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So TJ is doing another order of PK (grass shrimp, P. kadiakensis) for me and suggested I post on here to see if anyone else wants to get in on the order. I'm getting 1800 total for two different BOW, so right now the price each would be $.35 but TJ thinks we could get Fattig (hatchery owner) down to $.30 each with some more orders.

I ordered 300 a couple months ago for a pond I'm working with and the service was great. They arrived in great condition, very lively with only one mort out of 300. Who knows if they survived the large bluegill and shellcracker in the pond, but they looked frisky going in.

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If you are interested in getting PK established in your ponds I wanted to share some critical advice Mr. Lusk shared with me while visiting my ponds a couple weeks ago:

If your ponds are sparce or lacking aquatic vegetation secure bales of hay in various [he suggested four] places in shallow water and release equal portions of your shrimp in close proximity to the bales. Bob indicated the hay not only serves as habitat/cover, but also as a forage source.

I have stocked over 1000 PK in my ponds but have been unable to determine whether they have established themselves - primarily due to a lack of time for sampling. I have millions of FHM and I beleive they serve as preferred forage as of now, so I am hopeful the shrimp have evaded predation and are present and multiplying. However, my aquatic vegetation was sparce at the time of stocking and I had not received Bob's advice regarding the bales until recently - so I'm uncertain where I now stand.

I wish I had more information to relate in terms of my stocking success. I do know for certain these guys survive NE water temp extremes, are resilient[less than 1% mort shipped to Lincoln from Brady, NE], and are perfect size forage for BG, YP, RES, etc.

My only part in this is to help coordinate shipments across the US for my forum family - and I DO receive free shipping if I place an order - but do not in any manner profit, nor do I want to, in this transaction. Pricing is contingent on qty of order, so if you're feeling shrimpy please let me/Walt know and we can get rolling.

TJ


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I got 200 from a previous order and can say I only had one mort as well... I put 50 into a pond with only lake chubsuckers in it and 150 into a pond with just shiners, suckers and minnows in it. So there were absolutely nothing in there that could eat shrimp. I will seine it this fall to see if there was any reproduction. Almost any place that has trophy sized RES has a population of grass shrimp. They are a top notch food for RES as well as just about any other fish. And they make a top notch bait as well...

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Have you sampled the pond yet? I did about a dozen swipes in likely locations that had some vegetation and only collected tiny FHM, nymphs and waterbugs. Let me know...


Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after. ~ Henry David Thoreau

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No sampling yet... I am going to wait til September. I will sample both ponds. I want to see how the PK are doing, as well as see how the other forage fish are faring as well. I want to see how the LCS are progressing as well. Right now I just introduced some aquatic vegetation which hasn't taken off yet, so it should be easy to seine with minimal aquatic vegetation. I'll let you know what I find...

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 Originally Posted By: Walt Foreman
I ordered 300 a couple months ago for a pond I'm working with and the service was great. They arrived in great condition, very lively with only one mort out of 300. Who knows if they survived the large bluegill and shellcracker in the pond, but they looked frisky going in.


Walt,

That's about the quantity I stocked in my 1.5 acre pond, which was freshly stocked with BG/RES, and devoid of cover at the time. I stocked the shrimp in late March, and by about June, they totally disappeared. I thought they were goners. The following spring, I had a good crop of adult shrimp. 1 year later, I had a bumper crop of large adults. They disappeared again by June this year, but in the past week or 2 I have started netting large numbers of small shrimp. I think they are tenacious little survivors, and wouldn't bet against them!

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 Originally Posted By: bobad
 Originally Posted By: Walt Foreman
I ordered 300 a couple months ago for a pond I'm working with and the service was great. They arrived in great condition, very lively with only one mort out of 300. Who knows if they survived the large bluegill and shellcracker in the pond, but they looked frisky going in.


Walt,

That's about the quantity I stocked in my 1.5 acre pond, which was freshly stocked with BG/RES, and devoid of cover at the time. I stocked the shrimp in late March, and by about June, they totally disappeared. I thought they were goners. The following spring, I had a good crop of adult shrimp. 1 year later, I had a bumper crop of large adults. They disappeared again by June this year, but in the past week or 2 I have started netting large numbers of small shrimp. I think they are tenacious little survivors, and wouldn't bet against them!


Bobad

Can you advise me on some areas I might want to target for sampling? Right thru the weeds? I think you have more experience with these than anyone on the forum...


Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after. ~ Henry David Thoreau

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That's awesome, Bobad, encouraging to hear. I haven't even looked for them yet because I'm afraid they all met horrible fates in the jaws of bluegill/shellcracker. I just started working with this pond again very recently, three months ago; I worked with it for ten years before moving to CA for ten years, and in my last stint with it it gave up bluegill up to 1.75 lbs. and several shellcracker that would've gone well over 2, including one that I have a scanned pic of on bigbluegill.com that probably would've been the state record but the elderly gentleman that caught it didn't weigh it...Right now the bluegill are averaging a little under 9", about eight ounces, but I've caught several recently in the 10" range, and I caught three shellcracker that went 10.5" on my last trip, so I'm fearful for the shrimp.

But- there is a good deal of cover in the lake, and I made a point of stocking the PK into such: willow trees fallen into the water, grass/small trees growing in the shallows in a cove, the few places where there were still small beds of FA post-fertilizing. So who knows if they made it, but I'm encouraged to hear your success. I'll probably wait until next spring to look for them.

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 Originally Posted By: teehjaeh57
[quote=bobad]
Can you advise me on some areas I might want to target for sampling? Right thru the weeds? I think you have more experience with these than anyone on the forum...


teehjaeh,

I seem to catch more in shallow areas with overhanging weeds and grass. Grass which grows on the banks tends to vine into the water and dies and/or collects algae. Both dead grass and algae are food sources for the shrimp, and both provide cover from marauding lepomis as well

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 Originally Posted By: bobad
 Originally Posted By: teehjaeh57
[quote=bobad]
Can you advise me on some areas I might want to target for sampling? Right thru the weeds? I think you have more experience with these than anyone on the forum...


teehjaeh,

I seem to catch more in shallow areas with with overhanging weeds and grass. Grass which grows on the banks tends to vine into the water and dies and/or collects algae. Both dead grass and algae are food sources for the shrimp, and both provide cover from marauding lepomis as well


Thanks Bobad good direction will relate my findings


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TJ, Will you be doing this again next spring?


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I enjoy working with you guys - I will pick up the phone and spend and hour or two coordinating for any of you, anytime. Seriously - it's not a bother - you know where to find me and I'm happy to help out anyone or pass Dale's info onto any of you as well.


Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after. ~ Henry David Thoreau

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I think he advertised in the last PB edition. In the back... If you are stocking a new pond, IMHO it is very much worth it to stock at least a hundred shrimp with your FHM per acre. If you have an established pond with cover(preferably submerged aquatic vegetation) then putting a couple hundred in will give them a good chance at taking hold as well.

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Can someone link a previous thread to help me decide if I should be worried that I don't yet have shrimp in my pond?

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What's your species of primary interest, Bullhead? If it's trophy LMB that you're mainly after, PK may not make that much difference. If you're managing for trophy bluegill, though, they're a preferred food item for bluegill that could potentially make a big difference in the bluegill's overall growth.

I say "potentially" because I've only had them in one of my ponds for about two months, and am just adding them to a couple more. They're a pretty new management technique for trophy bluegill, but they occur naturally in a lot of places where bluegill get very big without management, such as FL and LA. I don't think you can lose with them; worst-case scenario is the bluegill and bass munch them all, and the fish still get a good growth spurt; best-case scenario is the PK establish in your pond and you have a new food source.

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Walt

I really want to build some small forage ponds - I'm talking 6x15' maybe 6' depth. Easy to seine...one can have a constant supply of GSH, FHM, PK Shrimp, whatever forage one wants, that are safe from predation and reproduce like crazy. One might need a drawdown mechanism, and obviously a source of irrigation, but I'd bet a garden hose at 2 GPM would suffice for something this small? One would be self sufficient stocking forage cost free when they need it. A backhoe could accomplish this with ease. What are your feelings/thoughts?


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Walt's right - IIRC you are focused primarily on establishing and growing your LMB - other forage species [GSH] might serve your overall goals better. I would say Travis, Jesse and Bobad [CJ and Walt] are good resources to determine whether they'd work for you. I certainly wouldn't feel any pressure to do this whatsoever. I'm always a PM away and Dale isn't going anywhere as far as I know either.

The reason I stock them is because I want to raise trophy BG and RES...these critters fit their forage niche well from all I've researched.


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TJ, it makes total sense to me. There are a couple really small phosphate pits on the property I'm working with that has five larger pits that I'm managing for trophy bluegill; I've thought a good bit about putting some FHM and PK in one or two of them. The only limitation in my case is that these ponds would well nigh take a miracle of science to seine - they've got heavy cover, as in whole trees in one instance, throughout, and on top of that have muck bottoms that have built up over seventy-plus years, and steep banks that drop off quickly. I would either have to use a cast net or traps to catch the forage.

But if I had ponds like you're thinking about, it would be done yesterday.

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Walt

How about above ground repro tanks? Cheaper, quicker, easily seined/drained.

1000G stock tank.

Fabricate spawning habitat for FHM - easy
GSH - I've heard yarn on bottom or furnace filters work
PK - bales of hay according to Lusk suffice as forage - not sure about spawning? Any ideas?

Tarp to cover the tanks to discourage predators and provide shade. Suspend a few inches from top of tank.

Need release on bottom of tank so you're not spilling fry over the edges - screen the out flow to prevent major loss of fry.

Aquamax pellet and fry powder for the GSH and FHM - hay bales for the PK.


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 Originally Posted By: Bullhead
Can someone link a previous thread to help me decide if I should be worried that I don't yet have shrimp in my pond?


Well, your BG will be fine without shrimp. You can grow monster BG without them if feeding and all other conditions are right. I like them because they are 1 more layer of forage. Most all forage species boom and crash, so the more species you have, the less pressure on any 1, and the more likely the BG have a steady supply of food. Even shrimp have a down cycle where all you have are very tiny young. (shrimplets?)

I have a little bait pond about 10x10x3' deep in which I grow FHM and shrimp. Water is pumped from the main pond by a small solar powered pump. A while back the pump quit, and the water level went down a foot and got very hot. Well, my FHM all floated up dead, but the shrimp are still alive and flourishing.

A minor benefit of shrimp is they utilize a resource that not many other creatures utilize. They are detritus feeders, feeding mainly on dead vegetable matter. The dead vegetable matter normally accumulates on the pond bottom as smelly sludge. In a perfect world, the shrimp and crawfish would consume all of the detritus and recover that lost resource. However, I guess even a heavy shrimp population would eat only a small percentage of it. But hey, it's better than nothing!

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Advice from the expert on Grass Shrimp - thanks Bobad - you have just given me some interesting ideas.

Think your forage pond idea would have worked with stock tanks?

Do you pump enough water simply to keep water levels consistent or enough to replace - meaning you have overflow?

Have you ever found the need to feed the shrimp?

Do the shrimp reproduce or just mature in the pond? What types of structure would you recommend adding to a stock tank to encourage repro - if you think one can accomplish this at all?

Last edited by teehjaeh57; 08/13/09 02:12 PM.

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What are my goals for my pond? Huge fish of every species biting every day. Isn't that everyone's goal?
It has decent bass and crappie swimming around in it, but I have never caught a bluegill over 5 inches. Part of that may be because they've been inbred for the last 45 years. I added some red ears from Arkansas Pond Stockers truck last spring and probably should add some new bloodlines of bluegills.

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 Originally Posted By: Bullhead
What are my goals for my pond? Huge fish of every species biting every day. Isn't that everyone's goal?
It has decent bass and crappie swimming around in it, but I have never caught a bluegill over 5 inches. Part of that may be because they've been inbred for the last 45 years. I added some red ears from Arkansas Pond Stockers truck last spring and probably should add some new bloodlines of bluegills.


I really like your goal - I think everyone shares your sentiments!

I was at Ye Olde Fish Truck [APS] this Spring too for my 750 RES. Were you at the Orschleins in Lincoln? Maybe we were in line together, it was a very windy bitter cold day.

You have RES, BG and Crappie - sounds like PK might serve as a benefit for you.


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 Originally Posted By: teehjaeh57
Advice from the expert on Grass Shrimp - thanks Bobad - you have just given me some interesting ideas.

Think your forage pond idea would have worked with stock tanks?

Do you pump enough water simply to keep water levels consistent or enough to replace - meaning you have overflow?

Have you ever found the need to feed the shrimp?

Do the shrimp reproduce or just mature in the pond? What types of structure would you recommend adding to a stock tank to encourage repro - if you think one can accomplish this at all?


Well, I'm certainly no expert. Just think of me as someone that has attained my goal of establishing an extra forage species.

I suppose PK will grow and reproduce in just about any conditions. I threw 30 in my bait pond about a year ago, and now they're wall to wall.

The little solar pump I use works like the tide. During the day, the water level in the forage pond rises 2-4". When the sun goes down, the water slowly returns through the same 5/8 water hose. The brighter the sun, the faster it pumps, so it keeps the tiny pond from becoming too hot, as well as keeping it topped off. If your pond is large enough to not get super heated, that's all they need. Mine isn't, so I had to figure a way to keep it cool.

I used to feed the FHM often, but never fed the shrimp directly. If I thought it would improve growth and reproduction a great deal, I certainly would. Maybe they would need a feed supplement in gin clear water with no grass or weeds, but my pond doesn't come close to that.

I don't think structure is necessary for shrimp. I think grass and weeds at the water's edge provide enough cover as well as food for them. I suppose their clear bodies and lightning quick escape "snap" are their best protection from predation.

I used to obsess over the shrimp because I wanted them to get established. However, once I learned what great survivors and breeders they are, I'm confident they're permanent and totally carefree. You'll see!

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Thanks Bobad - great advice. It remains to be seen if I can raise PK in a stock tank...will revert my experiences.


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