Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Feeding fish too small for feed?

I recently stocked my 1/4 ac new pond for the first time with 130 CNBG, 30 RES, GAMBUSA and 100 catfish. All the fish were between 1-2 inches. Is there a feed that these small fish can eat? If so, what's the best for fastest growth?

I'm sure there are others, but Purina makes fish for fry...

http://www.purinamills.com/game-feed/products/?specie=Fish%20&%20Aquatics

Did you stock feed trained fish? If not, I am not sure how well they will take to feed. Perhaps one of the guys with experience will chime in with an answer.


FWIW in my experience, CC will figure out pellets quickly, even if they weren't feed trained.

So will BG and some other species.

Thanks guys for your input. I'm not sure if they were feed trained as they were so small it seemed as if they were just hatched

My small 6 inch catfish are feed trained, and feeding them has also caused some 5 to 6 inch bluegill to quickly become feed trained. Even wild catfish in a stream can become feed trained, if worked nearly every day in the warmer months. But, I found if you hook one while feeding, much of the previous effort goes away, and they won't readily feed again for some time. My small bluegill will nip at the floating catfish food, and eventually they seem to get some of it as it softens. BTW, I couldn't find any floating pellets locally that are small enough for one to two inch bluegill to ingest.

If you want to go to the effort, you can take larger pellets and mash or grind it into meal/smaller size so the smaller fish can ingest it.

If you have an old kitchen blender it will work. Just for entertainment, soon after stocking my pond initially wife and I would sit on the dock with pliers and mash pellets to feed to the FHM swarms and growing BG.

The smaller fish will eat the larger pellets as it softens and they can get a bite off of it. But it is kind of hard to tell the right amount to feed that way. Higher protein feed the correct size for the target fish is definitely the way to go if you can find it.

All but the smallest of fish can eat Aquamax 400. Only thing I have ever fed smaller is some meal for tiny tilapia. It was really fine 50% protein stuff I fed till the tilapia were a couple inches long.

The smaller pellets don't float; they sink into the clay bottom. If I crush the catfish pellets that I have, they also sink. I wish there was a source of 1/16 inch floating pellets to feed very small bluegill.

Small fish will eat pellets that have floated for a while and have softened up. Feeding a higher grade of pellets to fish will help them grow faster, and faster growing fish will get to a size where they can eat a floating pellet sooner. Then it snowballs from there.

All food isn't created equal. Feeding the incorrect food to your fish would be like feeding your dog cat food, or your cat dog food. Even a single 40 or 50 pound bag of small pellets that are designed for fingerling fish will get a pond a great jump start. BUT, with the higher nutritional requirements that small fish have, would the original poster be willing to spend the $$ on the correct smaller pellets?

I know where to get small pellets that will give fingerlings a tremendous jump start. BUT, at $5 per pound of feed (not including shipping), and it coming in a 40 pound bag, how many bags would be sold to a pond owner??

Hydrate the food before feeding. That can make a heckuva difference.

A word about smaller feed. It lasts a long time. Since fish are small and pellets are numerous, you are not throwing near the volume compared to the large pellets for larger fish.

Yes - sometimes its good to buy a little from your local hatchery or split an order with others. 50 lbs of fry/yoy food goes a very long way.

MakeDo Farms, I have a cheap Ninja I bought at Wally World, and keep a coffee can full of chopped up fish food in the UTV. It does go a long way with the smaller CNBG.

Guess I'm obsessing about tiny crustaceans lately; that's the way I am. But... It seems to me that a pond with a healthy crop of Daphnia or some similar crustaceans would provide the feed needed by the youngest of fry.

“Generation after generation of females [Daphnia] can be born in this way [asexually self-replicating], with new females reproducing as early as four days old at intervals as often as every three days, for up to twenty five times in their lifetime (though this number is usually far smaller, and females tend to produce a lot less than one hundred offspring). You don't need to be a mathematician to imagine the magnitude of a healthy daphnia population.
“Moina spp are, although similar to daphnia and other members of the Daphniidae, is quite distinct from the genus Daphnia. They are very small in comparison to most Daphniidae (less than 0.5mm in length), and their young are only about the size of newly-hatched brine shrimp. However, their culture is almost identical to that of Daphnia, and although they are harder to acquire, their use as a cheap alternative to brine shrimp as a first fry food has made them popular with many fish breeders” http://www.caudata.org/daphnia/#cult1a

“Moina are resistant to extremes in temperature and easily withstand a daily variation of 41-88° F (5-31° C); their optimum temperature is 75-88° F (24-31° C). The high temperature tolerance of Moina is of great advantage for both the commercial fish farmers in the southern U.S. and hobbyists culturing live food at home .” https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=A0SO8yFd.aJWf6UAa4VXNyoA;_ylu=X3oDMTBya2cwZmh2BGNvbG8DZ3ExBHBvcwM1BHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNzcg--?qid=20070701110132AAGkZys&p=Moina%20spp%20environmental%20requirements

100 catfish in a 0.25 ac pond is a lot of CC for a regular pond situation. Be watchful of water quality as the reach 14"-18".

Almost all ponds if not noticeably muddy will quickly develop an abundant zooplankton community that diversifies as the pond ages. So often, lots of natural fish foods are present soon after the pond fills with water. Silty water suppresses phytoplankton and zooplankton. Inoculating a new pond with water from a pond with apparent good water quality stimulates and diversifies new zooplankton community.

Many fish farms that train fish to pellet feed wait until the fish are small to large fingerling sizes (1.5"-3') before training the fish 'to pellets'. If the fish were all less than 3" then USUALLY they will find enough natural foods to allow them to grow to the 3"-4" sizes. Then work on trying to get them to eat pellet fish food. One other option would be to contact the farm where you bought the fish and buy 3-10 pounds of small size fish food from them. Try looking on eBay for smaller amounts of good quality fish food. Or use the larger pellet, food softening method or buy pellets and grind crush them into smaller sizes. Fish pellets 1/8" or smaller will usually sink. Larger pellets usually float. Consider building a floating feeding ring to retain pellets in open water so the don't float to shore and cause water quality issues although birds (usu ducks) & little fish, will sometimes eat fish pellets that have floated to shore.