Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Thanks TJ!

Sounds like a plan. There won't be a dry eye at the pond side graduation ceremony!

So cool. You could charge admission for this Steve. Just good stuff all around.

Just an update for TJ, I'm down to 48 SMB in the tank, 24 of the largest ones I had in the tank went in the pond in back in June. I did catch two of them last night and they were both at 6", one of them spit up a 2" FHM/GSH. The remaining SMB in the RAS are now taking dry AM500 off the surface really well.

The water depth in this picture is 32":




Just for Bullhead, here is a picture of the filtration system I am using.

Beautiful smallmouth. Nice tank!

So did you tell them if they didn't eat what was on their plate they would go hungry? Is that how you got them on the dry feed?

I've been mixing some ground up krill with my smaller 600 in the ras tank to get a stronger feeding response. I will slowly wean them off of it. They were feeding on the 5D01 and 5D02 but just not as aggressively as I wanted them to.

My bigger ones in the cage that I culled out are feeding like gangbusters 4 X per day on 5D03 - even the pellets that don't sink. I'm beginning to think they were not cannibals but were feed trained under the lights in the pond, hence how quickly they are feeding on the artificial feed. That could explain their larger size too.

Shorty those are gorgeous SMB !!!! Cecil are yours that nice ? You guys are really setting a high standard.

Thanks for the update.

Yep! I didn't really want to force the issue but felt it was time. They do prefer to take pellets next to where the filter discharges water back into the tank, it briefly dunks and soaks the pellets as they slowly drift around the tank. After fifteen minutes I will pinch a few pellets and let them sink before cleaning the rest of the pellets off the surface but most of the SMB are now taking pellets off the surface. I am also adding some AM400 pellets too when I am done with the AM500, some of those sink and are being eaten by the smaller ones in the tank but the AM400 is going in dry, I don't want slower learners to starve. When I first started this ten days ago just the biggest fish in the tank would eat dry pellets off the surface, now most of them are.

Oh man. I need some video or something!

Those fish look 'scrumtrillescent' in that tank!

The ones that I have in the cage froth the water when the pellets hit the surface. AM600

How'd you get that one to glow?

That us just stellar Shorty. Gorgeous fish. And very plump!

Very Nice!!!

Thanks, I'm going to come see it in person and ask a few questions, some evening.

Is this all the filtration you have working for you in this tank?

Do you have anything else like air stones or anything?

Just trying to see how you keep the water so clean and do not load up on the solids. I have such a hard time with my solids in the Tilapia tank I have and need to add another filter or 2. My homemade bio-filter just not doing the job.

Then again it was included with my tank so I have used it thus far. It is a good thing that Tilapia are so forgiving in their water quality. I just think that if I could increase the quality I would be able to increase the health of the fish, helping me put the weight on them much quicker.

Any thoughts?

I am using a Tetra "mini pond" gravity fed filter designed for back yard ponds between 250-1000 gallons. I have 250-260 gallons of water in my tank. The pump it came with is rated at 550 GPH. I did buy an extra mechanical filter for it and have the mechanical filter doubled up inside. I do rinse out the mechanical filters once a week, I have also added some extra media in it as well to help with the bio filtration.

In addition to that I am also am running three aquarium power heads (170 GHP ea.) that I have McGuyvered mechanical filters at the bottom of the pick up tubes that circulate and aerate the water. The powerheads have a venturi system that add air bubbles into the water without an airstone, you can see it on the right side of the picture. I do rinse the mechanical filters on the powerheads out every three days, they get dirty real quick. I am also doing a 10-20% water change out daily. I kind of cobbled this together on short notice but it is working.

Not yet but close! I still have a few that don't seem to want to get with the program and are quite scrawny.

Two things:

1.) A bio filter is not a mechanical filter that cleans solids out of your water although there are those that can do both, such as a bead filter or polygeyser filter. However the best water quality comes from having a separate mechanical filter that filters the water before it gets to the biofilter.

2.) Tilapia are quite dirty compared to some other species of fish as in they produce copious amount of feces.

That's a great way to put it..."Evolution of ponding".

Man, that fish is a piggie!

Shorty, at this point you had some bigger smallies from the previous fall, right? If so, were you worried about cannibalism of the 2011 fish from the 2010 fish?

Since the water is colder now, do you still have fish in the tank, and if so, the bacteria are no longer active probably, right?

I shut the tank down back at the end of September, so yeah, the bacteria is no longer active.

Looking back at it I should have purchased a heater and kept going with the RES I had a little longer, the fiberglass tank I have is insulated.

I wasn't too worried about cannibalism. In October of 2011 I stocked 20 5-9" SMB (mostly 5-6" and one or two 7-8") in my little pond, those fish are now 12"-14". Of the 75 SMB fingerlings I got from TJ, three went into the pond within a few days of picking them up from TJ, they just didn't look like they transported well so those three may have been cannibalized. Then in June the biggest 24 from my feed training project went into the pond, those fish were 6"+.

Of the remaining 48 SMB I had left in the tank the largest 23 fish went into the pond in mid September and then I gave away the remaining smallest 25 SMB. So I should have 67-70 SMB in my 1/4 acre pond. I will probably need to thin those numbers down later this spring or summer. They should hammer the huge GSH hatch I had this year over the winter and eagerly take pellets once the water warms up this spring.

I visited Steve last August or September to ask questions and then bought the same filter. I've been using it along with an 8 foot stock tank ever since then to grow out about 80 YP and 50 BG along with some fast and smart FHMs that have managed to not get eaten. I'm using a small seine net to separate the species.

The tank is in my shop which I keep at about 40 degrees, when I'm not working there. The water temp has been about 45 degrees for a month now. I have a very small amount of water trickling through all the time, probably only about 15 to 20 gallons a day. About once a week I change perhaps 10% of the water.

I can't tell you if the bio filter is working or not, but I do know the nitrates are never over 1%. I don't seem to see a lot of feeding activity, so they only get about a quarter cup a day of chopped shrimp and AM. I never see the perch eat, but they seem to be growing some. I do see the BG eat now and then.

I suppose that even if the water is too cold for the bio filter to work, the relatively small amount of organic matter going in along with the water changes keep the nitrates low.