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I was talking with a fisheries biologist the other day about fish for ponds where don't want fish. He suggested a redear / bluegill cross (don't remember if was male bluegill and female redear or vice versa - think one was 97% males and other 100%).
Thought about stocking a 3 acre pond with grass shrimp, possibly fathead minnows, and maybe 100 of the crosses (normal guidelines around here are 100 bluegill per acre so that is half). That would potentially yield very fast growning fish on put and take basis. Has anyone heard about this cross? Anyone know where to get some of them? Any downsides of which you are aware?
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Ranger says "Also, would these males be sterile or just male?" Neither. Hybrids males & females would be fertile and some females would be present in the stocking - probably 5%-20+% females present depending on the cross and selection of fish individuals. I think you or the fish biologist miss communicated.
Why do you not want fish in the pond?
Last edited by Bill Cody; 03/28/10 02:19 PM.
aka Pond Doctor & Dr. Perca Read Pond Boss Magazine - America's Journal of Pond Management
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Thanks Bill! I must have misheard him. Got excited for nothing. Not for my pond. Someone elses. Uses pond for drinking water and doesn't want it to smell or taste fishy. Wouldn't mind have a limited number of non-reproducing fish in it; but... HSB fit that bill; but person doesn't want waste from fish food, etc. and don't see how they could do well without either other fish or fish food.
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Hard to tell from the pic in the article because it is black and white, but I highly doubt that fish is a pure BG. I am betting it is a BG/RES hybrid.
If you were looking for "ponds where don't want fish" with the potential to grow monster trophy hybrids, there will be some reproduction from the hybrids. You would need some type of predator to eat their offspring. If you stock LMB, you'd have them reproducing... Perhaps you can consider stocking a small number of HSB every couple of years. Say 30 every other year. If you don't feed them, they should stay hungry and heavily prey upon the few offspring your hybrid sunfish produce. This is not normal stocking practice and I am not sure it would be perfect, but HSB will not reproduce in a 3 acre pond, so they would be easily managed. It wouldn't be a pond without any fish, but for 3 acres there sure wouldn't be many...
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HSB without supplemental feed won't grow fast, but they will find enough food in the few hybrid offspring the sunfish produce and the natural insects, frogs and inverts the pond would have to at least survive and grow a bit. I'd skip on the fatheads as they would not fit the bill in keeping the pond mostly fish free.
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Uses pond for drinking water and doesn't want it to smell or taste fishy. That's a new one to me. (As in the fish causing the fishy smell of a pond.) He better keep the insects out and the birds from crapping in the water too.
Last edited by Cecil Baird1; 03/28/10 10:10 PM.
If pigs could fly bacon would be harder to come by and there would be a lot of damaged trees.
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There is a good bit of info from studies on RES Xs and BG Xs. This could take years to go over all the info on lepomis genetics/speciation. Below BR= BG X RES while RB= Recp cross RES X BG.
HYBRIDIZATION OF FISHES IN NORTH AMERICA (FAMILY CENTRARCHIDAE) by
W.F. CHILDERS
Sex Ratios of F1 hybrids Sexually mature F1 hybrids were collected from each population and sexed. Of the 10 kinds of viable F1 hybrids, seven were predominately males (RB, BR, and BG were 97 percent males; WG were 84 percent males; and RG, GB, and BW were approximately 70 percent males), two were approximately 50 percent males (GR and RW), and one was predominately female (GW was 16 percent males). Ricker (1948) determined the sex of 428 BR F1 hybrids in Indiana and found them to be 97.7 percent males.
Sex determination in sunfishes is very poorly understood. Bluegills, green sunfish, and their F1 hybrids apparently have 24 pairs of chromosomes, and the sex chromosomes are indistinguishable from the autosomes (Bright 1937). Bright also reported that the chromosomes are so similar in shape and size that he was unable to detect specific differences. Roberts (1964) found that red-ear, bluegill, and warmouth sunfishes each have 24 pairs of chromosomes; green sunfish from North Carolina had 24 pairs; but green sunfish from West Virginia had only 23 pairs.
The unbalanced phenotypic tertiary sex ratios of the F1 hybrid sunfish could result from unbalanced primary genetic sex ratios, specific differences in the strength of sex-determining factors, an overriding of the genetic sex by environmental factors, or differential mortality of the sexes.
Since the WG F1 hybrids were 84 percent males and the reciprocal cross hybrids were 16 percent males, it is possible that the strength of sex-determining factors of warmouths are 5.25 times more powerful than those of green sunfish. Specific differences in the strength of sex-determining factors cannot alone explain the sex ratios of the remaining eight kinds of viable hybrids, since none of these were predominately females.
RB and BG F1 hybrids were both 97 percent males. If differential mortality were the cause of these unbalanced sex ratios, much of the mortality would have had to occur after the swim-up fry stages, since in the stripping experiments total mortality between fertilization and the swim-up fry stages was only 14 percent for the RB and 27 percent for the BG F1 hybrids.
It is not known which sex is the heterogametic condition for the sex chromosomes of the four experimental species; however, Haldane (1922) formulated a rule which furnishes a clue: “When in the F1 offspring of a cross between two animal species or races, one sex is absent, rare, or sterile, that sex is always the heterozygous sex.” Using Haldane's rule, Krumholz (1950), in a study concerning BR F1 hybrids, pointed out that the males of both bluegills and red-ear sunfish are probably homozygametic for sex and the females heterozygametic. The application of Haldane's rule to all possible F1 hybrids produced from red-ear sunfish, bluegills, and green sunfish indicates that the female is the heterozygametic sex in these three species. Hybridization of male warmouths with females of the three Lepomis species resulted in partial or complete lethals, suggesting that in the warmouth the male is the heterogametic sex.
4.2 Reproductive success of hybrids The reproductive success of each of the 10 kinds of viable F1 hybrids was investigated in one or more ponds. The occurrence and abundance of F2 hybrids were determined by seining, trapping, shocking, poisoning or draining the ponds after the F1 hybrids were one or more years of age. RB, BR, and BG failed to produce abundant F2 generations when in ponds which contained no other species of fishes. In contrast to these results, BR F1 hybrids produced abundant F2 generations in two ponds in Indiana (Ricker 1948). The other seven kinds of F1 hybrids produced abundant F2 populations when stocked in ponds containing no other fishes. Three of the seven kinds of F1 hybrids which produced large F2 populations when stocked in ponds containing no other fishes were also stocked in ponds with largemouth bass. RG F1 hybrids and GB F1 hybrids, when stocked with largemouth bass, produced only a few F2 hybrids. No F2 hybrids were found in the pond stocked with BW F1 hybrids and largemouth bass. WG F2 hybrids and GW F2 hybrids were stocked in ponds containing no other fishes. Both of these F2 hybrids produced large F3 populations.
Backcrosses, outcrosses, a four-species cross, and a three-species cross involving F1 hybrids are listed in Table III. The BW × B backcross was made by stocking adult male BW F1 hybrids and adult female bluegills in a pond which contained no other fishes. The other 12 crosses listed in Table III were made by stripping gametes from ripe adults and rearing the young to the free-swimming fry stage in the laboratory.
R × RW, W × RW, B × RW, G × RW, R × GB, and RB × W young were killed after they developed into free-swimming fry because of the lack of ponds in which they could be stocked. All six kinds of fry appeared to be normal and probably would have developed into adults. Free-swimming fry of the remaining six crosses in the laboratory were stocked in ponds and did develop into adult fishes. BW × B, G × GW, and B × RG populations produced large numbers of young.
Last edited by ewest; 03/28/10 04:14 PM.
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Good info. If it were my pond - and it most definitely isn't, I think I would try the grass shrimp, fathead minnow, RB or BR (is male or female listed first?) route followed up with stocking of a very limited number of HSB and maybe a single SMB or something to pick off any offspring and help keep the fathead minnows in check. I may still see if I can talk him into something like that unless you recommend differently.
Tries to always scare away the ducks / geese that try to land and would like the fact that the few fish would eat the bugs. Wants the water as pristine as possible. I guess I'd rather not drink goose or fish poop either; but he has a very good filtration system and is pulling the water from near pond surface...
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The pond owner will get fishy smelling and sometimes fishy tasting water WITHOUT fish. Try it to verify my correctness or it can be verified with any good college professor familar with algae. Try contacting IL Natural History Survey, someone there should be able to verify this info. I want to hear how the pond owner expains fishy water without fish. It may take several years for the offending algae to get established but it almost always does. There could likely be other tastes/odors that develop besides fishy from algae.
Although fishy odor types of algae do often get transferred into BOW from fish hatchery water, water fowl and often wind blown algal spores. Fishy odors and smells in water come from algae not fish. Metabolite by-products from different species of algae produce all sorts of odors and flavors in addition to fishy. Not all algae produce strong odors just several types do. A pond will not get a fishy odor from fish unless there are a lot of dead fish.
Last edited by Bill Cody; 03/28/10 08:50 PM.
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More good info. I'm going to talk with him some more.
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I know what I would do. I talked with him again and made my recommendations. I'm giving up.
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Forgot to say THANKS! Although I now doubt if these discussions will lead to that other person doing anything, they have convinced me to try it on one of my ponds. I'm looking forward to having some trophy bluegill / redear some day!
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