Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Raising Forage and Bait Moving more fish, what am I missing?

We're pulling more CNBG out of the brood pond this next weekend. So far the process has gone pretty well, with far more 8 to 81/2" CNBG than I thought were there.

I'm dropping the pond 3' Friday before a Saturday seine, so we should be handling thousands of fish. So far, this is what I have:

2 110 gallon sorting tanks with aeration.
2 30 gallon bait tanks with aeration, to shuttle fish to the habituation area.
Various nets.
Slime replacer and clove oil.

Is there anything I'm missing, or tricks to make this go better? This will be the most fish I have ever moved, and it's gonna be a long day. I don't want any oopsies midway through this.

Thanks, Al

Al, Cecil and I sorted a bunch of fish at his place 2 years ago. IIRC we put the fish in a 300 gallon circular tank, and pumped pond water continually into the tank, letting it overflow back into the pond. That let the mud and FA separate from the fish. We then sorted from that tank into the 30 gallon coolers to move the fish to the pond. Any fish that you have seined out that you want to go back onto that pond, I'd keep out in a tank to avoid re-seining and re-stressing them.

With that amount of fish, I don't think 2 110 gallon tanks will be large enough (volume wise). I could be wrong tho!!

I wish I could be there to help. Sounds like a good time.

Take lots of photos, Al!

Never used slime replacer or Clove oil when moving fish. However I ALWAYS use salt at 0.5 percent. Always!

My fish always went into a holding pond if I couldn't move them to a permanent location very soon.

Oxygen of course is critical but your next limiting factor is ammonia build up from their gills. If you have to hold a bunch of fish in tanks for more than a few hours I would add some kind of ammonia reducer like ClorAM-X, Amquel, or a similar product.

What do you mean you always use salt 0.5. Sorry for the newbie question but can you expand on what you mean?

Cecil, the tank where the pond water was pumped into and flowed out of didn't have salt, did it? Just the static "holding" tank, right?

I think you're right. I may have put some in originally before we decided pump in and out of the pond. Moving the water through and pumping in fresh water dilutes the ammonia.

I know we added salt to the hauling tank for the fish you took back to your pond.

Water was cold which helps a lot.

Salt is added to the water before the fish are added at 0.67 oz. per gallon to get it to 0.5 percent aka 5000 mg/l or 5 parts per thousand.

When seining and moving fish they get stressed. When they are stressed freshwater fish give off more "salts" than they take in which causes them to go of "osmotic balance." By adding salt you circumvent that and get it back more into balance. In aquaculture salt is referred to as the aspirin of aquaculture. All haulers add salt to the hauling water.

Salt also helps prevent fungal issues from getting started by sloughing off the older slime layer and stimulating new growth. Some literature says salt also calms fish down.

Lots of info on salt use and fish on the Internet. Just do a google search.

http://www2.ca.uky.edu/wkrec/SALTTRANS.htm

Take lots of photos, Al. Wish I were there to help you...

Cecil, thanks for the salt info. I may try that.

Guy's, I wish y'all were here too. Last time we seined that pond, I almost got divorced over it. I got a wider/deeper net, and we will work off the banks this time. No trudging around in muck at the bottom of the pond.

So far, we've had some interesting finds. The HSB looked like tiny little footballs. They haven't grown lengthwise that much yet, but they are almost round. I hope that means they are hammering fry, because they just aren't eating enough fish food to warrant that much growth.

The sun was right last time, and the Camelot Bells were very easy to distinguish. I've never seen LMB with golden metal flake down their back, but the CB's have it.

Tony, no hybrids of any kind have been seined up yet. My GSF are 3" to 7", and that makes me wonder when they got in the pond. If it was this year, could their spawn/spawns just not synced with the CNBG spawns? I was certainly expecting at least some crosses.

Here's some pics from last weekend.

I had read about round cages on the forum, and that made a lot of sense to me. So, I made this one, and it worked well. It can be stored flat, and has 3/4 oz weights on the netting which made the sides hang straight in the water. Very cheap and easy to make. All the GSF went in here while we were moving fish. Netting was added to the top. And yes, I know what it looks like.



One of the original stockers.



Various sized CNBG