This is the 2nd year I have put some tilapia in my pond. The first year I don't think there were enough (total fish), or enough larger adults to keep up with the FA. This year I have larger fish and they seemed to have done a great job keeping the FA away. I see some good growth and have some big male blue tilapia with nice purple/blue coloring on their tails.

It appears as if they have run out of food since the only FA left is in the very shallow water, maybe out to 6" of water. I have had turbid water this year due to my unwelcome goldfish but this has also caused there to be really no vegetation at all on the bottom.

I've been watching that rim of FA around the shore and wondering if I should rake it out or not. I've been leaving it in place because when I rake I find lots of tadpoles (earlier in the summer), snails, PK shrimp, tiny critters of all types and at night I see the minnow fry coming in the shallows to eat. They like to hide in and under the FA as well. So I've been leaving it alone.

But today it was a rainy day and I had my bathing suit on and was wet already, I decided to jump in the pond and see what happened if I tried to rake BACKWARDS and bring the FA back out into the deeper water to provide some snacks for the tilapia. As I was doing the work I had several thoughts that I thought I would share with you all.

Pros of getting in the pond and raking from shore into deep rather than the typical way of standing on bank and raking it out of the pond:

1. It is MUCH MUCH easier on your back to be standing in about 3-4 feet of water where your rake (I use a long handled landscape grading rake with 48" width, narrow spaced aluminum tines) start at high ground on the bank and then you pull it down hill towards your feet. I remember how much my back hurt standing on the bank and bending down and pulling a load of FA up the bank when I did it from shore in the past!!

2. When you have a rake full of FA and you are standing in the deeper water you can just swish the loaded rake up and down or side to side and more easily get the FA off, rather than on the shore lifting the wet heavy FA up and on the bank behind you and then try to get it off the rake. If it was stuck on the teeth too well then I just tipped it sideways and by hand pulled clumps of FA off and threw them out in the deep for the tilapia to grab and eat later. The water also makes the rake and FA load more buoyant so it doesn't weigh as much.

3. I found that I didn't have to get the rake totally free of FA every time. If I had a couple clumps stuck on the rake I just took another pass and the weight of the FA helped push the rake down for me as it came down the slope of the bottom of the pond. Again easier to have a heavy rake as it goes down the slope rather than pulling the heavy rake up the slope if you are standing on the bank.

3. A big advantage of doing this was that I groomed the first 6 feet or so of the shore line with my fine toothed rake and the rake cleaned up the black that was laying on the sand between the sand and the underside of the FA. When the FA was sitting there it looked pretty clean but when you stirred it up you could see big clouds of nasty black stuff that were released. It was good to aerate and stir up this black layer. This left me with a nice sandy shore line again as if I had 'groomed the sand traps' at a golf course.

4. When I have a big rake full of FA and am swishing it up, down and side to side I'm creating natural waves that also help wash the bottom of the shallows and show up some natural gravel again. nice!

5. Perhaps the clumps of heavy FA that I tossed in the deeper water will sink to the bottom and perhaps the tilapia won't be able to eat it off the bottom but still out of sight out of mind.

6. Hopefully I kept all the desirable critters in the pond this way.

Probably there are cons to doing it this way as well though...

1. You have to have a gradually sloped pond bank with fairly smooth bottom to do this. Steep sides, slippery clay, or rip rap on the sides will not work so well.

2. I realized I'm keeping the nutrients in the pond by raking backwards. To prevent future algae issues it would have been better to remove all the FA and turn it into shore based compost. My hope was that the nutrients (FA that went back in the pond) would go in the tilapia and still be removed from the pond when the tilapia die this fall.

3. If the water in your pond is cold...this is not a good idea. I was surprised how fast my water temps dropped with a few cool nights. The hottest labor day week and weekend in 60 years is coming to W Michigan next week so the pond will likely heat up again soon.

The neighbors driving by thought it was strange to see me standing in the pond in the light rain with a rake but that isn't the first time they wondered about what was happening in our front yard...

Give it a try.

Watching those mini waves coming up on the shore of the pond made me wonder if anyone has ever tried to build some type of wave maker in their pond? It could be a mechanical bellows or some other device that from time to time gave a impulse and produced some waves? The wave action would do a good job of washing the bottom and keep the shoreline weeds moving and hopefully keep the bottom clean. My aerator doesn't aerate the shores, the plume of bubbles slows down well before shore, a wave machine would do a great job of doing this!




Last edited by canyoncreek; 08/29/15 09:50 PM.