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I am finally ready to get my pond put in, but I am at a loss as to choosing the right size pond and the species of fish.

My primary purpose for the pond will be to have a supply of fish for food! I can eat only kosher fish so catfish are not an option.

My land is only 12 acres so the smaller the better, but I intend a minimum of 1/2 acre.

The place where I am putting the pond is about an hour from where I live so I need a pond with little to no management.

So little to no maintenance and good fish for food, and keeping size to a minimum are my goals.

Can someone please advise me which palatable fish would be good for little to no maintenance in a smaller pond?

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I have a client with exactly your same goals and criteria. You have to go about it a bit differently. First start out with how many pounds of fish you want to harvest from the pond weekly. Next is feeding and aeration. Ponds can hold more fish and grow more fish if they are aerated and the fish are supplementally fed.

It all depends on how you will be preparing the fish too. If you are de-heading, gutting and scaling and cooking with skin and bones in, you can harvest smaller fish. If you want to fillet your fish, then they have to be larger.

So:
Pounds of fish per week/month/year?
Will you be feeding and aerating?


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Mozambique Tilapia, a Cichlid (Family Chichilidae) Coppernosed Bluegill, Hybrid Bluegill and Largemouth Bass, all sunfish.

If wanting food, Tilapia will produce a lot of good size (1 pound plus) and larger from a small stocking early in the springtime.

The bass/bluegill combo will not provide nearly as much food in a small impoundment, but still a significant amount, depending on your eventual pond size.

Kosher fish list



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Esshup

Thanks for your reply. I would prefer as little input as possible, and so aeration and feeding would not be preferable in my situation. We want something as natural and self-sustaining as possible.

The amount of fish really isn't so important just that it is a fish we can eat. We (5 person family) eat fish a maximum of twice per week. I'm not sure what that would come out to in pounds.


Last edited by The Greer; 10/29/14 09:52 PM.
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Rainman,
I really do like Tilapia! But I read that they can't survive winters here. LMB would be great too but I read that they need lots of maintenance in a smaller pond.

You mentioned stocking. Are there any scenarios for our situation which could avoid re-stocking after stocking initially? I would like a pond that is self-sustaining if at all possible. If it requires some of the less preferable fish to achieve this, then I would choose the less preferable fish.

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Greer, for a $50 annual investment, you can restock every year. The tilapia offspring will also help feed and support the other "rear-round" species.

$50 would be about 4-5 pounds of stocker size Tilapia in a quarter acre pond, and could produce 50-60 pounds of fish in a single season. Unless you are willing to do a lot of management, or build a much larger pond, nothing will produce more pounds of fish for less money or work than Tilapia.

Nothing that goes onto your dinner table survives the winter...lol

Last edited by Rainman; 10/29/14 10:53 PM.


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If you want a small pond, and edible size fish, it will take some management regardless of the fish species.

Generally, the smaller the pond, the more frequently it needs care, whether it is fishing, feeding or correcting any issue that arises. Things happen far faster on a small pond than a larger one. Costs are generally lower on small ponds overlarge ones too, especially if any chemical is ever needed.



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My client also has a family size of 5. He is aerating, but not feeding. He has more water acreage than you will have, and it was determined that without supplemental feeding his ponds would not produce enough fish per year to support two meals per week for the family. One a week was pushing it.

With the equipment that is available on todays market, I don't consider aeration and feeding maintenance. Aeration is a "install in the pond" once, then once in the Fall and once in the Spring, switch the diffusers from winter to summer. If the system is set up for minimum maintenance, that equates to turning a couple of ball valves off and a couple of them on. Once a year pick up the diffusers, scrub them off and drop them back down.

Feeding can be even less maintenance than feeding a dog or cat. Fill up the solar powered, automatic feeder once a month, make sure the timer is set correctly and forget about it. Clean it once a year. When the water temp is in the low 60's or upper 50's, turn the feeder off, clean it out. Start feeding again when the water warms up past that mark in the spring.

Here is a thread on carrying capacity of ponds. It relates very well to what you are trying to accomplish. I doubt that you could harvest 50% of the carrying capacity of the pond and still keep a self-sustaining population of harvestable fish.
http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=201295&page=1

That's why I was asking about how the fish would be cooked. Filleted fish, depending on the skill and species of fish, will only have a marketable yeild (if you want to call it that) of 50%-70% of the gross weight of the fish. If the fish is marketed as bone-in, I'd bet the marketable yeild would be 60%-80% of the gross weight of the fish.

Somebody please check my math because it isn't my strongest subject.

You aren't supplementally feeding.
Predator fish convert prey fish to body mass at the rate of 10:1.

Take fillets for instance. Lets use the high side of the numbers. Say each person consumes 1/4# of fillets at each meal. 2 meals a week. That's 2.5# of fillets per week, or 3.6# of gross fish weight per week.

So, your pond would have to grow 36# of fish per week to support the 3.6# of fish that you take out for the table. That's 1,872 pounds of fish that would have to be grown in your pond from hatching as eggs to you taking them out as grown predators. That does not take into account how many fish have to be left in the pond to reproduce to keep a sustainable harvest.

How does that figure relate to the carrying capacity of a pond (per surface acre) that is not aerated nor supplementally fed (that was given in the link that I provided)?


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This might be jumping ahead into the future planning of the pond, but if you do go with stocking Tilapia make sure you build the pond in a way that it can be netted. Which also adds in a maintenance factor of doing it every fall. You will have to decide whether or not the extra work to do that is worth more(or not) of more food on the table. Some folks have skill ( luck? ) in catching them, so far I have not.

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Greer, welcome to Pond Boss. Your question of low maintenance/no feeding/no aeration/self sustaining/feed the family isn't new to us. But I have no knowledge of anyone being really successful at accomplishing their goals under their own conditions. Mama Nature just doesn't cooperate. It's about like planting a garden and assuming that no weeds or pests show up and rainfall waters it. I might add that even with my guidance my children didn't turn out to be perfect.

Rex(Rainman) is right about tilapia yielding more protein per acre than any other option.

This stuff takes work/knowledge and cash infusions. Even though we often harvest from our ponds, we would be better off financially going to Krogers.

Last edited by Dave Davidson1; 10/30/14 05:50 AM.

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.

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Originally Posted By: Dave Davidson1
Greer, welcome to Pond Boss. Your question of low maintenance/no feeding/no aeration/self sustaining/feed the family isn't new to us. But I have no knowledge of anyone being really successful at accomplishing their goals under their own conditions. Mama Nature just doesn't cooperate. It's about like planting a garden and assuming that no weeds or pests show up and rainfall waters it. I might add that even with my guidance my children didn't turn out to be perfect.

Rex(Rainman) is right about tilapia yielding more protein per acre than any other option.

This stuff takes work/knowledge and cash infusions. Even though we often harvest from our ponds, we would be better off financially going to Krogers.

Dave is right on - as usual!
Even though we often harvest from our ponds, we would be better off financially going to Krogers.

Common carp are the only self sustaining species that I know of that would be on the Kosher list. They can survive in almost any body of water, large or small, hot or cold, pure water or putrid water.
The problem is you have to be an expert angler in order to harvest them - they are one smart fish. A blast to catch on a fly rod if you are into that kind of stuff. smile

If I could roll back the clock which I can't (my doc says I can only slow it down grin), I would stock common carp in a small pond just for sport fishing. They are becoming a very popular sport fish in many lakes and streams around the country - being called "Golden Bones" compared to highly sought after tropical bone fish.
I love them on the fly and folks tell me thy are very good to eat when smoked or properly prepared....
George Glazener

Last edited by george1; 10/30/14 06:30 AM.


N.E. Texas 2 acre and 1/4 acre ponds
Original george #173 (22 June 2002)




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""Even though we often harvest from our ponds, we would be better off financially going to Krogers."" This is a really great and wise quote. The pond as a food source is very similar to a backyard garden. It takes work, effort and some expense to yield a dependable crop. Its is profitable only if you find gardening a hobby pastime instead of using your time doing something else.

Last edited by Bill Cody; 10/30/14 08:23 AM.

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Originally Posted By: Bill Cody
""Even though we often harvest from our ponds, we would be better off financially going to Krogers."" This is a really great and wise quote. The pond as a food source is very similar to a backyard garden. It takes work, effort and some expense to yield a dependable crop. Its is profitable only if you find gardening a hobby pastime instead of using your time doing something else.

I strongly agree!
I would NEVER want a pond if not for passion for the fish!
Too much hard work and expense - others have different passions for ponds but passion is required IMO.
G/



N.E. Texas 2 acre and 1/4 acre ponds
Original george #173 (22 June 2002)




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I agree with everything everyone above said. But If you are curious about it and want to see some pond(s) with your own eyes, you can PM me and come by my pond. I too have 10+ acres and a 1 acre pond that is set up different than what you want,but it might at least give you and idea what your place would look like with a 1 acre hole on it.

Mine is managed and we have a mother in law with a non managed/natural pond you can look at that is about 1/3 acre and a cousin that has about 1/2 acre pond that is also un-managed, all within a mile of each other. Just a thought.

As an example on #of fish produced. In 2014 I have taken 45# of CC and 70 CNBG at a total weight of approx.28# and one tilapia about a 1/2 pound. 73# of fish X 60% meat yeild (I agree with esshup) would have me at 44# of meat. We only have 2 bags of quarts right now. I have caught a few bass but they are not really managed because I have a slot only to help manage CNBG my primary focus.

I aerate and feed but cull selectively for my goals. As you stated with a "Natural" pond not only would you be at the mercy of mother nature and living in East TX, as I do, the wide fluctuation in water level could cause you some "natural issues" with any fish you stock. As an example my mother-in-law natural pond has years where no fish are caught and 1 out of three years when we do catch mostly bream and warmouth and it dies off again for a year or two. Of course when the pond completely dries up which is often since 2006 there have been no fish at times.The bird bring in the eggs (I assume) and the cycle starts again at the mercy of mother nature.
I think F&C is right too in that you will need to build your pond for netting because I struggle to catch them as well. Only caught one this year by accident. I have them for algae control and supplemental forage species.

All that said, it is a interesting idea and a challenge I would think, for constant fish yield with a natural small pond. I would add that many of the experts here who manage many ponds would might recommend if you want a more constant fish yield, you might get it with a larger pond of say 3 to 5 acre where a variety of fish could be stocked and allow a balance in a pond with a lot more acre feet of water,bla,bla ,bla.IMHO


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I would take MPC up on that offer. Good way to see some ideas.

HERE is a link to a thread you might find helpful. When I first started thinking about what to expect back from a pond "food wise", the link gives a bit of a common/everyday language that newbie pond owners might relate to.

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How about a non linear idea to help solve your design problem. Using the pond water and fish together to create not only a fish crop but also a produce crop at the same time? Aquapoincly(sp?)grown lettuce or vegetables that you then consume, and/or trade. IMHO, outdoor Aquaponics has a great potential for pond owners looking to self sustain.

Fish waste and lettuce go together like peanut butter and jelly smile

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I think mnfish idea is a great one for someone who really want fish to eat and in a sustainable system that has a main component of fish yet gives additional fruit so to speak in the veggie area,win/win!

From all I read tilapia are the cream of the crop fish species for aquaponics, not that other species cannot be grown. I wish I would have thought of that idea as a suggestion.

In 18 months to 2 years I will start my aquaponic system.


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Welcome, Greer! East Texas is huge...what county is your pond in?


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