Pond Boss Forums AQUATIC VEGETATION Balance of plants in the environment Advice Needed Before Adding Fish

The submerged vegetation is helping to create clear water by competing with plankton in the water column. Know your water alkalinity. Good alkalinity is above 20 and better 30ppm for good plankton growth. Low alkalinity leads to clear water and tends to not allow plankton abundance and thus it allows abundant rooted plants to be the most common type of plant. The vegetation has several pros and cons.

Fish options. Bluegills and minnows will reproduce and make lots of small fish. If it is to be a fishing pond then you can add several largemouth who will also reproduce to make lots of little bass that could soon be too abundant and eventually eat all or most all the small fish. Balance becomes important when having both reproducing prey and predator. If the pond is not mainly for active frequent fishing, first consider adding hybrid striped bass as the predator and not largemouth. The HSB do not reproduce. Too many HSB remove some to few and BG are too abundant add more HSB - you control their numbers. With first using HSB later LMB can be added to control too many BG or sunfish. HSB will grow to sizes that are determined by the amount of small fish to be eaten. 1/4 ac would not need very many predator bass to keep the minnow/sunfishes/ BG controlled.

Another option in a small 1/4 ac is use HBG instead of regular BG. Pros and cons of either one. With HBG you could use either LMB or HSB as predator. When using HBG with LMB, the LMB do not grow very big because the HBG do not make very many small offspring for LMB to eat a lot and thus grow very big. Usually with just HBG LMB do not grow much bigger than 12" to maybe 14" depending on how many LMB are in the pond. The fewer LMB present the bigger they will grow in any pond.

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