Cold hardy cichlids?

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Andrew1002 said:
I would love to try and do this. I was thinking about buying a couple full grown pairs of Oscars and as soon as my pond reaches 50+ degrees drop them in. Then possibly and maybe eventually have some cold-water cichlids. After winter Im going to try this with convicts. Gonna buy a couple my fry as well and see what they can do. I say convicts because of their hardiness. I already have approval from my mom and her boyfriend. He said if I could get p bass to live in the pond year round he'd buy me all the stuff I'd need to do it. I will experiment with this and the odds of it happening are very slim. I'm going to keep my current. Batch of convict fry and breed them to some of the other ones Ive been mixing in with petstore lines and see how many I can make. If all goes well, I will possibly have about 1000 convict fry. So maybe I can make this work. If not I'll breed the Rest off

-Andrew
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I've put alot of thought into this. Just gotta look up a little more things on this idea and see what I can learn. Then I'll decide

-Andrew
 
Andrew1002 said:
I would love to try and do this. I was thinking about buying a couple full grown pairs of Oscars and as soon as my pond reaches 50+ degrees drop them in. Then possibly and maybe eventually have some cold-water cichlids. After winter Im going to try this with convicts. Gonna buy a couple my fry as well and see what they can do. I say convicts because of their hardiness. I already have approval from my mom and her boyfriend. He said if I could get p bass to live in the pond year round he'd buy me all the stuff I'd need to do it. I will experiment with this and the odds of it happening are very slim. I'm going to keep my current. Batch of convict fry and breed them to some of the other ones Ive been mixing in with petstore lines and see how many I can make. If all goes well, I will possibly have about 1000 convict fry. So maybe I can make this work. If not I'll breed the Rest off

-Andrew
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My friend that plan right there ain't gonna work. The adult Oscar would die along with convicts. They could live in their while it warm but once it cools down they will begin to have body shut down. What the OP is proposing is possible but most likely would take years to get anything viable. It gonna take more than a few generations to get a tropical fish to adapt and thrive in cold water. And by that point you might get them to only live in that kind of environment they might not be able to handle warmer waters again


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Azedenkae said:
We would be all keeping monsters then, eh? I mean I can release my Convicts into my local creek today and they'd 'wreak havoc'. Well I guess this is MFK after all, ake we all keep monsters, but still look it could happen with any cichlid.

Though imo it doesn't matter so much if a fish invades a new system and takes over - it just means that it is more successful than the locals, and to be honest more life is always good imo. That is what happens in nature anyways, species migrate all the time, and if they're successful then they replace the indigenous species, if they're not successful then they don't, or something in between.

After all, what exactly does it matter if a different species of fish swim in our streams? We might miss the old fish there, but that'd be individuals specifically. Nature wouldn't care. For all it matters, it's a more successful species filling the niche, which is 'better' anyways.

Imo anyways. Because nature changes constantly anyways, always in a state of flux. Species come and go all the time, communities change, different species get replaced by others. Why should it matter if it changes because of us or not? After all we're constantly changing the environment all the time anyways. Might as well just accept the fact that whether caused by humans or nature, it is going to change anyways and let it be, rather than trying to preserve communities which well, would eventually change anyways, regardless of how hard we try. Imo.
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I'm trying to see this from your point of view, and I can't. More life in the long run means overstocking and barren rivers and streams that are eventually going to cause ecosystems to collapse. Need an example?

Take Asian Bighead and Silver Carp, also known as those fish that jump out when boats go by. They are overloading a certain ecological niche that is depended on by all kinds of other organisms including all young fish and some adult fish like the paddlefish. This means that its going to take away food from other forms of life in the river, eventually killing off all these different things that depend on each other. Monster fish are good if they're in the correct native places.

The same thing could easily happen with convicts or any other cichlid that breeds like crazy.

If your still not convinced think of all the economical consequences. Local fisherman would be SOL, so would commercial and sport fishermen. The government is currently spending a ton of money to keep these carp out of the Great Lakes because of these consequences. look it up.
 
Crazy mike said:
My friend that plan right there ain't gonna work. The adult Oscar would die along with convicts. They could live in their while it warm but once it cools down they will begin to have body shut down. What the OP is proposing is possible but most likely would take years to get anything viable. It gonna take more than a few generations to get a tropical fish to adapt and thrive in cold water. And by that point you might get them to only live in that kind of environment they might not be able to handle warmer waters again


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Not just years, decades if not longer.
 
True. It's not an overnight adventure. What I'm talking about is slight shifts in temp from generation to generation, maybe a degree or two a year, but if you're doing it in a cichlid tank in your house, you wouldn't notice the experiment, only "another tank" in the house. The experiment would eventually get to where you're replacing your heater with a reef tank chiller. 35-40 degrees is all I'm looking for here. I wouldn't expect a cichlid to survive an iced over pond. You'd still have to heat the pond here in new jersey, but you wouldn't have to go broke doing it. I see 2 outcomes here. Either cold hardy cichlids are worth a ton and you revolutionize pond keeping, or you are single handedly responsible for a new invasive species. Maybe once you get strong cold hardy genes, you could hybridize with something using hormones and guarantee the fry are infertile. After all, a mule is of no threat to the horses habitat.


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That would be cool. And it is possible because there are infertile variants of the Asian carp I talked about too... but its too late for them.

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Anchovie said:
True. It's not an overnight adventure. What I'm talking about is slight shifts in temp from generation to generation, maybe a degree or two a year, but if you're doing it in a cichlid tank in your house, you wouldn't notice the experiment, only "another tank" in the house. The experiment would eventually get to where you're replacing your heater with a reef tank chiller. 35-40 degrees is all I'm looking for here. I wouldn't expect a cichlid to survive an iced over pond. You'd still have to heat the pond here in new jersey, but you wouldn't have to go broke doing it. I see 2 outcomes here. Either cold hardy cichlids are worth a ton and you revolutionize pond keeping, or you are single handedly responsible for a new invasive species. Maybe once you get strong cold hardy genes, you could hybridize with something using hormones and guarantee the fry are infertile. After all, a mule is of no threat to the horses habitat.


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The third outcome is that the failure to produce anything. I believe that is the most likely outcome.


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Nature already took care of this for us. They are called Sunfish.

You need to research how evolution works. And just like nature, you would need thousands of years, and up. Good luck.

If this guy is willing to buy whatever you need to keep P Bass in the pond - then have him buy some industrial pond heaters, and an enclosure to cover the pond with.
 
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