Amazing Mountain Cloud Fish (17th Aug 2005)

You have got to believe this!!! :unsure:

I was breeding some of these fish in the summer of 2004, in a 1.0 m X 0.5m X 0.6m garden waste bin (it narrows a little towards the base). In this bin, I had a plastic bin about 30 cm high which used to hold a water-proofing membrane product and in which I had planted a water-lily. And also some water hyacinth with pale blue flowers and bulbous leaves which help the plant to float.

When the fries appeared, I fed them with crushed fish flake food, and soon they matured to breed on their own. There were 40 or so of them by about February 05. When the weather started to get colder and I was going on holidays, I caught whatever adult fish I could to put into my aquarium. When they appeared to feed at the flakes I netted them. Very soon they learnt not to come up to the surface to feed. As a result I had a quite a few fish that I didn't manage to catch. So I left them alone.

But what surprised me was the fact that they seemed to have disappeared after some time when the bin was overgrown with the water hyacinth and the lily had died back. They were not coming to the surface to feed, and I thought they had all died. That was in around the month of March or April.

A few days back I had the bin emptied a little at a time. I used the water to water the garden. I took out the smaller bin with the lily plant in it (The pinkish leaves are waiting to appear on the surface in warmer weather). I poured whatever contents/residue from the big bin into the smaller bin and left it at that.

But today to my surprise, when the residue had settled, I saw a few mountain clouds swimming in the smaller bin. As soon as they sight my shadow, they dived into the 'mud' at the bottom. Now what I want to know is how they manage to survive all this while. I have not fed them anything for almost 3/4 mths!!! Furthermore, the temperature over winter could have dropped to 5 or 6 deg Celcius!! :blink:

Btw Mountain cloud fish were from China. They were discovered by a boy in China, and they are thought to be extinct and only found in aquariums. Go to this site : Robyn's Webpage to find out about this fish

thats interesting how the white clouds survived the winter.

White clouds are pretty hardy fish as you've found. They normally die below 50-55 degrees F but some people swear they can survive colder. Your pond got below that but probably not by too much (the water temperature is normally warmer than the air). If your pond had frozen, and they'd lived, that would have been truly amazing!

As far as lack of food, they fed on the microlife in the pond itself, things like algae, perhaps parts of the waterlily, and certainly the tiny animals that must be present in the pond. Also, when it was really cold (most of the time that you didn't feed), their metabolism was low so they had very little need for much food at all. I've had trouble catching tadpoles out of my tub ponds each fall. Normally the ones left behind die when the tub freezes nearly solid but last year, some survived in one tub pond. I was amazed.

wow thats amazing how they survive in the pond.