Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Creating habitat FH-Hilton

I have 1.00 acre & .33 acre ponds that I will be stocking with FHM in the next couple of weeks.

I searched the forums for specific FHM spawning structures, but did not find any specific plans.

I built a 4 story 2ft square hotel, will this work?

FH-Hilton

If it's agreed that this will work, how many will I need in each pond, and where should I put them?

Here is a pond layout drawing:

Layout

In that pic, north is up. Maybe someone can do a quick paintover of that pic in MS paint to give me some ideas of number of hotels & placement?

My father was concerend about the slots being too large, and fish would get in there and eat the FHM eggs, should some sort of chicken wire be wrapped around this hotel?

Chicken wire won't stop 2 to 3 inch bluegills or other fatheads. However, it should get a lot of moss that might help. Heck, it looks OK to me. I figure small BG will use it to delay predation.

Male FHM are rather vigorous in their protection of their nests. I am a big fan of shingle size pieces of wood, rocks, or other flat objects being put in the shallow areas of the pond, say 3" to 12" deep... If they are around 18" apart, a male FHM will take over each spawning site. That shallow depth precludes bass from eating the male FHM and protects the newly hatched fry. BG are less likely to come that shallow to harass the nest as well. The big giant structures will certainly be used but lead to an easy meal for the bass once they are stocked. An FHM in 3' of water is a dead FHM...

I thought FHM laid eggs upside-down? How would shingles work?

Reason I made the hotel was because I thought they needed an underside of something, like pallets. However pallets are too large IMO, so I made something with a smaller footprint.

Anyways, I already put this in the large pond, so oh well...

or, just take cedar shingle shakes and push them into the shoreline just below the water line

That's a lot easier to do!

Like Dave says, don't scrap out the FH hotel just yet. Fish and M Nature utilize their creativity in ways we will never be able to anticipate, let alone understand. Put 'er in and hang out the vacancy sign.

FHM will dig out an area underneath a flat laying rock to lay their eggs under that rock. Pieces of broken up cinder block get used with fervor.

What do shinners need for spawning?

grassy stubble, filamentous algae, pond weed, even submerged woody structure will be used to lay their sticky eggs on. GSH do not protect their eggs like FHM do though. They scatter them and head the other way.

My ponds don't have a lot of vegetation yet, will Blue Herring eat up my $$$$ in fatheads & shiners?

I've already seen them there many times...

Blue Herons will eat the fatheads & shiners, but it's a fact of life.

Those FH-Hilton's will be good structure for many fish, but they won't sink that easily, or should I say, they may move around if not secured firmly to the bottom.

I already installed the one I built, I'm 210 lbs and I was able to get on it, balance and mash the legs into the ground, then I loaded up the top with some large stones. I'll take a pic of it in the water next time I'm there.

Hopefully that will keep it in place.

Do be aware that if you have fluctuating water levels, especially during winter, that ice may form around the structure and then when the ice breaks in the early spring, the structure moves with the ice.

Right now, the water is 2ft lower than I think the final level will be when it's full. I'm really only putting these in this year hoping that I get a spwan from the fatheads before winter. Next year when the water is higher (I hope), I'll have to add a few more. I'll just leave the old ones deeper and let fish use them if they want...