
Mason-Dixon Line.
That way I could do it all year round instead of just
the two or maybe, three months, that I'd have at here at
10,000 feet in the Rockies.

Frank


-->>> The Confidence of Amateurs, is the Envy of Professionals <<<--

Soooooooo, I stumbled across this thread and I think I have come back to look at your pics at least a dozen times in the last week. I am going to do it. i have a couple questions for you. First, what do you bed the pots with and how deep do you bed the pots? Second, I want to possibly add fish and I was wondering if you would suggest a fish to plant ratio based on size of tub or should I just go with the inch of fish per gallon rule and not worry about the amount of plants in the tub? Thanks for any info....

First, what do you bed the pots with and how deep do you bed the pots?

It depends on the plants and such. For most of the plants I use the common universal planting basket made for ponds with liners and such. I get mine usually at the Lowe's Hardware store. But many LFS sell them as well. They are about 8 inches in depth, and come in a variety of several sizes width. Some plants that I know will out grow these baskets, I usually use some kind of larger bucket or something similar. And I just punch a bunch of approximately 1 inch holes in and around it.

As for the bedding, I usually use a combination of ordinary dirt and a clay type gravel mix. Just be careful of placing it in the water the very first time, as some of the loose soil will come free and cloud up the water. But once established, it will stay clumped up within the container.

Also, depending on what fish you add, you will want to cover the surface of the bedding with a layer of rocks. If you have fish that like to root around in the substrate, they can and will up-root your plants. So place a layer of larger sized stones/rocks on the top of the bedding. This will prevent it.

Second, I want to possibly add fish and I was wondering if you would suggest a fish to plant ratio based on size of tub or should I just go with the inch of fish per gallon rule and not worry about the amount of plants in the tub?

You will deffinitely want to add fish. If you don't, you will end up with a large mosqueto outbreak. The fish are done to keep down the insect outbreaks, with the side effect being the actual spawning and better coloration of the fish. But the main reason is to control the insect population. As for size and amount, you want to keep these low. I only put out pairs and small breeding groups on all of my tubs. In the larger tubs, I put in larger fish, but still only a pair or small group of 4-6. In that 100 gal on the porch there, I only have 6 Madagascar Rainbows. While the smallest one at 20 gals, has only a pair or gouramis in it. Depending on your placement and what plants, determines if you need water movement as well. For the most part, most of the plants will oxygenate the water very well. However, if the tub is placed in direct sunlight, you will need water movement to help keep from boiling the fish. Or, you will need to have the surface of the water very covered with plants or plant leaves to protect the temp below.

You do not want to populate the tubs very high. As you will not be doing water changes. And unless you get enough rain and such to over flow the tubs, the rain will not change the water either. So you want to keep your populations down, so those fish in there get plenty of free live foods, as well as plenty of oxygen and plenty of everything else they need. And the bad stuff is kept down to a min.

Fish choices is another concern. For smaller tubs, I try to keep only labrynth fish in these. So if they do get a bit warm, and the oxygen in the tub does drop, they are air breathers and will tolerate the conditions then. In the larger tubs, if you are wanting to spawn the fish, I suggest a plant spawner of some kind. And the placeing of floating oxygenators on the surface of the water. Liky Water hyacinth, frogbit, or water lettuce. These have hanging root systems and give the fish a great place to spawn. As well as great hiding places for the fry. Though many egg scatterers do well spawning in these larger tubs as well. Once established for a month or so, the tubs are teaming with infusoria for the fry. So there is no reason to have to feed the fry. In about 3 months, 95% of the time you should babies to bring in. And these tiny fry babies, grow faster outside than inside.

I once took out about 50 bosmani rainbow fry from a tub at about a couple weeks old, and well under a centimeter long, and brought them in. Fed them the best quality fry foods, both live and not live. After three months, the fry left in the tub, when brought in, where 3-4 times larger than those I brought in prior. The ones I brought in last, where over an inch long, while the others I priorly brought in were pushing a cm. Rainbowfish breeders will tell you, that a one inch aquarium bred and raised rainbow, does not get to one inch for about 6 months or more.

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There is always a bigger fish...