Pond Boss Forums FISH & FISHING Fly Fishing & Other Fish Species Newer pond: Need advise

Two years ago we built a one surface acre pond here in mid Michigan. The pond is 12 foot 4 inches when full. It has some springs in it. The first year, we planted 200 rainbows in November. They did well until early June of the next year. Then we lost them even though the water temp didn't seem to be that warm. I believe the problem was that we were aerating 24/7.
This year we planted another 100 rainbows in the spring, aerating only 3 hours a day. We also added 2 gallon of blue dye. So far even though the summer was very warm, most all of them have survived. Even though the pond is only at 10 foot deep this year, it seems to be doing much better.
We are going to put 100 brook trout in the pond in the next week or so. Being new to this pond thing, I am open to any advice any of you have. Thanks

Welcome aboard Timberframe. What is it you need to know? It appears you have figured out how to get your trout through the summer by not mixing the water column too much, which allows a cooler water sanctuary in deeper water but still enough D.O.

I will say brook trout could be more of a challenge as they prefer slightly cooler water than the bows, and are more easily stressed. Been there done that.

Where are you getting your brook trout from?

I have grown out brook, brown, and rainbows to trophy size but I'm not blessed with springs etc. My 1/10th acre pond had to have a well, in which I gravity fed it in -- after dropped it through a packed column -- to blow off nitrogen and C02 and to aerate it.

Thanks Cecil for the "welcome aboard". I will throw out a few questions and hope someone can guide me, as I say this pond stuff is all new to me.
How much should I feed the trout and how often?
How much should I aerate?
How many trout will my 1 acre pond support?
Can I use a limited amount of copper sulfate to control weeds?
Can I add well water to pond when the pond level is low?
Is it ok to route spring water runoff into the pond?
Is it best to only have trout in the pond and not add any other kind of panfish?
I appreciate any trout knowledge and experience that gets posted!!!

Welcome to the forum Timberframe, you didn't mention if you have any forage fish in with the trout.
100 trout should be no problem for your pond even if they are fairly large, how big are they?
Aeration can have alot of variables but when the pond is near freezing over I run the aerator non stop thru the winter in about 4ft. of water to keep an area open for air exchange and running it shallow reduces the chance of cooling the deeper water too much.

Many people on the forum use well water for their pond and usually run it over some structure to aerate it before entering the pond.
I have Golden shiners and Pumpkinseeds in the pond with my trout and they supply extra food for the trout. If you decide to add supplemental feed just use enough that they will use in about 15 minutes. If you have plenty of natural forage they may not eat much of the pellets.
As Cecil mentioned Brook trout are more sensitive to low O2 and warmer temps., Good luck and keep us updated.

Well right now, we have roughly 50 rainbows (10-12")in the pond. We are looking to add 100 brook trout (10-12") this week. I was hoping to do some ice fishing for the trout this winter.
I have to tell ya that this summer we had a family reunion with a fish fry. Even though we fried up bass, blue gills, perch, specks, and trout, the overwhelming favorite was the rainbows.

TF did those fish for the party come from your pond or are trout the only ones you have.
It's funny how peoples taste differs, I have trout but prefer the taste of perch.

It depends on your goals. If you want them to grow as fast as possible and as large as possible I would feed. Here's what I did:

If I planted small trout under 8 inches I fed them twice a day to satiation (feed slowly until they slow down). My larger trout I only fed once a day and they grew just fine. If you are feeding once a day during the hottest part of the summer, feeding in the morning is best as that is when you're oxygen will be increasing vs. in the evening when it will drop and decrease to it's lowest level just before dawn. However it all depends on your pond.



It all depends on you're pond situation. Sounds like you have already found you can warm the water up too much by 24/7 aeration. If three hours a day worked good this summer you might want to stick to it. Or if you have a temp and D.O. probe you can do some testing and determine if you make any changes. Also night-time aeration is best as it keeps warming down.



Again it all depends on water temps, oxygen levels, and whether you feed or not. Feeding them will support much more trout than having the subsist on natural feed. I also believe - and Adirondack Pond may disagree with me on this- that fed fish have a higher survival rate.



I assume you are referring to algae as copper sulfate is worthless on macrophytes (rooted plants). You may be able to get away with it if your water is hard but I wouldn't risk it myself. Trout are sensitive to copper sulfate as are grass carp.



Absolutely. As Adirondack pond said you may want to splash it on something before you add it to the pond. Actually the best thing would be to gravity drop it through some five gallon buckets filled with plastic media (I'll post pics when I get my computer back) and feed it into a hose to the bottom of the pond. That way you would add to the cold water of the pond without warming it before dropping it in. It would also already be aerated.



If it's cold it wouldn't hurt anything especially if you aerate it somehow.



If you don't feed the trout the panfish will compete with the trout for natural feed. If you do feed them it probably wouldn't be a problem although personally I would go with all trout, so you won't be annoyed by nibblers that aren't trout when you fish for the trout. Also, since your trout won't reproduce it will be an easy fishery to manage if you stay with trout. It's possible as your pond ages the BOD in the deeper water will increase and make water quality marginal for trout. If that happens you can always switch to panfish. However going from panfish to trout is much more difficult to undo.

A downside to feeding it it will fertilize your pond and make annoying weed growth more likely, and could age your pond faster. However if you keep your trout numbers low enough it may not be a problem. A one acre pond could easily support a fun fishery of 50 to 100 big trout and not fertilize the water too much by feeding.

Not sure if you're aware of this but if you feed the trout it's not unusual to produce 10 lb. rainbows, 10 pound browns, and 3 to 4 pound brook trout in only a few years. Sometimes you'll get a few that will get even bigger if water temps and oxygen are good.




Just wish I could post some pics for you of the trout out of my pond! I have to wait to get my computer back.

TF here's a link to posts showing Cecils stacked column and some of his large trout.
http://www.pondboss.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=130040&page=1

Perch are my wifes favorite to eat. I love em also. Perch, walleyes, and trout are sure hard to beat.
In regard to your question, we only have trout in our pond. I was thinking about adding to our pond some panfish such as blue gills, perch, and such but I didnt know if I should mix them with the trout. What do you think?

If your gonna feed the trout you don't need forage fish but it would allow them to feed anytime if you had some minnows.

The problem is establishing a forage base when you already have large trout in the pond. I'm partial to GSH but fatheads would be good too.
If you have enough cover like weeds or put christmas trees in you could stock some adult fatheads and GSH in the spring to start your base, or you could try a couple hundred thousand GSH fry from Andersons, either way it might be worth a shot.

Last year when we put in our first rainbows, we put in a gallon of fatheads. They must have taken quite well because when I throw the weed rake out to pull in weeds, I find lots of minnows in the pulled weeds.
I have another question. Does adding a gallon or two of pond dye potentionally raise or lower the water temp ?

It sounds like you have a forage base, that's good, but I guess you have a weed problem and are considering using dye.
I don't have any experience with dye but I think it might lower the temps. in the deeper water, others have used it and might give you some advice, I think Cecil has used it.

I can't answer that as I never used it in my trout pond.

I've always thought that darker stained water warmed up faster, but I believe Bill Cody once said it's the reverse with the dye.

Bill?

Your thought makes sense to me, Cecil - it would seem logical that the darker water color would absorb heat energy more readily, just like wearing dark colored clothing on a sunny day versus light colored clothing. I'll be interested in Bill's response as I've not read anything by him about that before.

I gave Bill a heads up on the dye question regarding warming or cooling of the water, so he should respond shortly. Anyone else that wants to chime in is welcome.

Timberframe,

Did you say where you are getting your trout? If you did I must have missed it.

I agree that the darker color of the dye can raise water temps, but I think by limiting the sun to the deeper water it might be cooler at depth and create a larger difference between surface water and the bottom.

That's kind of what I was thinking might have been the case, AP, but I was also thinking that if the upper water was getting more distinctly heated, would that not translate to more transferred heat into the next layer and so on? I realize that thermoclines will play a role in it, but it just seems that if your top water is warm, at least the next layer is going to gain some of that heat, too.

Todd, As usual I guess it's another it all depends issue, pond depth, aeration, or water inflow, maybe Bill has a definite answer.

Wrong time of year now, but it would be interesting to put dyed pond water and pond water that is clear in two different buckets, set them in the sun and monitor temps. Maybe even three buckets -- another that is distilled and crystal clear?

Maybe this has already been done?

Good question about the warming of water with and without dye. Short answer, I'm not sure.
Long answer. From just casual observation, IMO ponds with Aquashade warm slower than ponds without Aquashade. Using just blue dye probably would produce the same result. I think this due to some casual temp tests and YP spawning later in ponds near me with Aquashade than pond without Aquashade. However this could be due to the YP not receiving as intense of sunlight when Aquashade is present.

Cecil suggests: ""put dyed pond water and pond water that is clear in two different buckets, set them in the sun and monitor temps. Maybe even three buckets -- another that is distilled and crystal clear?""
This has been done with above ground pools by the original Aquashade people. AS I recall and without looking it up, they reported the water warmed faster in above ground pools with Aquashade. This contradicts what I first stated. I think if someone emailed Applied Biochemists (Mfg of Aquashade), they would/could willingly provide an answer to this question. Why doesn't someone try emailing them?

In my thinking, I think their original study was flawed because they used above ground pools. Above ground containers would warm quicker due to heat transfer from the sides of the pools. Also the pools were not as deep as ponds and pools would not behave thermally identical as ponds due to the morphometry and characteristics of a pond.

If I can remember until spring, I may do some pond temperature testing of ponds with dye and no dye in spring of 2011. Lots can happen by spring of 2011 to distract me. I am pretty sure that the amount or concentration of dye does definately have an affect on the thermal warming of the water. But I am not positive yet if the warming is slower or faster.

Does anyone off-hand know what wavelengths of light are resposible for the majority of heat transfer into water?

I think the heating wavelengths may be quickly absorbed in the near surface layers thus little heat transfer to deeper water. REmember warmer water is a lot less dense and lighter that cooler water so heated layer could easily tend to stay at the surface of ponds with blue dye. Aeration would have a big affect on the distribution of the absorbed heat layer.

Yeah we need someone with 2 identical ponds with a depth of atleast 10 ft.
Cecil I think buckets of dyed water would get alot warmer than clear water, probably too small for testing the affects on deeper water.
Before I increased the inflow to my pond the tannin water would only have a summer visibility of about 2 ft and even though the pond is only 8 ft. deep there would be quite a difference between surface water and bottom water, but then I had the variable of 35 gpm gravity flow from the stream so that could have made the difference rather than brown water restricting sun light.

Bill, I see you've posted while I was doing my slow typing, looks like you've added more "It all depends".

Great input, Bill. The "it all depends" factor sure has a lot to do with just about everything pond related it seems!

Anyone volunteering to contact Applied Biochemists?

I sent an E-mail to Arch Chemicals.