# Garra Rufa as a pond fish



## farnet

Hi all,

I have a well established pond (about 9000 litres, witha a 16000 lph pump and pressurised filter) with various koi golfish and shubs in it.

I was wondering whether it is possible to keep Garra Rufa fish alongside my existing batch.

To be honest I am more interested in the fish as an unusual entity rather than cleaning off my dead skin, be an interesting talking point when having a party but thats all.

I read that the fish are quite happy in waters of between 0 - 40 ish degress so the UK climate should be ok.

If I'm correct any ideas where I can get some from, I live near Loughborough and looking at the places online they are catering for the spa companies rather than having them as pets.

Personally I have mixed feelings about the use of the fish for treatment, mainly on the animal welfare side I'm concerned with, although I do remember as a kid sitting in some seriously deep rockpools in Guernsey and getting inspected and cleaned by 100's of shrimp...... hey an alternative therapy 

Farnet


----------



## Guest

I'm glad to hear that you don't want these fish to remove dead skin from your feet, however I would reconsider keeping them in your pond unless it has a source of heating.

Despite what you may have read, _Garra rufa_ does actually require a water temperature in the range of 25-30°C. They may be fine during the summer however in winter they will need to be transferred to a heated indoor aquarium, otherwise they'll freeze to death.


----------



## farnet

Hi Luke,

Thats a shame, it's quite hard to actually find proper information on the actual fish (where I read the temp variant was to do with them in Turkey in their natural habitat) on the net rather than the spa antics. 

What I am after are unusual fish to add to the pond, that give the wow factor to non believers. It's like when I used to have a heated tank, you'd get people looking in and suddenly seeing you have shrimp and hermit crabs along with the angels etc, that is what I am after with the pond.

Are there any VERY unusual pond fish out there? I have been searching but for the UK they seem very muted, looking at getting some swan mussels but I can't say they'll be noticed very easily in a pond that is over 4ft deep.

I have had members of the sturgeon family in a previous pond but the local farm cat got all of them whilst we were on holiday, will get some more sometime but I want to make sure our cats don't have that sort of interest first.


----------



## Guest

A lot of the info that litters the net is churned out by suppliers of _Garra rufa _to the 'spa' trade and also the spas themselves. Some of this info is often the result of twisting facts to make the practice more acceptable in the public eye.

Sterlet (_Acipenser uthenus_) are the only fish that come to mind which fit in the 'unusual' criteria; they are also available in an albino form to make them more visible to fishkeepers (and predators). Slightly less commonly-kept species include Golden Orfe, Common Carp, Green Tench and Roach.

I've also seen some pond owners attempting to keep Wels Catfish, without the actual knowledge that they will eat any smaller fish in the pond and the fact they can exceed 2.7m/9ft in length.


----------



## aquaticstore.com

Garra rufa are not really suitable for a pool in this country for a couple of reasons:

Firstly the temperature needs to be 30c keeping this temp in a pool will prove extremely expensive.

Secondly the other inhabitants of the pool will not do so well in the high temps.

If you are looking for something unusual for your pool you may want to consider:

Bream
Rudd
Tench
Grass carp

Most of these fish are freely available from bigger aquatic retail outlets.

Aquaticstore.com


----------

