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Todd I though only a few of his fish died (a few big ones) and his concern was about all the rest (small fish). It really is a question of how crowded they are now and what will happen as they double and triple in size (weight) again during the hot summer. He has a full years worth of BG with no predation (other than BG). That could be a bunch of different sizes from multi-spawns last year and this year. Better to deal with it now than in 2 mths when they are even more and bigger. I would rather take the risk of losing a few now do to a move rather than later at a higher risk factor and cost. This assumes though that the problem was accurately described. Your concern is one reason I moved to blocking nets – no move – no handling as they get bigger and minimal water quality problems.. This option was presented early in this process.

I have moved small fish this time of year a number of times without problem. Very short moves do not seem to effect fish like long crowded moves from a hatchery. I only move a few in a batch of oxygenated water and the move only lasts about 15 mins. Usually one seine pull ( 100-200 small fish) I do this early in the am and move to a habituation area (netted area) for protection and observation. I see very low morts moving 2-3 inch BG.

I do agree with the concept an so advised - often. You just have to monitor the carrying capacity and move fish out or mother nature will fix it for you. I think you noted the risk in your earlier post. IMO the best way to use this method is to start with small BG 2-3 inches and only feed them one spring and summer and move them all in the fall. Here they would go from 2 inches to about 6 inches. Stock , growout and move them out leaving only a few adults for next year. This seems to avoid water quality issues and heat problems. This was my suggestion early on.


Last edited by ewest; 06/16/10 08:56 AM.















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Thanks for that clarification Ewest. Yeah looking back Chad didn't lose as many fish as I thought, but I still classify him as official fish farmer now, even if he didn't reach the mark.

I will be interested to see where Chad goes from here.


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Only lost 25 larger 8" CNBG.

Todd, Im pretty sure it was the bushy pondweed. Thats all I have out here along with coontail in my other ponds. What Im wondering though is could it have been on the bottom or below the plankton bloom out of my sight and then boiled up to the surface during its final days before it completely decayed out to nothing? It was a tan color when it was visable, not green, but in tack. Normal looking just not green.

Im gonna try to post some photos from this morning, im not sure if the fish will be clearly visable or not. here goes













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looks like the first shot turned out the best, I wish I would have left them full size instead of shrunk them. Anyone got any guesses on quantity! The last shot was my first handful of food thrown out.

Anyways, so thats the main mass of fish that pill up where I feed normally. There are plenty more in the pond especially 1" fish but thats my normal gang that I feed.


This group can no doubt consume 10 lbs of feed per day. I normally feed 5 but chunked in 10 lbs a few weeks ago and they had no trouble with that.

SO... what im wondering is if i back down to 50% or normal which is 2.5lbs for the next 2-3 months i may/may not gain much size... If I do try and move these now and succeed then I probably will have removed say 75% of the lbs of fish in the pond. I could then continue to feed 5 lbs which would be plenty probably for the remaining fish and use this summer to grow another crop...


By the way, im actually thinking about a huge lift net to catch them. I have material to make a 20ft by 10ft lift net. I would submerge it 2ft down for example and feed over it for a few days. They are either gonna crowd over it or not. SEe the last photo, when they are rolling all over each other trying to get the food I figure they are in about a 10ft by 10ft area... Might work and might not, but it is a simple, and fast way to catch them. Pull the net up, dip them into a 200-300 gallon tank, then 10 minutes to there new home.

Last edited by chadwickz71; 06/16/10 12:51 PM.

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I don't mean to be harsh, just frank or honest. First, Floridone does not work that way, it is very slow acting, up to 90 days to see results. And in a pond like that it could stay active for up to two seasons. At least you only paid $20 a oz for Whitecap at that amount. Avast or Sonar about $25 per oz. And then when you treated the pond, you probably killed off most if not all oxygenating plants, which made your total carrying capacity way less. It is almost impossible for pondweed to reemerge in a pond that small treated with Floridone. I know it is a live and learn event, and I have made way worse calls than that. I think moving or adding fish now is out of the question. You mentioned replacements were so much, so I thought you were replacing the brooders. What you have now is the new carrying capacity. But as thos efish growout it will be exceeded again. In a way you are lucky you suffered a partial crash instead of a total dead pond with zero survivors. Floridone kills so slow it barely causes O2 depletion from rotting plant mass. Plus your water temps must have been forgiving. I personally would either establish oxygenating plants and or get some o2 in there. And I would back off the pushing it to the edge numbers. Better off harvesting less than killing them all. I always stay on the low sides of the numbers to allow for reproduction and growout on small ponds. Like I said before, with itty bitty ponds there is just not a lot of room for errors. Good luck and sorry if I came across like I always do. Not personally singling you out for my torment and ridicule. I honestly wish you luck.

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PF, I have always considered phyto, sun, and wind as a more consistent producer of oxygen than the actually growing plants. Am I mistaken?

BTW, Todd is right about the challenges here. A one acre pond in April can become a 3/8 acre pond by September. My 1/4 acre forage pond can easily be 1/10 acre before I can take action. My fish kills are legendary.

One year we try for a plankton bloom and the next year we have all kinds of noxious weeds to spray. It's nice and sunny around here.


It's not about the fish. It's about the pond. Take care of the pond and the fish will be fine. PB subscriber since before it was in color.

Without a sense of urgency, Nothing ever gets done.

Boy, if I say "sic em", you'd better look for something to bite. Sam Shelley Rancher and Farmer Muleshoe Texas 1892-1985 RIP
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Chad, Your net idea will work especially if you have a dock!!!

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Well it seems the acute phase is over for now?
I initialy read this as a 911 call on thaughts of what to do, to cut losses.
So things/thaughts came out with out any overwiev, so imidiate actions that popp up is water pharameters (o2, temp C/F) need changing or fish moved fast.
If no action is posible to take (for any reason) hang on for the ride (rolercoaster or rodeo) eyes vide open an keep track on details.
Maybe a few others had the same thaughts, and shot advice from the hip?

Good post anyway we learn from shearing these experiences (good/bad) thats why we keep posting? So a bit temperament comes naturall in a acute situatione (adrenaline)

Reading thru I wonder a bit, about the surprise some are expresing on the speed of the algal blooms and the fact that one was reeleased by another in a few days.
I'w seen this a number of times ocure in natur, one disaster reeleses the other, and we talk houres not days, like a landslide start a chain of events. High densetie stocking in a pond located outside, where the sun and rain rules the environement I'd say the chanse of experiencing this increases? (calculated risk)

Hope you keep sharing the "rodeo" the sucsess or failure is good learning for many.

As for the challenge in raising fish in Texas, i think there is differente and simmilare chalenges on the matter in any locationes, and the kind of fish you try raising on your turf increase or decrease the challenge, or trill

Good luck ahead


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Originally Posted By: Dave Davidson1
PF, I have always considered phyto, sun, and wind as a more consistent producer of oxygen than the actually growing plants. Am I mistaken?

BTW, Todd is right about the challenges here. A one acre pond in April can become a 3/8 acre pond by September. My 1/4 acre forage pond can easily be 1/10 acre before I can take action. My fish kills are legendary.

One year we try for a plankton bloom and the next year we have all kinds of noxious weeds to spray. It's nice and sunny around here.


In most ponds, Aquatic plants are the primary producers of oxygen. The Sun helps with photosynthesis, but without plants it just heats up the water, which lowers O2 levels. Higher temps, lower O2, crashes occur in Summer. You just are not going to get consistent O2 from wind or wave action in small ponds. You do not have the surface area exposed for it. A few small ripples if you have wind at all just does not do it. Phytoplankton is huge, could be a pond's number one oxygen producer. It is an aquatic plant. Single celled, bottom of the totem pole, but a pond backbone. I encourage any kind of aquatic plants, and phyto is probably the best. Bear in mind, those same plants take oxygen back at night. Your lowest levels are going to be before sun up. If those fish are gulping at the surface, you know you are right on the edge.

Some of my best fish farmers up here have oxygen diffusers, and aggressive aeration. That would be my thought with this pond also.

Beleive it or not, I have way worse drawdowns than that. My 1/4 acres ponds are bone dry in September. My bigger ponds lose 75% to 90% of volume. The fish kills are almost a matter of time without very close management. I am reworking a bad die off pond now. We can have stretches of a week of triple digits with no wind, and years of droughts consecutive. Luckily, this season is my best this decade. My best pond has not dropped a foot yet.

It's a high wire act here also. Or Forrest Gump's box o chocolates. You never know what you are going to get. I think prevention is a key, but I rarely get a call from someone who thinks that way. I am there after everything is dead, dying, overrun and unfishable. I am undoing years if not decades of no or mismanagement.

My thoughts remain the same. And you have to plan for these potential conditions. Keep the numbers low. Monitor oxygen, especially right before sun up. If you have a brood pond, harvest it aggressively, before the long hot drawdown summers. Your lowest total fish population should be during Summer. Don't treat a pond all at once. Don't treat a small pond with herbicides unless there is no recourse. Don't leave dead material in the water. Don't overfeed. If you can, add oxygen, or aerate. Shade, and add water.

This was a Floridone created fish kill. And that chemical does not really have that happen very often. You should start slow, even half dosage and wait. It does not go away, and will continue to work an entire season, just slow. Smaller ponds are unforgiving. One small mistake and they crash and burn.

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Little update, the pond seems ok i guess for now. fish are eating although only getting 2.5lbs a day now. Bloom doesn't show any increase or decrease, everything is just holding...

The pond is about 10-12" low however and I'm gonna grab some help and string out some pipe and pump some water in from a larger lake about 300yds away. I figure i'll just fill it up till it runs out.

Anything to watch out for here. I'm gonna place the suction probably in 3-5ft water depths to put in water thats around the same temp and not pump it from way down deep in the colder region of the larger lake. Should I just let the water run in over the land and let it wash in a certain amount of debris but oxygenate along the way. Or just prop the discharge right next to the pond where the water dumps right in...


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Chad

What about making a little cheap waterfall with a liner and some rocks to oxygenate? At least then you're not worrying about sediment or debris washing back into the pond? Could be a cool water feature?


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Chad, anything, like vegetation, in the big water hole that you don't want pumped into the smaller one?


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dave, there is but, im not sure if I can really do anything about that, probably the smallest particle can cause trouble. From what im hereing though the Whitecap is still probably present and might keep anything from growing for a season.


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So chad.
Is there a end to the story?
Got things sorted?
Would be nice to get update


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Sure thing, I have been super busy and haven't been on the site since the post but maybe once.

Here we go:
So after the thread I went about week and got some help stringing out a bunch of 6" alum and setting up my smaller 3" pump. I topped off the pond, everything seemed ok. Then we got about a week of rainy cloudy days right after that. I was checking the pond now morning and evening and found that by the second morning of cloudy/rain the fish were piping at the top. The pond was full so best I could do was just run fresh water in from the lake nearby with my pump. I ran it for 3hrs every morning and that relaxed the pond. Well I'll say by the end of the week when we started getting sun I was ready to pull'em out.
So I took 2" PVC, made a 10 by 20 ft rectangle, tie-wrapped in my 1/4 net, drilled holes all in the PVC for water to flow in and out when lifting the net, and put it in the water with one side right on the edge of the bank. I tied three ropes to the side sticking out in the water, The idea was to pull on the ropes and the net would raise out of the water much like a big crane raises and lowers it's boom.
It took another week for the fish to get used to the white netting laying on the bottom under them. By the way Im still running my pump off and on during this time.
That Saturday morning i grabbed my brother and father and my mom came along to watch. I filled my water trough with my pump got everyone on a rope and started throwing food. I was really fretting the next couple minutes as this was the first time to test the net.
Up it came and the whole swarm of fish i've been feeding was in it!!!!!
We lost maybe 100 fish that catapulted themselves out of the net before we got it high enough.
First thought, "Holy crap they are larger than 2-3"
Second thought, "Thats a lot of money!"
Third thought, "Why am i just standing here staring like an idiot?"
PROBLEM #1 If we held the net to low letting the fish have good water to hold in they jumped out. If we hold it right, they are laying in the water on there sides 50% of the fish just laying on the net totally out of water!!! eek
So after seeing this I kicked it in high gear and scooped the fish out of the net as fast as possible into my trough and we left for the larger lake. 5mins later we arrive. I setup a small tub for a salt bath and I start netting them out, dipping them in the salt bath then releasing them. At this time I decided to guage the scoop size to estimate the numbers. I got 8 scoops out of the trough that were the same weight. Average size was 4.5"! My fault on guessing the size wrong, the range was more like 4-5" with some 3" in there also. Boy was I happy with that mistake though.

Quick count on the last scoop = 300 a scoop! Estimated total 2400!!! they all swam away!!!

Mission accomplished! I was super happy with that. For one they were a lot larger than i thought and its nothing like a plan working the first time. ~2400 fish in one hual just made my day.

There will be a next time and I did make one HUGE mistake, I was so worried about them laying in the net in the hot low DO water I didn't take a photo with all the fish in the net...That is my biggest screwup but next time I will have another person to film the whole process. I did get a couple when we released them though.

Now what? Now that I know what 2400 looks like its been about 2wks since the move and I'm still feeding. I have what looks like 1200-1500 more fish at the net everyday. They seem very healthy im thinking about feeding them and leaving them in to grow and letting the water cool off. I hope I releaved the pond of the strain with pulling out the 2400. Im watching the new batch and will make the call as I go i guess. Right now it looks like I can make it to fall and maybe have a big batch of 5-6" fish which would be even better.

The pond i released the fish in is mature with bass but I have higher hopes now that we found out they are 3-5" fish.

Me scooping out some fish, mother and brother.


Brother releasing them in 7acre home.





Last edited by chadwickz71; 07/22/10 08:54 AM.

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Great job! That had to be fun and rewarding......


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Very cool Chad and an innovative way to net fish, another fine example of pond meistering.


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Thanks

Like i said earlier I really would have liked to take a lots of photos and not rush up the process but with my crude setup the only thing I could do was keep the total handling time at a bare minimum.

I've been trying to guess how much weight I pulled out with ~2400 3-5" fish. They were in good shape. This would be great info for me on how much the pond was holding. We have a lot of talks here on lbs per acre in "normal" ponds.

If I had an idea I can ruffly figure the fish I took out plus the group I still positively have +/- a few more I don't see.

Any help here.


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Good go.
Nice end off story,with help from the family, and the weather gods playing along.


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