Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Building a dam My new spring fed pond. With pics.

I have recently built this pond. Guessing a little under a .25 acres. I plan to stock it and grow some water plants. Im wet behind the ears. Any advice would be great. I also want SMB and perch, sunfish. Is that a good combo? The pond will be 8' deep at the deepest. Need ADVICE!!!! Thanks!

Welcome to the forum, jeffro!

By perch, I am guessing you mea Yellow Perch...many of our southern living brethren call most panfish, perch

Back to your question, Yellow Perch do very well with Small Mouth Bass. Bluegill however, don't. The BG often quickly overpopulate since SMB are not as ravenous as a Large Mouth. Another panfish option that is also a great idea for controlling snails that host grub parasites, is Redear Sunfish. You can also add Hybrid striped Bass to the mix along with Fathead Minnows and possibly Golden Shiners if choosing HSB. other small minnows like Gambusia (mosquito fish). Spotfin Shiners are another great forage, but harder to find.

Rainman has a good summary. If you stock smallmouth- yellow perch,,, the only commonly available and acceptable sunfish with them is redear sunfish. Avoid bgill with smallies. Other sunfish types can be added later if necessary.

What about.....wait for it.....stocking HBG in the SMB YP combo? Would the smallies and perch be able to control the limited reproduction of the HBG? Both the perch and the HBG could be feed trained.

I'm waiting on the answer to this one..

""What about.....wait for it.....stocking HBG in the SMB YP combo? Would the smallies and perch be able to control the limited reproduction of the HBG? Both the perch and the HBG could be feed trained."" I've done that stocking combo plus with a few HSB added. It worked pretty good especially if the fish are fed pellets. An advantage is if the HBG are harvested and replaced with new HBG. Control of the young HBG will be dependent on how many SMB are present. Expect the HBG to eat some of the SMB eggs and fry which could limit SMB production depending on how many HBG are present. I think HBG will eat more fish fry than the YP because the HBG are more aggressive and tend to inhabit shallower water where SMB fry are seeking refuge.

Thanks Bill!

Jeffro,
Welcome to Pond Boss.... water is looking good... fun times ahead...

Jeff, what is the tall pipe for?

I'll add to Bill's comments on adding HBG as an extra forage. I would wait till the bulk of your smallies are 2 pounds and or HSB are 4 pounds, or larger.

Like Bill mentioned, HBG will likely steal some eggs, but any F-2 or later could be worse when it comes to nest and egg raiding. YP ribbons gone, SMB nests destroyed if many HBG offspring with GSF traits become abundant.

The pond is only 0.25 acres. Can someone make a recommendation for him that takes the size into consideration? Bill?

I was thinking this also. A pond less then 1/4 acre, 8 feet deep at the deepest and he wants vegetation.

Stocked like a regular recycling larger body of water. I had always read on Pond Boss that perch belonged in larger bodies of water like two or three acres and up. Shouldn't this pond be approached more like a water garden pond? The vegetation around the edges would be miniaturized plants. Perhaps just colorful KOI fish. As soon as I seen this post I went to my Sunset Water Gardens book and saw ponds bigger then one quarter acre.

A quarter acre can support several hundred YP and about 25 SMB, if pellet fed.

Thanks rainman, but why did I read so much on Pond Boss not to put yp in small bodies of water?

John, can you find those posts and copy/paste a link to them here? I'd like to see what they say (and where they are at).

jeffro, Looking great well done.

I see you have lots of elevation. Can you build more ponds below this pond and so on. Like a tiered pond system. I really wish I could have a tiered system with the largest pond at the bottom.

Oh to dream....

esshup give me some time on this. I thought it would be ease to find but so far nothing. I am starting to go back through my post that started in 2002. If I misread, misinterpreted or dreamed this I will be disappointed because I always wanted perch in my pond.

Back again. I've gone through the post titles and reread the ones that I posted in and thought could have perch information in it but found nothing. I'll keep looking for my own peace of mind.

Perch and small ponds.
This was remembered out of text and is no reflection of what Bill was saying in the whole. I do think I have read this more then once on pond boss but to find this stuff isn't easy. In doing some reasearch I have found in three other instances where perch were said to not do well in small ponds.


http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=17089

typically I have found that YP as the main panfish do NOT do well in smaller ponds with LMB unless the ponds are fairly weedy. 

Thanks John. The key to that sentence is "With LMB in the pond".

A bit further down in Bill's answer there is: In ponds with good weed control (few weeds) YP work best combined with a few non-reproducing predators that have smaller mouths or have limited reproduction.

It's not the size of the pond, it's the type of predator that is in there.....

YP in the presence of LMB stand little chance at all....a 10" LMB can swallow a 8" YP...a 20" LMB can swallow an adult lunker 14" YP...Maybe that is where you are thinking YP will not do well in smaller ponds...where LMB are present.

With less aggressive, smaller gaped predators like SMB or HSB, YP do VERY well in small ponds, especially when pellet fed.

In the right conditions (no weeds) with pellet feeding, one can grow just YP (reproducing) in a small pond with lots of 9"-14" YP present. However for success it does take some management and harvest. I have a few examples of YP only ponds near where I live in NW Ohio.

Thanks guys! The pond really is probably less than .25 acres maybe between 3/16 and 1/4. At any rate I have a spring that runs into the pond year round, but during the hotdry months the spring is a fast trickle but during the fall and winter is full great. When a say great I mean maybe a 5 gallons a minute or so..... The pond is about half full and has only been filling for the last 4 weeks. I swam in it yesterday and the water is very warm with only a little cold in the deepest which is like 4ft right now. The cold is lying around my feet and up to my ankles. I'm hoping when full at 8' depth the bottom 4-5 feet will remain cool. My question is on aeration....will I need to aerate? If so I have no power close. What would be the best solution for this size pond and solar?

Also, I noticed tons on tad pols in the pond over the weekend! I mean a lot! That is good SMB food, right? Or is this going to be a problem? Not sure what to think about seeing all the Tad pols! HELP APPRECIATED....THX guys!

When you say the power is not "close", how many feet are we talking?

You can push air a LONG ways.........

200 yards (guessing)

If you can get a trencher in there to bury airline, you can have a compressor where you do have grid electric and push air to the pond. I have a client that pushes air over 300 yds without a problem.