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Hi all, I've got an outdoor pond in South Africa, the water temperature in winter drops to 12 deg Celcius. What catfish would be best suited for me?

I would guess that some of the native american ones would work.

Ones that live in the southern parts of South America would also work.

Obviously, native european catfish tolerates low temperatures as well.

There's also catfish from Asia that live in for instance Japan, where it also gets cold during winter.

There are however several other factors to take into account:
1. What size is the pond? This will affect the size of the fish you can keep in there, and thus probably limit some of the species from the above geographic regions.

2. What else do you have (or plan to have) in the pond? Most catfish will eat just about anything that fits in their mouth...

3. Do you have any particular "type" of catfish in mind? There's several distinct types, like the suckermouths (e.g. ) or shovelnose (e.g. ) types that look very "special", whilst there's also other species that have a more "traditional look", (e.g. or ). This is where "personal taste" comes in...

I don't have any experience with keeping catfish in ponds, so I can't really say what one(s) are the best choice, but by answering the above questions, you'd be helping me and others eliminate species that are NOT suitable for you...

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Mats

seanc wrote:Hi all, I've got an outdoor pond in South Africa, the water temperature in winter drops to 12 deg Celcius. What catfish would be best suited for me?

I had excellent luck with the N. American albanio channel catfish in my outdoor 180 US Gal koi pond in a climate with considerably lower winter temperatures, low enought at night to put a thin layer of ice on the ponds.

The fish were introduced together an approximately the same size. The catfish grew faster than the koi, but not by enough to make a big difference.

troi

Hi Mats

Thanks for the info, I pretty new at the game and currently have a copy of koi and fan tail gold fish in the pond. I'm looking at giving the pond a bit more character and I'm sure that a cople of catfish will do.

I have had a look around and I would prefer suckermouths or shovel nose fish. Any sugestions?

koi might be okay if they are large enough; but with in a year, a catfish such as a channel cat will eat all your goldfish.

I would strongly recommend you don't stock any non-native catfish in your pond.

Many countries have laws to prevent this for a reason!

There's several native species of catfish in South Africa...

http://www.fishbase.org/Country/Country ... freshwater

The difficulty is finding a specie that doesn't require fast-flowing water...

There's two genera, and both are river-living fish that like fast-flowing, highly oxygenated water.

Most Amphilius species would require fast flowing water.
http://www.planetcatfish.com/catelog/amphilii/G_123.PHP

Austroglanis spp. [not listed under that name in Cat-eLog] are also fast-flowing water fish.

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Mats