Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Fathead Minnow Pond

I have a small pond I am currently filling with well water. I was thinking about stocking it with fathead minnows and from time to time releasing them in the Lazy W pond. Does anyone have any experience or thoughts about a pond of this type? Another question while I'm at it. Are there any fish that continue to reproduce during cold weather or is it just a warm weather thing?

Reproduction periods of all warm and cool water are in the early spring through the warm months. Time or weeks for egg laying depends on the species. Only fishes that lay eggs in late fall or winter are mostly trout, salmon and a few other cold water species.
Your small pond will be good for raising baitfish. If you feed them ground fish food and routinely harvest them you will be surpised how many minnows or shiners a small pond can grow in one year. If you are pushing the limits of the ponds carrying capacity some form of or a small amount of simple aeration will help keep the water quality better and boost the amount of minnows that can be grown. Although raising minnows can be done quite well without aeration. If you feed the minnows, do not over feed the first year and feed them only what they will consume in about 15 minutes each day. Excess uneaten food will cause water quality problems.

I have one of those small forage ponds. Done right, it will be wildly successful. So successful that you will work your butt off to prevent a DO crash when they overspawn.

This isn't the first time DD1 has expressed a bit of hard feelings in regard to his forage pond. Cracks me up... since I'm planning to do one myself.

I imagine I'll be repeating DD1's statements myself sooner than later.

Is now a good time to stock fatheads?

Sunil would say that there isn't a bad time.

The FHM in my pond started disappearing faster and faster, so I dug a very small minnow pond. I was able to trap 30 FHM and put them in. There are ~500 after 6 months. I'm expecting a population explosion this spring and summer. To keep the little pond fresh, I have a small submergible pump pulling water from my big pond, dumping 4-5 GPH into the minnow pond. the pump is driven by a small solar panel. If nothing else, I will have an endless supply of live bait.

Bobad, that sounds good. I'm going to try that this spring.
What size pump and solar panel do you use?

If there is water, it needs fatheads. If they become overpopulated, maybe 1 predator of appropriate size could be added. Blocking off a small area for people who cant dig a separate pond would work, too. You will always be able to catch bass at the net staring thru it.

On 2nd thought, since I was only prescribing the Sunil/Burger recipe, there would be no advantage to stocking now, and without much depth, they would be more vulnerable to the cold. It does get cold way up north there, dont it? I used to go thru your fair city on the way to Brownwood to visit my son before he transferred to SWT.

Burger, I graduated from SWT when it was still a college. So me and him are fellow Bobcats. Thanks for the advice all. I am gonna wait till I get back from Japan in April.