Hello all. This is my first post but have been reading intently to learn as much as possible. First, shout out to Bill Cody who has been more than generous with his time and advice. I have been reading and don't see anyone with ponds west of Texas. Apparently a pond in Arizona is a rare thing and a pond expert is even rarer. I am building a 1 acre pond approximately 20 feet deep. It will be a combination rain fed and well fed pond. I want it to be a combination swimming pond as well as fishing. I don't want to feed as this is a cabin property and only go up once or twice a month. It has a 6500 ft elevation with summer temps that can reach as high as 90 degrees but more often high 70s low 80s. Everyone here is telling me that FHM,BG,LMB,CC combo is my only option with some RBT sprinkled in. Will the RBT be able to survive against the onslaught of hungry LMB? I am filling now and the pond is about 6 ft deep and I'm going to put 50 lbs FHM in next week to get them started and then add 50 lbs of RBT next month. Will I have a good fishery if I don't add any other fish? Any recommendation of species and quantities would be greatly appreciated as well as any other advice for a new pond owner.
Sorry for the long post and thanks in advance!
Also, any recommended plants as well!

Welcome Capt. Using a well tells me that you are in high desert country. Where specifically? How much snow melt can you expect? Will it ice over during the winter? How long will the ice cover, if any, remain?

I think that 50 lbs of FHM and 50 lbs of Trout is going to be disastrous. I can see maybe a maximum of ten pounds, once it is full, of FHM. They are spawning machines that can consume a lot of oxygen.

Well water is not oxygenated so I would stock nothing until I knew about my water quality. Are you planning to oxygenate? The minnows will need algae to eat.

I don't know anything about trout so will leave that to others.

BTW, spent a lot of time in AZ. Uncle Sam provided with an all expenses paid, 4 yr, trip to Luke AFB. Over the years I've spent a lot of time hunting the State.

Welcome to PB captwho. There are some members out your way. They don't post much. Seems like a specific question is asked and then that's it. Sure would be nice to keep participation from the region going on a regular basis.

How cold will your water stay during the summer? RBT are usually stocked in the fall and not expected to last past June/July in most ponds, unless they stay cold. Your air temps sound similar to ours here, so I would think your water temps will be the same too. To warm for year round trout. The RBT I stock are probably a 1/2# each in Oct, so it seems like your numbers on them are high. I stock 50 RBT in 1 acre, and that works out nicely. If you feed, you probably could do it, and in regards to not being there to feed, you can buy an automatic feeder that will hold enough feed between visits. I think if you feed, the trout will do fine with LMB. The trout love feed. However, without feed, you will have to keep up a lot of forage for both predators. 10# of FHM seem more than enough for now if you don't add a predator till later. Oh, and make sure there are no hitchhikers in with those FHM. Hand sort them all, away from the pond. Put the good ones into a bucket, and then bring that to the pond.

The area is pines and mountains. Between Showlow and Heber. I'm not sure on the snow melt but I'm sure it will freeze at least a good amount on the edges for a couple of months. I will be aerating the pond immediately. I already have algae growing so I am not concerned for FHM food. also lots of tadpoles. If I start with 10 lbs of FHM then how many trout should I use? sounds like 50 fish will be good. I'm concern from my reading about introducing fish that can become a problem. Lots of complaints about CC on here. DO I use BG also? I am not a fisherman either so I don't know what I want. I do have kids and nieces and nephews that I want to enjoy the pond.

We have 60 degree nights so I assume the water wont get over about 70 deg. All the lakes up there have trout all year long.
Thanks for the heads up on the minnows. Will it be easy to discern FHM from other fish?

Props to you! 4 years at one base? So you know how beautiful northern AZ can be.

I lived in Phx area for 7 yrs and spent a good number of summer weekends up on the Rim and beyond- away from two legged critters. Beautiful country and an outdoor paradise.

I dumped my FHM and GSH in a new pond and within 2 months, it was swarming with new fry. Now a couple months further on, there are fish big enough to really make a good splash when they hit a pellet. When there are no predators, those forage fish just eat and make babies. I know it's not the advised route, but I hand feed when I'm at my pond on the weekends. They are up after the feed as soon as I begin throwing it out. I find it most enjoyable to just watch them go at it. My pond is bout same size and 10 lbs of FHM will do nicely as long as they have time to do the fishy thing before the predators hit them.

Trout in the local lakes near the pond could be surviving due to a combination of deep clean, very clear, water (oligotrophic low nutrients). This allows oxygen to be produced naturally in the deep cool-cold water to sustain trout. It is a low nutrient, habitat balance thing. You may not need aeration if your pond is at high enough elevation, has gin clear water and has low enough nutrient concentrations.

I think for your described conditions, I would at first forgo the traditional fish of BG, LMB, CC and stock only minnows and trout. If the trout do not survive then stock alternative fish. Smallmouth bass would be better in cool water than LMB.

Since you are not feeding pellets, I would not stock trout until 2014 2015 and in the meantime allow the natural invertebrate community to colonize the pond. Colonization will happen relatively fast especially if you supplement the invertebrate species present.
Stocked native AZ lake dwelling crayfish could help control attached algae (see later). These invertebrates will in themselves sustain a limited trout population. However I would do my best to stock scuds probably Gammarus lacustris or another AZ native Gammarus. I would contact a Gammarus (Amphipoda) expert at the Department of Zoology at Arizona State Univ. Tempe, AZ. Go to AZ State Univ website for contact info of Dr. Gerald A. Cole. Ask his advice what would be the best scud to introduce to your pond as trout food. He may be able to advise you where would be the best place to collect or buy some scuds as seed for your pond stocking.

I would also go to one of the high elevation trout lakes and collect some water with hopefully some good zooplankton and mud-rock dwelling insect larvae to seed into your new pond. Pick up rocks and pick or net any small crawling bugs including a few crayfish. All you initially need is a good diversity of a few of each type of "seed" organisms. Haul them in a bucket or two of lake water to your pond. One bucket of lake water and one bucket of picked bug larvae. Consider buying from the internet some Daphnia magna and or Daphnia pulex as 'good' zooplankton as trout food and pond diversity. Let all "bug" types colonize until next fall (2015)before adding trout.

Since you are not mainly interested in angling, I would stock smaller trout 4"-6" sizes 40-50 per acre would be a good number or fewer trout if your water clarity is 14-18ft. You can always add more at a later date as the original fish are harvested or more are needed as they die. A few different sizes could be beneficial. Note big adult trout will eat small fingerling trout.

Consider adding FHM this fall or next spring; trout next fall. Numbers of FHM could be 3 to 10 lbs based on what size trout you plan to initially stock. More FHM for larger trout, fewer FHM for small trout. Fewer FHM 3-6 lbs would be easier and quicker to net - hand - sort. Breeder FHM number around 200 - 250 / lb. If it were me I would trap or collect (drop net) naturally reproducing minnows from a trout lake and 'seed' them into my pond.

Yeah, I like that area. I took a nice 6x6 bull elk about 1/4 mile from the city dump East of town. Also did a lot of deer hunting in the Blue Wilderness. Heck, I've hunted a lot of the State. Now, I'm too old to handle the mountains and the skinny air.

I like Bills idea of the crawdads. They seem to grow as big as lobsters in that area. A lot of small lakes in the area have trout. However, I never did figure what they fed on. The water was gin clear everywhere.

I was there at Luke for 4 years from 64-68. I put in 4 different volunteer statement for Vietnam. I wanted to see the tropics. But I never got selected. However, every time some NCO's shipped out from other bases, I wound up with 90 day TDY's to take over the computer operations area. Once, it was during hunting season and I was PO'd.

Look up fathead pics here or anywhere on the web. The reason for sorting is that sometimes hatcheries aren't all that careful when they collect fish for sale.

I think fatheads could live in a nuclear waste dump. But, they need some algae established to eat on.

Bill, do you mean 2015 .

Yes trout could be stocked in fall of 2015. All others prior to fall of 2015. Gin clear water supports naturally very few fish pounds per acre and in the range of 5 to 20 lbs of trout per acre. Flying aquatic insects will annually find their way to your pond and colonize it with a wide variety of insect species based on its water quality and to a lesser extent habitat types. You can have good habitat types but if proper water quality is not present many invertebrate species can not thrive there. Surviving, thriving species are called 'indicator species'.

WOW! Every time Bill speaks I'm amazed with his knowledge. I don't mean to sound like a raving fan but I do appreciate real knowledge when I hear it. I did follow your advice and went to the local lake and "borrowed" about 40 gal of lake water. I didn't see anything in it but I did grab 1 minnow of some sort.
I did consider crayfish but everything I read from "The Man" said it's a bad idea. Do I need to worry about dam or bank damage?
Also, the flies at waters edge are getting ridiculous. Any ideas other than spraying with pesticide?

The trout farmer told me to go to the marshes on the rim and harvest grasses and plants to plant.
Any specific plant I need to stay away from? i.e.cattails?

Plants to choose will depend on the type of access that you want to the shoreline and waters edge. Notice and study the existing plants in and around the local trout lakes and transfer the ones you determine will fit well into your plans for your pond. Focus on short growing species. Crayfish from the trout lakes will not dig into your dam because they are lake dwelling species that very rarely dig deep burrows /tunnels and almost always live under rocks where you collect them.

Try a bread and or catfood baited minnow trap set for 2-24 hrs for collecting lake minnows. A mesh or wire basket of various sizes and types of rocks placed in the lake and inconspicuously marked and allowed to colonize for 2 to 8 months and then very gently retrieved and put in a tub of water for transport will collect a wide variety and many invertebrates as 'seed'.

Thank you. I will do that. As I spend more time researching the fish situation, my family and I are getting very excited. I will post pics as they become available.

does anyone have an opinion on koi?

I am also interested in another fish I can put in that will grow huge, but not invasive, for the kids to be scared of when they swim,(but obviously not dangerous)?

Well it sounds like this is going to be a long process of experimentation so I will keep you posted and participate as much as possible.

Big fish need big food. An often quoted example is a bass. They need food that is 1/4 to 1/3 their body length. Like us, it is a matter of calories obtained vs energy expended.

Unless you want to keep buying trout, I'd pass on a big fish.

Koi(river carp with color), are bottom rooters, aquatic pigs, and water roilers aeration will tend to accentuate the turbidity created by the bottom feeding koi. Koi and clean gin clear, water conditions do not partner well. Clear koi ponds need tremendous amounts of mechanical filtration to keep the water clear. If you are not regularly feeding the fish you will likely not see a big fish very often. If you want one or two large fish choose a white amur aka grass carp if legal in AZ. Another option to get a few eventually big fish is to stock fewer trout per acre such as 6-10. Fewer fish have more resulting food thus they always have food to excess and get big and fat.

Dave, are there any big herbivores? i.e. grass carp?

Bill, are there any bottom feeders that will prevent muck that aren't a problem? I thought cc were the answer but everyone seems to dislike them.

In my experience very few bottom feeders will eat muck, if they did, ponds with CC and koi would not be mucky. Many ponds with CC and koi have lots of bottom muck, and full of dead organics, dead leaves and various other forms of organic often blackish muck. Koi and at times CC will stir the sediments searching for food items i.e. bottom decomposers. This stirring activity does mix the sediments helping to keep the sediments mixed and oxygenated.

The best things that eat muck are invertebrates and bacteria (decomposers) that live in the oxygenated bottom. Oxygenated bottom zone (aerobic) is very important here. Anaerobic (no oxygen) is death for good decomposers.

As far as I have observed the best fish that eats muck is the tilapia and especially the blue tilapia. It eats muck to get the bacteria growing on the muck particles. Muck is not the preferred food of tilapia. To eat muck,, first the algae and other preferred plants of tilapia have to be in low supply.

There are documented studies of tilapia and some shad reducing muck in lakes. I have not seen any such results for CC , carp , etc.

Does anyone have an opinion on mosquito fish? The county gives them away for free and I thought the might be another hardy minnow type for the trout to feed on. But they also say they can be invasive and hurt the invertebrate population?

I've read they can be a great additional forage option, but also tend to inhabit a different niche than some predators.

To elaborate, and this is not based off of personal experience (I do not have mosquitofish in my pond), I believe this species tends to hug the shoreline in sometimes very shallow water. This, potentially, keeps them safe from your predators, kind of negating your purpose of using them as forage.

Sorry Capt, been gone for 4 days.

Grass carp get large but can eat only certain plants.

Do you guys have any opinion on fairy shrimp? would they be a good invertebrate to introduce for fish food?

I don't know anything about Fairy Shrimp, but here is a google search of PBF that brings up several links to posts about grass shrimp, ghost shrimp, glass shrimp, fresh water shrimp, also known as PK shrimp. I put some of these PK shrimp in my forage pond, but it has been a few months ago. I need to seine or otherwise try to capture some to see if they "took" and now I have a sustainable population. I'm afraid the masses of FHM I have in the forage pond might have made short work of my newly stocked shrimp. I did see some a couple weeks after introduction though. Try some of the google links and see if they are the same thing as Fairy Shrimp, or at least similar. Might give you some of the information you need.

google search "Pond Boss Forum PK shrimp"

Google search "Pond Boss Forum ghost glass grass shrimp"

Fairy shrimp cannot survive any significant amount of predation. They live primarily in vernal pools. Fairy shrimp are not the same as glass shrimp aka ghost shrimp, PK shrimp. Fairy shrimp are not 'true' shrimp. F shrimp are classified in a completely different taxomomic group or Order and are basically adult brine shrimp. They are considered a primitive (very early development) relative to most other Crustacans. Unique critters and they swim upside down, thus their high vulnerability to predation. About 27 species in North America.
http://www.arizonafairyshrimp.com/fairyshrimp.html

Are they different specifically than other grass shrimp Bill? I ask because teehjaeh57 seems to maintain a population of PK shrimp in his pond. This is the thread where we are talking about ordering some.
PK shrimp orders

If I had to place a bet, my money would be on what you say Bill. The little things just floated around the edge of my small mini forage pond looking like they were just begging to be eaten. I did not see how they could survive. On the other hand, they must be hardy enough to survive somehow in some conditions to continue existing. I did see some getting under the 2-3" limestone rocks I have in the water.

Now my curiosity is peaked. Here is an article with some general background. I would like to hear more specifics from you also Bill if you have more to share.

Louisiana Sportsman grass shrimp article

Edit: Ok, I replied too quick to Bill's initial post and now see he has answered some of my questions in his edit. I do that same thing - think of stuff after I make the post.

Fairy shrimp are very much different than grass shrimp, although both are in the class Crustacea each are in a different large taxonomic group called Order. Grass shrimp survive fish predation much better than fairy shrimp. Remember your high school biology: Phylum - Class - Order - Family - Genus species?.

Whew! That's good to hear.

As always Bill, thanks so much for sharing your vast knowledge with us here on PBF. This thread reminds me I need to go out tonight and see if any of my PK shrimp are still there and thriving.

Captwho, maybe you should consider PK Shrimp instead of Fairy Shrimp???????

No, but I remember the girl that sat in front of me!

That was 40 some years ago Bill! I guess what seemed important then........... well it still is important, but my priorities for learning have expanded.

Talk about strange priorities, now I sit at the kitchen table each evening reading PBF!!!!