Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Help Blue Gill die off

Greetings all, I have a 1 acre pond, 15 years old and 6' deep. The past two years the springs that fill the pond have slowed down to were the pond would drop about 2'during the summer. The past 3 weeks the BG have starting dieing, as of today 120 are lost. They are all 6-8". My LMB and Crappie are doing good. The man who checked the fish say they are dieing from stress and old age. The liver in the fish are almost white and there are stomach ulcers. I was told the ulcers could be from fire ants, I had a little runoff washed in back in Oct. that may have washed some fireants in. The fish will lay on the bottom and when you try to net them they swim about 5' and lay on their side again. I feed 36% Nutrena fingerling. I got busy last year and didn't keep the PH right and got alot of alge bloom.Thanks for any help

Welcome to the forum Crawford! You are sure in the right place for this question! Several experts and fisheries biologists (NOT ME) that enjoy trying to solve these type mysteries. And we all end up smarter for it!

5-8 ton of ag lime will help level off PH swings, but an excess of phosphate is, IIRC the usual culprit for filamentous algae.

An actual "Algae" bloom is usually a good thing.

Thanks for the quick response Rainman, the biologist who check my pond said the alge is spirogyra. I always have a good green color to the water. Last spring there was for the first time large masses of alge floating on the surface. I had to go out of country at that time for a few months and when I returned all the alge had settled to the bottom. You can see it still on the bottom because the water is so clear but it is slowly starting to rise with the warm weather we've had the past few days. The PH was reading under 6 on my test kit. I added 50# of hydrated lime and the PH is now 7.2 I haven't limed the pond in a few years but I have bought 1000 pounds of calcitic limestone and plan to put it out next month. My water temp is now 54 and I'm told to wait until it gets in the 60s. Thank You

Howdy Crawford, interesting post, sorry for your troubles.

When did you add the hydrated lime? Recently enough that it could play a role the demise of the BG?

Odd that only the BG are affected....

Anyway, welcome to the forum. If you had anything to do with killing the bluegill, congratulations, you've got lots of company here!

Hey Yolk Sac, I added the lime after the BG started to die off. I like BG, think they taste good. There's been many many young kids caught there first fish out of my pond. We catch 100 or more a year.

What's the max size to which the BG grow in your pond? Are your BG pure coppernose?

Also, have you had more ice than usual this year? I noticed that Greg Grimes, who's also in GA, mentioned that he'd seen more ice this year than any other he could recall. The whitish livers could be due to fat deposition, which can be seen in several abnormal nutritional situations; the ulcers can definitely be due to extreme metabolic stress in other animals including humans, though I don't know specifically if this also occurs in fish.

I wonder if it could have been too cold this winter for a pure bred, extreme southern coppernose variant, if this is indeed what's in your pond. It's hard to imagine what else might be affecting so many BG at one time, and sparing the LMB and BC.

hey, welcome to pondboss crawford. for a minute i thought you might be GW enjoying yer 11 acre pond in Crawford given that yer retired now but i see yer from the great state of Ga.

the fire ant theory is interesting......

I've seen fish, especially trout slurp yellow jackets and hornets from the water surface. Makes you wonder if they are getting the snot stung out of their stomachs? I am sure fire ants would be stinging the whole way down too...

crawford, the fire ant deal is for real but it usually is something that kills bluegill right after ingesting large numbers of them. Usually see that in hot summr months. Doubt that it is chronic condition from that.

Hard to explain the death if just a few then agree about age/stress. however hard to believe with that many, doubt that is it. We see fish dying when we have these dramtic chagnes in temps. You know 16 last week now door open in office with over 70 degree temps. WIsh I could help figure it out. WIth jsut one species of one size though usually not water but disease.


1,000 lbs of ag lime will do very little. If going through the trouble if possible follow the advice and add 5 tons or more. Hydrated lime only last a short period do that to jump start fertilization bloom in a few months. Advice about waiting until 60 is for fertilizer additions, you need to add lime now.

Could it be old/moldy food? You said you are feeding and most likely only the bluegill are eating it; which would explain why the bass/crappie aren't dieing.

good answer csteffen

hmmmm...the moldy food theory is interesting....

IIRC bob lusk had a really good post about that a while back, darned if i could find it though..

Here it is.

http://www.pondboss.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Main=11775&Number=132280#Post132280

ewest is the MASTER as finding old threads! It's like he's got a datalink straight into the computer...

Crawford I have a pond of simalar size and depth. I had exactly the same experiance. Dead bluegill. No problem with my yellow perch or crappie. My probem however started after a freeze then a heavy rain. With a few small Gills getting trapped on top of the ice. Next came a hard feeze. Now the large one's started dieing below the ice.


.

The retreating ice got thin enough on my older pond this afternoon for me to see a dozen or so dead BG on the South side. The ones close enough to inspect have been dead awhile.

There are no morts apparent in my newer pond.

Tomorrow I should have less/no ice and enough time (plus no thunderstorms or 60 mph winds) to check all the way around the pond and net out many of the corpses. I am interested in seeing if anything but BG died.

Thanks for all the responses to my post. We did have a heavy freeze shorty before the BG started dieing but some years back my pond froze over for about 4 days with no trouble other than for my Duck, Hank,was stuck out on a stump sticking out of the water for about 3 days.
I keep my feed in a airtight plastic container so I know it's not my feed. I hand feed the fish every day, had a feeder some years ago but the feed would get wet in it so I took it down. The BG are some I caught out of the Flint River when I first stocked my pond.
I plan to catch some BG out of my Dads pond and put some fresh DNA ,so to speak, in my pond. I've been told that I need to harvest more fish each year. Frankly I was surprised I still had that many large BG in my pond what with the otters that [used to] pay me visits along with the Blue Herons.
With the warm weather lately the BG are starting to eat again and I bought some sinking feed but the fish just spit it out.
The other day while in the boat looking for dead fish I found a stump about 1 foot from the bank that had a fire ant nest on it. I chopped it down. I coudn't see the stump from the bank because of the bushes. Again thanks for all the responses!

Theo,

I've got a 10 or so dead RES in my pond in Southwestern PA.
Pond was just built last year and stocked in Nov. so I'm not sure what might have killed the RES.
How everything else is still OK.

Scott