Pond Boss Forums INTRO New Forum Member Introduction Urban Bluegills

Howdy:

Revill here, from Austin. I have an 8' x 2' deep cattle water tank in my back yard I use for rainwater collection. I kept a half dozen goldfish successfully all last year in it, until they vanished when it froze over a couple of weeks ago. I haven't seen them since but I've not seen any dead goldfish either, so I assume they're dormant somewhere. The pond is filtered.

Yesterday the wife wanted to go fishing. So we went down to Lake Lady Bird where she had a blast catching bite-size bluegills. We wound up with 17 of them in my bait bucket. Since only a couple were even remotely big enough to eat, I dumped them in the tank.

Now the fun part. What do I feed 'em? In the wild they're not pickey, to say the least. Is there anything else I should worry about before I start harvesting monster backyard bluegills?

Revill
Austin TX

Revill, welcome to the forum!

Purina Aquamax is best or if you must, cheap catfish feed will help them grow some.

Can you post a picture of the fish for us to ID them positively for you? Many times what are thought to be bluegill turn out to be other species such as Green Sunfish. If this is the case here, the fish will not likely get big enough to eat, but would still be fun to keep around.

After looking at pictures on the website, at least some of these probably are green sunfish. So that's as big as they get? I may need to stock a catfish and start over.

Revill

HI Revill, welcome

Give this a read, it's about raising sunfish and has some info on raising them in a tank.

Sunfish Culture

With 17 in a tank that size, dont buy prepared feed in any quantity. Worst case if they were 1 lb each, would be about 6 ounces total for all per day.

You will have to check ammonia levels and do periodic water changes.

Sounds like a fun plan.

Hi Revill and welcome to the forum!

I am envious you have a pond in your backyard! I've tried for years unsuccessfully to convince my wife that's a great idea...sigh.

I completely understand your urge to raise some pets....and grow them into giants! I would recommend MALE BG - easy to keep alive and they'll eat nearly anything. If you do choose to feed them the guys are right I'd go with aquamax but there's no guarantee all the BG will become pellet trained. Those that don't learn, will starve and die potentially, but then you can head back to your local pond and grab a few more replacements. I think 10-15 BG would be a good number. It's a blast feeding BG and having them follow you around the pond...like a good dog would. You can have fun and snag grasshoppers and crickets around the homestead and toss them in too...they don't last long. I literally spend hours handfeeding insects to the BG in one of my reproduction ponds last summer...I couldn't get enough of it! Highly entertaining!

I suggest MALE BG because they grow larger and you won't have to deal with reproduction.

If they made Aquamax in 10 or 20 pound bags it may be better... As JKB said, you're not gonna use that much feed, even over an entire season. I just feed my "pet" BG cichlid food. I also feed them a pile of other live items, meal worms, nightcrawlers, crickets, grass shrimp and FHM. When gorged daily, they grow quite fast! Especially on 45% protein cichlid feed!

Well someone's gotta say it...
Since I'm the lone advocate I guess it might as well be me...

Why don't you put some Hybrid Bluegill in there? They're mostly male, so reproduction shouldn't be an issue, they take pelleted feed very well, they grow really quick, they get quite large, and they're relatively easy to catch if you don't fish for them constantly. (They do get hook shy after a lot of catch and release). Actually, your situation sounds tailor made for them.

Thanks for the advice. That article about raising sunfish is very helpful.

When I got home last night, there was a 'fluffle' at the surface; a fish! Then they all hid on the bottom of course. So something's surviving in there. I sprinkled a bit of goldfish food on the surface, but no takers. It was still floating on the surface next morning. I guess they're a bit shy yet. Once they start eating I'll investigate 'real' rations. I may suppliment with a few table scraps too. I wonder what's purchaseable here in Austin?

Right now my 'pond' is that 8' x 2' galvanized tank, with a koi pond filter I got off Craigslist that my wife keeps turning off 'to save energy'. It's full of rainwater. We water the garden from it with buckets, which isn't nearly as much effort as you might think. It's not much more effort than dragging a hose around.

I've got a couple of water lillies in pots on the bottom but they aren't doing very well. I suspect that they need more fertilizer than is commonly found in rainwater. Maybe the fish will help with that?

Does anyone have experience with ponds this small? I put in a gallon of water from the San Marcos River last summer to hopefully introduce rotifers and other filter feeders. I suspect it didn't help much because the water has been cycling between not-to-cloudy and really ugly. I just last week added the filter. Between Sara turning the pump off and the cold, and the filter having sat for a while unused, it doesn't seem to be doing much yet.

I've thought about introducing either crawdads or something else to clean things up; suggestions? Water hyacinths worked really well last spring, but they turned yellow and died after a couple of weeks and then the water got cloudy again. That's wierd! Water hyacinths are supposed to be invasive.

Is it possible to get a healthy ecosystem going in such a small pond? What would you introduce?

Revill

I expect I will upgrade to better stock if the greenies do well. I don't do catch and release. It doesn't seem fair to the fish play with them that way. If I'm going to do that to a critter, I should eat it.

Revill

Hey Revill,

Big question on your Galvanized stock tank. Is the inside painted or coated??? If not, there is a good chance your fish will die from Zinc Poisoning.

If you are running a filtration system, keep it running ALL the time. It will do no good to turn it on and off.

My mom has a small pond, maybe 10 ft x 14 ft, oval kinda shaped, with Koi. I am not sure what all plants are in there, but I know some are Lillie's. A couple others that I dont know what they are. Right now it is probably a solid block of ice, or darn near it. She never takes the fish or plants out for winter, and miraculously everything comes to life in the spring. The Koi are never fed, and she uses aquashade.

Last year my sister put in about 30 FHM for skeeter control. That was like ringing the dinner bell for the frogs! They did not last long.

This year, I am going to put in a few HBG and see how they fare. I was also thinking of putting in two really small CC.

It is really interesting to watch the workings of a small eco system. The fish scurrying around doing their thing. The frogs making a mad dash for the water when you walk by.

Koi are actually lazy by nature, and not really much fun to watch. With the HBG, tossing some food in once in a while, would be enjoyable to most. I'll bet everyone would get a kick out of it

Yeah, it's galvanized but it's not a new tank. It's been outside for several years. Should that help? The goldfish don't seem to have been bothered by the zinc, but I wonder if that's why I can't seem to get pond plants to grow well?

Thanks for the ammunition on the pond filter. My wife is just a bit too economy minded most of the time. After all, how much current can a 500 gpm pump draw?

I don't have any frogs, probably because there isn't any place for them to get in and out. I'd thought of introducing some but since the pond's right below the bedroom window, that may not be a good idea. Bet tadpoles would clean up the algae, and provide food for the perch.

Nah, being oxidized wont help. Zinc oxide needs to be scrubbed off really well. I have a new tank outside that I am oxidizing prior to clean up and will be re-coating with epoxy that is fish safe. It is a process to deal with for galvanized tanks.

Could also be a problem with the plants but, I dont know enough about that.

Maybe Bill Cody or someone else could chime in on plants in a Galvanized Tank.

I know that getting paint to stick to galvanized is not easy. You say you're letting your new tank oxidize; I guess I've already done that step. What do you use for a coating, and what needs to be done to the tank to get it to stick? Is there a link?

Revill

I oxidize it a bit. Then scuff it up real good with coarse sandpaper. Scuffs up easier that way. Clean it off good and apply epoxy paint.
Potable Water Epoxy

I thin it out a bit and spray it on. You can brush or roller it on also. Make sure you mix it really well and sweat it in. Then you need to let it cure properly. That will be temperature/humidity dependent. To be on the safe side, I let it cure for 2 weeks. It will adhere to galvanized metal real good.

I'll get mine painted sometime toward the end of next month to get it ready for fish in May.

Howdy:

Revill here again, a year later. We haven't had much rain this year. The pond's been pretty low because we use it for watering until it gets down to the level of the water lilly pots. I had to actually ADD WATER last week to keep things alive.

All spring and most of the summer it was solid green with algae. I added a filter (well, actually a galvanized tub full of gravel) and a pump last spring. It didn't seem to help much with the algae until about a month ago. I looked out the dining room window, and I could see the bottom of the pond! And, there's a fish in there!

One of the goldfish is now about 4" long, and one of the sunfish was visible now and then. I'd been throwing tiny bits of dry cat food in the water now and then to see if there was anybody home, but no takers. When I stand by the pond the fish hide. And that's the way it was until this weekend.

Sara has been feeding one of our cats canned food, because she (the cat, not Sara) is getting so old she doesn't have much in the way of teeth anymore. Sara'd left the uneaten food out in 105 degree heat and it had turned into dust. I swept the dust into the pond. Suddenly, it was viciously attacked! The sunfish LIKES canned cat food.

The next day I cleaned the cat dish in the pond again, and there were at least THREE little green sunfish on the attack. The goldfish is just too slow, he doesn't get any.

So, I bought some koi pellets. The sunnies really like those too, and the goldfish doesn't get any. I've counted four nice size (for a LGS) sunnies, and there may be more, it's hard to count them when they're in a feeding frenzy.

So, we now have pet sunfish. And a nice clean pond. It only took a year.

Revill