So I'm in the middle of resetting my small pond due to a variety of reasons...it's almost pumped down to nothing at this point.

One of the flaws with this pond is very little habitat for small fish or structure for predators. I had some time this weekend so I took this pile of stuff from around the farm:



And turned it into this:






Most of this will go into deeper water for holding structure...also just got 15 tons of rock brought in to make some SMB spawning beds. Pics to follow there once my back recovers from the initial effort well enough to finish up.

What are you using for the "branches"?

That's irrigation tubing. Basically plastic pipe.

NICE!

Nice Dale!!! Going into "deeper" water? How deep? Small fish prefer shallower structure spaced out just a foot or three under the surface. Predators stalking the structure like it near where it drops off to deeper waters and on points. If you are not using aeration, the deeper water becomes anoxic during the summer months and becomes poisonous to fish.

Rainman, it'll be aerated.

I'm looking at putting most of that stuff in the 6-8 foot range. That'll be sure that it's all covered up at full pool.

I'm going to have a good bit of habitat at the shallow water areas as well, more of the 'Christmas tree' variety.

8' sounds ideal! That should put the tops at about 2-4' under?

Right...

See the SMB beds thread for "how to". Put some woody cover near the SMB bedding area (close).

http://www.helpourfisheries.com/how_to_build_a_nest.htm

http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=92626#Post92626


http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=133192&page=1

what's the life expectancy of pallets underwater if used as a base for spawning substrate? I may try a couple of the elevated beds just to see what they like better.

Keep an eye out for plastic pallets.

not sure where I would come up with those...have access to literally hundreds of the wooden ones, can't say I've run across a plastic one yet.

Plastic pallets.. can ask at a plastic recycling place, or bread is delivered on plastic pallets, other shapes/sizes to browse from or inquire about are here. You might see something you recognize.

Plastic Pallets

They are far more rare than wooden pallets, for sure. I have a single vendor who uses them and snatch them up whenever they ship to us. I used them to make my smallie beds and will use them for a variety of other things including my feeder platform and fathead spawning habitat.

Uline sells a variety of plastic pallets:

http://www.uline.com/Product/AdvSearchResult.aspx?keywords=plastic%20pallet

Because of this thread's title, I was fully expecting to see pictures of someone pulling a junk automobile (aka, Redneck yard decoration) into their pond. lol

Well, now that you mention it, we didn't leave it there, but the husband once drove one of the trucks off the road on one end of the pond. It landed on its nose in about a foot of water with the back wheels in the air. He would not let me take any pictures. We had to fire up the back hoe to get it out. I got such a huge laugh out of that. Him, not so much😊
Cmm

I saw 2 milk crates in a storage closet at work. They have nice sized holes in the side that would let minnows in but keep larger fish out. You could stack them as in this picture.

Also, if you put a sheet of thin styrofoam in the bottom of the crate, then tipped the crate or 2 stacked crates upside down and put it in the shallows the FHM could spawn on the underside of the styrofoam. You would still want to weigh or tether the crate to keep from moving or get thin enough styrofoam that you don't float the crate.

Not so cheap to buy, but I know at our school that there were frequently broken crates (crack in the bottom or side) that caused them to be thrown aside or thrown away. Call your local school to see if they have some cracked ones in the kitchen/milk storage area or call the dairy and see if you can take the cracked ones off their hands or buy them for a low price.

Unless that is, if what I propose is illegal then you should not do it!!

Illegal use of milk crates?

Thanks, basslover. When I went to the site I noticed that they had 40 x 48 inch plastic stackable pallets. Up to 60 could be stacked in 8 feet, which works out to a little less than a 1 1/2 inches between them.

I was thinking this might be really good for FHM spawning & protection. Stack several of these in shallow water and you have a FHM love hotel!

Drawbacks: Would have to be anchored somehow. Also they aren't cheap, around $32 per pallet, if I remember correctly.

Advantages: Permanent. If they can keep larger predators out, you might be able to have FHM in the pond even after LMB introduction. That would seem beneficial for YOY BG and LMB.

Try this anthropic? In your case you would NOT want them to nest together.

Nestable pallets

Canyon, I see these are substantially cheaper. However, if you do not nest them together, it would take a lot more space for the same breeding areas. Is there some reason why stacking a few packets together is a bad idea for FHM?

No, I think you do want them close together, your previous idea of keeping them 1 1/2" apart would be ideal. I was thinking if 2 pallets nested completely tightly together, then you would lose the gap. ON the style in my link above the legs fit into each other so you could control the gap by putting something in the hole that the leg fits into to adjust the gap to 2" or whatever gap you want. That would work well.

Bill Cody taught me that some shiner species need much tighter gaps, almost better described as crevices. They need gaps more like 1/4" or so.

In the immortal words of Bart Simpson, "Don't have a cow, man!"

Fatheads don't need the crevices, just the spotfin shiners. Maybe bluntnose minnows too. But if the crevices are desired, and you still need weight to keep down the pallets, what about using cheap gravel to weigh them down? Then you would also accomplish the crevice spawning habitat as well.

I get you. Thanks! Don't know if 1.4 inches is ideal gap, or perhaps smaller would be even better. Do we have any FHM experts who know?

Only issue with nested pallets might be that rocks used to hold open gap might be dislodged by currents over time, thus closing them completely.

See this re FH from the archives. Don't know why some links work and others don't.

http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=115165#Post115165

IN the link I gave above called 'nestable pallets' you can see that the 'feet' of the pallet go down into a socket and they nest flush to each other when the foot is in the bottom of the socket. I would say you could put a piece of wood or some other material that doesn't break down in water that is the desired width of the gap you want between pallets. You could probably only put the 'spacer' in the holes on the 4 corners of each pallet. The weight of the pallet above would keep it in place. This would I think keep the gap permanent and you wouldn't have to worry about rocks rolling out of place.

I agree you could weight the pallet condo down with some rip rap, limestone or other jagged edged rock material and create crevices or crayfish hiding spots too.

I'm not aware that FHM care so much about the gap being too wide. When my FHM spawned I never saw my pallet condos being used and instead I think they went inside a section of smooth walled plastic culvert and did the deed there.

There is a youtube video link somewhere that shows FHM spawning, you can see by all the frantic activity of the male that they probably don't mind a little room to swim around with all the wriggling going on.