Advice - any suitable large catfish for a pond in a Cape Town winter?

Hey guys

We have a koi pond at our house in Cape Town and we've had it for about 15 years. Over this time we've had koi whose numbers have slowly dwindled down to about four, having lost some from jumping out during spawning and a few from tumours etc, but for the most part they've been long-lived, and we've had successful spawns in the past though they're normally more of a nuisance with the number of eggs produced...

We're thinking it'd be interesting to have a large catfish in the pond and maybe stock up with a few more koi. We have some gambusia that were accidentally introduced years back with lily pads and a catfish that'll help deal with them would be great, since I no longer have my tiger Shovelnose and Arowana to feed with gambusia since they were moved to a new home. The only real problem is finding a catfish that can survive temperatures likely to be experienced during a Western Cape winter, beyond something like a sharptooth catfish or others that are considered invasive. I doubt a red-tail, for example, would be happy in those kinds of temperatures? Any ideas are welcome.

Thanks

 

Unfortunately cant think of a catfish that would survive your winters that is not illegal to keep....sorry...

 

I think the koi might eat the mosquito fish, there were some mosquito fish in our goldfish pond, and one particular individual loved chasing and eating them, so they were always wary and hiding on shallow ledges at the surface. All the mosquito fish finally perished in an accidental large W/C (i.e large amounts of chlorine) and we found just one body on a shallow ledge.

The makriel or botter barbel (Schilbe Intermedius) would be perfect for what you require (If it doesn't get too cold) as it doe's not get too big and is a mid-top level swimmer an not too day shy,
but unfortunately like all other S.A species on the BL.

 

Thanks for your posts guys. Yeah the gambusia problem has been around for ages and they're thriving in the pond, so even though the koi eat a few here and there they're definitely not enough to do it. Ah well.