Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Creating the food chain Re-stocking a drought-kill .4A pond in central TX

I wouldn't bother trying it without artificial feeding. The HBG just don't provide the forage base that the HSB need.

I have been reading some materials on Tilapia and LMB growth rates.

One of the articles I read indicated that stocking FHM/BG/RES in Feb/March, followed by LMB/Moz T in June was a good technique for accelerating bass growth, and the article (focusing on a pond in east TX if I remember correctly) cited 1-2" pure Florida LMB hitting an average of 1.1# after the first year. Does anyone have experience with stocking Tilapia this early in a pond?

Stocking tilapia is dependent on water temps and early season availability. They cannot tolerate water temps in the low to mid 50's. A cold spell in March might wipe them out.

I had a client inform me his Tilapia were still feeding heavily in 50* water last week. Shocked us both!

UPDATE:

Pond is now at over 70% of full pool, and more rain is projected in the near future. It'll probably hit full pool within the next few weeks. This pond went completely dry for several weeks in july/august, so it is a blank slate.

People are going to be heading up to the property the pond is on over the weekend. We've called the local fish hatchery, and they have FHM available. Planning to stock 3 pounds (pond is .3-.4 acres).

Would it also be appropriate to add 1"-3" RES and CNBG at this time?

My parents want to go ahead and stock RES/CNBG to avoid multiple trips to the hatchery, but I'm thinking that there might not be sufficient plankton buildup to support sunfish yet. If there was going to be someone there to feed every couple days I'd go ahead, but that's not the case.

Would stocking just RES now be possible?

How about stocking some adult CNBG along with a few more pounds of FHM to tide them over until the plankton really takes off, and relying on a spawn free of LMB predation to get bluegill numbers up? We're looking at putting LMB in around April-June.

txelen, flip me your email and I can give you a stocking plan. Basically you can put all three forage species in now they require little fodo anyways until it warms next spring. I suggest waiting until June to get a nice 2" lmb. Why would you put in tilapia when you have 2 Inch bass that makes no sense the tilapia will be too big for the bass to eat year one. Now year tow good option. I expect to have a minimum of 3 lb bass 18 months after stocking with our plan 1.1 lbs in year is pretty poor on new fish stocking gorwth rate in TX climate.

Dad just called me from the pond.

Apparently the hatchery he went to doesn't take checks, so he just put in 90 bluegill and 1.5 pounds of FHM. I'm not too impressed with this hatchery, because they don't have CNBG or RES and the guy there told my dad he should stock Crappie.

We're going to have to add more Bluegill when we stock LMB in May. I'm thinking that we'll go by Henneke to get some 5" RES and CNBG, along with 25 hybrid LMB in May. My question is, how many CNBG/RES should we get if we just stocked 90 2" BG? I originally wanted to have 400 CNBG and 50 RES (all ~2") stocked this weekend, but that has fallen by the wayside it would seem.

If you adding 2 inch LMB you can still add 2 inch CNBG at the same time. You can add the rest 310 if you wanted 400. What do you mean by hybrid LMB ? I would still add about 20 5 inch CNBG and 25 5 inch RES at the same time and a few more FH ( 5 lbs).

What hatchery was it?

Henneke sells the Florida X Northern Hybrid LMB. I stocked them in my tank (about 50 miles East of the subject pond and 4 miles south of Henneke). Henneke takes checks, and his fish have thrived in my tanks. Within my first year of stocking the CXB catfish, I was catching edible sized fish, though I feed them Aquamax 2x daily. I am looking forward to introducing my 3 year old to fishing in the spring!

My 1.4 acre pond is south of San Antonio. I bought my stocker fish from Henneke Fish Farms. I stocked CNBG, RES, FHM and CC in July, 2008. I stocked LMB and 20 medium tilapia in May, 2009.

I'm no expert and my proof is only anecdotal, but I believe that putting tilapia in at the same time as the fingerling bass was helpful. By the end of the summer, we were catching a few 9-11" bass while fishing for bluegill. When they hit, they were slamming anything that was white (looked like little tilapia). With no large LMB in the pond, the original 20 tilapia produced 100's of 1-6" tilapia in the shallows through the summer (and presumably many 100's more in deeper water).

I was not at the property when any die off occurred. I am no longer seeing any tilapia in the shallows, but I have not found any indication of the die off (dead fish on the shore, etc). I assume (hope)that the LMB and CC gorged on the smaller ones as they died. The 10" bass should have been able to eat a bunch of the smaller tilapia. I also believe that all those little hungry tilapia helped keep our pondweeds and algae under control.

I would stock a small number of tilapia with my bass if I had it to do again.

What did the water temps get to ? Some in south TX have tilapia overwinter. What size were the LMB at stocking?

Tempted to do this... I'm stocking three separate ponds (all almost identical in size and depth), I think that I'll try putting 1# of tilapia in one of them at the same time as LMB.

I recall reading an article, I think it was by TDPW or the TAMU Ag Extension, in which stocking tilapia with fingerling LMB helped growth significantly.

Quotes from the article can be found here at bottom, but I'm having trouble finding the article itself again with google.


Question: Could the threat of tilapia overwintering be controlled significantly by installing a pond-bottom bubbling aerator in winter, and hooking it up to a thermostat to operate whenever the air temperature is below 50F? It seems that this would turn over and mix the pond water, eliminating any warm pockets on the bottom holding tilapia.

"Question: Could the threat of tilapia overwintering be controlled significantly by installing a pond-bottom bubbling aerator in winter, and hooking it up to a thermostat to operate whenever the air temperature is below 50F? It seems that this would turn over and mix the pond water, eliminating any warm pockets on the bottom holding tilapia. "

An interesting possibility. Water has a natural mixing in the fall in most places. The concept of mixing the water , if needed, to get the temp low enough to kill the tilapia is sound. Keep in mind cool water sinks (water gets heavier as it cools until it gets below 39F at which point it gets lighter and rises). The warm water will not be on the bottom in S TX in winter until water temps are below 39 an event which may not happen. A temp profile in winter would be a good idea first. A good understanding of water thermodynamics (fall turnover / thermocline) is important.

Ewest-

The LMB were 2-3 inches when stocked.

I don't know what the water temps have dropped to at this time. I am going to the property this weekend. This cold snap should drop them even lower. I put one tilapia in a large water trough by the house to keep the FA down. It died before Christmas. The pond certainly has deeper water, but it has been a cold winter this year, so I assume they have died in the pond as well. It will be interesting this spring to see if I had any overwinter.

I have seen a couple of posts here that tilapia have overwintered not far from me.

Thanks. Let us know what you see.