Little mini pond with rice fish sounds awesome! That’s when I’d like to do. They don’t need a heater because they’re cold water. They breed on their own and they’re beautiful to view above. I really like fish that are kind of understated like Japanese rice fish. Although I’ve seen some really gorgeous ones that beat out even the prettiest Guppies.

As far as advice goes for your little mini Pond I would recommend using the walstd method. I keep a tank that’s unheated and with no filter myself and really the only two things that are required in my opinion are a sand or gravel bed. If it’s gravel it needs to be deep enough to hold nutrients underneath it.

I typically prefer sand. Then you can add snails like Malaysian trumpet snails or assassin snails which I think can handle the cold. You could probably even get away with nerities but they turn the substrate and help pull mulm underneath it and it keeps the tank cleaner.

If you’re doing a mini Pond you can get away with using all sorts of terrestrial plants, I’ve seen videos of people using peace lilies as like the main Center Point and Main vegetation filter, I really want to try something like a money tree because in the wild where they’re grown they actually grow in a bog like a mangrove and can be grown in straight up water without rotting. Plus the fish will eat whatever rot’s there and so will the snails if you choose to add them.

A lot of people are going to be like don’t add Malaysian trumpet snails, they’re pests, yeah they can get out of control if you overfeed the tank but I find they control themselves really really well and if you have something they can dig into like a sand substrate you don’t hardly see them they’re normally underneath the substrate. They’re awesome nocturnal so they don’t come out at night and they’re super good at cleaning algae and turning your substrate. So for me they’re one of my favorite snails to include in a tank that has a sand substrate because it helps keep the tank clean.

Past that it’s a lot of fun and I think you’re going to really enjoy it. Just get ready to do a lot of testing and have a way to react if you do need to change something about the pond. So you know get good aquarium test kit. You only needed to check ammonia, nitrates and nitrates, but the pH test is necessary and can inform a lot. And I find the gh/kh test also be very helpful for diagnosing what’s going on. You be surprised how often it’s not the ammonia causing problems it’s the ph and the lack or excess of GH.

I’ve had my cold water tanks set up for about 6 months which is kind of like a mini pond. It doesn’t have a heater. It doesn’t have a filter it only has a light. I did add a small AirStone just to keep scum from forming on the top. I really didn’t have to do much after I planted it and put on the sand cap and let everything settle. It’s been going strong. I have had to correct some things because my water is damn near distilled and that’s causing issues with some of the fish I want to keep which need much harder water than what I keep. So if your water is very low on GH or KH make sure you get argonite which you can get at any Petco or PetSmart to help buffer your water. It’s the same thing as crushed Coral but you don’t have to order it online and it’s easy and accessible.

You can also save a ton of money by going and getting a lot of your supplies from the hardware store instead of From aquarium stores so You can get like black diamond blasting sand if you want a black substrate. A lot of people use pool filtering stand for a pure white substrate. I like to use coarse sand that people use in concrete. Where I’m at it’s $6 for a 50 lb bag. The equivalent aquarium substrate is over $100 for a 50 lb bag. Generally it’s $30 for a 20 lb bag. Just make sure to rinse it well before you use it. This is also the place where I get my lava rocks and then if I need bigger forms of lava rocks I glue them together with super glue. You can fill in the gaps the with sphagnum Moss and superglue. It works a lot like the paper towel method but looks a lot cleaner. Huge bag of lava rock is like $5/$6.

You will hear some people complain about how rocks can interact with the water and cause pH changes. And I will tell you that I have tried to use this on purpose and it is a lot harder to do than you think one or two rocks that may mess with your pH isn’t going to really have an effect on your pH even over a long period of time. Think of it this way your tank will consume the GH and KH of the tank and you need some way to replenish that over time otherwise the pH of the tank will crash and you could lose some of you’re more weak or sensitive tank inhabitants. By the way these rocks that can interact with the pH are typically white rocks. It’s marble, limestone, argonite, different forms of calcium carbonate. If you were to just buy the random rocks from the hardware store that aren’t white the likelihood they’ll interact with your water is practically zero. If your super worried about it that’s why you have the KH/GH test and you can test daily if you want.

I’m sure you know about Gathering materials from nature too so I’m not going to go into that. But I do find that the hardware stores often overlooked as an excellent source of cheap resources.

Last bit of advice is that sometimes when you’re getting fish initially it can feel really awful if they pass away but a lot of the time these fish are very sick and you don’t have a good way of treating them. If you’re in the US you have access to a lot of medications you can start them on kanaplex which is a really good General antibiotic for initial use if your fish look sick. If they have parasites you can use Metroplex and a combination of prazipro. It’s really good at treating most parasites but if they have worms you need to get another medication called Expel-P. That medication is light sensitive so you need to turn off your lights after you give it and it’s best given at night.

If they’re not getting better on kanaplex or you think you need to boost it mix neoplex into some frozen food that you can get at Petco/Petsmart.

Just used one scoop for one Ice Cube. Most of the frozen foods that you can get at Petco or PetSmart are in ice cubes about the same size.

After you get your fish in through the quarantine. And they’re about 2 months old you can stop worrying about if they’re going to die from infection at that point the only thing that will kill them is tank stress. So just worry about keeping a good tank and they’ll be fine. Obviously when you’re dealing with live readers you’re going to have a lot of these little fish and you’ll notice that some of them just die. That’s not anything you can do the sometimes just have bad genetics because they’re just aren’t predators that are able to eat these fish and they use large broadcast rates. Since you’re trying to keep these fish I’m sure you know this and I don’t want to sound patronizing I just want to reiterate it because I have wild type guppies Which do really good but occasionally I do lose one or two here and there.

Have fun friend if you’re not having fun in this hobby you’re doing it wrong 🤘