Rain Barrel Residents

Hey Everyone, meet Erics and Bob! Over the weekend we noticed that there were quite a few hefty looking mosquito larvae in our lovely rain barrel, so we did a bit of research and found that people oftentimes put feeder goldfish in their barrels to eat the mosquitoes. I guess you feed them normal fish food a few times a week and the rest of the time they eat bugs and stuff. I guess they should be happy since they will no longer be food for piranhas (although they do have to live in the dark). We got eight little fishies and some food, which ended up costing around $5. Not bad for pest control (plus they put extra fertilizer in your water)! It will be interesting to see how they do with temperature fluctuations, I don’t have a very good track record when it comes to keeping fish alive, so we’ll see… It was pretty funny putting them in the rain barrel because our barrel is fairly large and black and we can only look inside through a hole with a few inch diameter. The fishes went in and disappeared into the murky depths. I figure if they don’t float up, they’re still kicking but I do have a vision of one day far down the road looking into the hole and seeing something like a large carp suddenly swimming by the surface! However, if anyone has any advice to help us keep the fish alive, it would be much appreciated. I need all the help I can get…