Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Feeding Correct food for newly stocked CNBG and RES

When I start feeding which probably should be in the next month or so, what is the best food particularly the size of pellet for these fish. They will have been stocked 4-6 weeks.

What size are the fish?

I don't know if it's correct or not, but (with the exception of larger feed trained LMB and AquaMax LMB Pellets) I usually try to keep the pellet sizes the same or smaller than the fishs' eyeball that I'm trying to feed.

Pellet size should be approximately 20-30% of the size of the fish species mouth gape.

They were app. 2-2.5" in length when stocked

The RES will not eat the pellets.. I'd recommend AM400 or GFC..

BGK, at one time I would have agreed with your positive statement, but just because you can't see RES feeding on pellets, doesn't mean RES will not eat the pellets...

I discovered by accident while fly fishing for CNBG, that if I let a AQMX 600 pellet
fly sink to the bottom, RES will jump all over them.
"It all depends"...

G/

Can you put in both sinking and floating pellets at the same time when using an automatic feeder?

I don't have a fish feeder yet, so I don't know the specifics on it yet. But by Geoerge's observation, it may be worth mixing them if it works.

RES are not trained at the hatchery to eat pellets. They don't train as easily as BG. They can be feed trained as several people here have done so. Like George my RES will eat some pellets as they sink. A few even come up like BG and feed right along.

You can mix sinking and floating in a feeder. If you hand feed you can put a couple hand fulls of pellets in a bucket with water and let them sink. Toss some dry pellets into the pond and after about 30 seconds then toss out the ones from the bucket.

At that size I would use some AM 400 and 500.

I have RES in my pond that exhibit the same behavior that ewest is seing in his. I prefer to only feed floating food so I can see how much they are eating. The floating food will have some soak up water and sink. But, with fish that size, like ewest said, 400/500 for the first bag, then straight 500 for a bag or 2, then start mixing in 600. Smaller BG will pick apart 600 once it gets soft, but it's work for them.