I often move my North American fish out side when the water is cooler than
that, so long as it isn't going to get cold again ( so if the water is 70
degrees on Feb 27th, I hold off, ha ha). This cooling down and then natural
warm up with longer days will help most reluctant fish to spawn. If the
water is in the 60's, you should have no problem. Just set the fish up in
the shade, a porch , etc. in a container with an airstone in the morning. By
evening you can transfer the fish to the outside container. When the water
is cooler, high 50's I do a bit more in depth acclimation. This was
nessacary last year because of the nasty winter and spring. Even though this
year was an even worse winter, and a fair to midlin spring so far, water
temps quickly responded recently and I was able to move the fish out the
easy way. If I want to do it earlier, or again, have a crummy spring, then I
do the airated outdoor container for three days. I monitor the fish to make
sure they are acclimating to this. then, float them in large bags for a
couple hours in mid afternoon. By supper time I dump out half the water, and
add half as much of the container water to the bag. Then let them float
another hour or so. Have not lost any fish to the acclimation process yet ,
as long as they weren't put in the container outside if they showed serious
threat during acclimation. For non native fish, ( tropicals) I wait till
water is within their tolerance range for sure. Then I am even more careful
with acclimation. Otherwise disease can set in within a weeks time. Its all
about useing your best judgement. I do have to note, my pond and tub water
is nearly the same as my well water, which is like rain water for the most
part. If you have serious hard water with high conductivity in your
aquarium(s), odds are the water is not the same in outdoor containers with
wind, sun, plant and rain influences.
After all this, most fish will spawn well. The sun, diet of insects and
other wild foods, and natural temp swings day to day, and daytime to night
time should get them spawning. I would just leave most if not all my fish
out year round, but after a winter like the last one, I don't even know if I
want to trust my fish caught locally outside anymore. It was bad, real bad.
Ray
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