Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Anybody losing any large yellow perch

in the unseasonabe heat?

I had my second floater today in three days. Not going to lose sleep over it as over 99 percent will survive, but wondered if anyone else is losing any.

No issues with bluegills of course.

Cecil, I've not gotten a single report on any YP floaters in the much warmer ponds I've stocked recently.

I haven't seen any floating. I have noticed mine aren't eating very much and even my bluegill and HSB have cut back. We've had several nights down in the 60's and I thought maybe that would keep the water cooler. Need to get a thermometer to check the temp.

None here, I am more worried about the cooler temps and rain that are in the forecast. A big cool down is on the way.

I lose a handful every year if it gets hot for a significant duration of time, but a few more around spawning time. Nothing significant.

All perch feeding has shut down as far as I can tell.

Do the warmer water temps make it hard for YP to maintain body condition? Mine seem to get skinny when it gets warm.

Not sure. I don't mess with them in warm water so can't tell if they get skinny. And they always look skinny to me when they don't have eggs or are males. But if they go off feed it would make sense they lose some weight.

The floaters don't appear to be exceptionally under weight though.

What's interesting is even my smaller perch in my holding pond have stopped feeding. Ammonia and nitrites are zip so that's not an issue even though the 1/10th acre pond is fish heavy.

Was at a fish farm a weeks ago and the fish farmer said something interesting about the yellow perch in one of his ponds. He said he fed them too heavy in the spring and they went off feed in the summer and would be off feed until fall. Never heard that before. Maybe Cody or someone can explain. I have had them go off feed in late summer before until the water cools off.

How old were the dead fish?

Not sure. My guess is 4 to 5 years.

Are your water temps near 90 degrees,

Hey Cecil,

FWIW I lost one a couple weeks back but he/she was 6 to 8 inches up on the bank. I just figured he beached himself chasing a minnow. No floaters so far but my geo pumps 6 to 8 gpm of cool water into my puddle when the air conditioning is running.

I was at the pond yesterday. No floaters, but my YP were just stocked this year.
My feeder isn't working, so I hand fed at 6:00 am. The YP were hitting the feed harder than I've ever seen them. (The feeder hasn't worked for a month.)
Swam yesterday afternoon after I finished mowing. The water was surprisingly cool, considering the recent 90+ degree days we've had.

78 F. from top to bottom. Run the two diffusers mostly at night.

When I kept smaller yellow perch in cages (up to 8 to 10 inches), they had no issues with water temps in the 80's. Fed really well. Once thet get 12 inches and up they don't care for it.

I think my two resident snapping turtles keep my heat stressed, dying YP consumed before they float to the surface. Current surface temp at 6" is 85F and at 6ft 79F. The temperature difference meets the technical definition of stratification.

Historical heat stressed perch discussion.
http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Main=23726&Number=298097#Post298097

http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=20285

Interesting read. I think I will have aeration going by the end of next summer, or 2017 at latest. Depends on how much I'm going to spend on fixing the leak in my dam..

Bill,

So you aren't running a compressor this year?

I have seen this for the last two years. I am thinking that they do not need the energy and just hang at the bottom of the pond. I have about 2-10% still feeding but seem to be the smaller perch. Young that may have learned to feed on pellets from their older kin.

Cheers Don.

P.S. water temp has dropped so no floaters here.

Cecil asks:So you aren't running a compressor this year?
Yes I am running aeration about 4 hrs per very early morning. Temps were taken late afternoon and I think the temperature difference was due to daytime heat accumulation. I will try and remember to retake the temperatures when the aeration stops tomorrow morning.

Bill are you only running the aeration in the morning because of running it during the day will warm the pond to much?
Is it to save power as well?
How would one guess on house much aeration is enough with out over heating the pond. I just run ours 24/7 and do find in the summer the pond warms up quite a bit.

Cheers Don.

No floaters, but have 82 at the surface yesterday, and 73 at 5 feet down. Perch are still aggressively eating, but waiting for the food to hit them down where it is cool. They don't want to come to the top very much. Definitely odd weather to have my water temps this warm this late in the seasons. No wind to stir things up, so it is well stratified, which is telling when you dive in and can feel the layers in temperature changes.

Dono - I am only aerating 3 hrs per day from 6-9AM in 0.7ac using 6 diffuser heads (3 separate diffusers) for strong mixing when it occurs. This schedule is a reduction from last year when I was aerating 5hrs per day at a similar time of day. Some other local YP pond owners with 1/3 ac ponds were running aeration 2-3 hrs per day with success and fewer adult YP deaths during mid summer. I decided to try the reduced time frame for experimentation to measure how much of my pond water column in a larger pond will be mixed on this schedule. Hopefully some temperature & DO data will be available in a few days. This 0.7ac pond is primarily a YP-WE pond and YP will tolerate low DO, but not the WE. I am still catching some WE in traps so I know they are surviving this aeration schedule and amount of water column mixing.

You assume correctly. The more or longer one mixes the pond the more the deepest bottom areas become warm and close to within 1F of surface temps. My goal in my summer climate is to have the coolest water on the bottom areas with adequate DO for YP and WE survival.

Question was "How would one guess on how much aeration is enough with out over heating the pond. I just run ours 24/7 and do find in the summer the pond warms up quite a bit."
Very good question with several variables or it all depends. Variables: pond size, pond depth, bowl shape, amount of habitat to resist mixing, size of compressor, number of diffusers, location of diffusers.

My goal has always been to have a minimum of 2-3ppm of oxygen on the deepest bottom areas prior to the aerator restarting. This maintains adequate DO for good aerobic bacterial and invertebrate decomposition of the sediments.

In your specific case in cooler summers of Ontario and if your compressor produces 3-4cfm 3-5 hrs of aeration per day should be ample to maintain good DO on the bottom for YP. In your situation running 24/7 is hyperventilating your pond and increasing the DO above 4ppm (mg/l) is not necessary. Warming the bottom water over 75F for YP may actually slow down the growth of the larger perch. YP growth will decrease in less than optimum temps, both high and low. As YP get above 11" and WE above 18", I think they prefer a cooler habitat for optimum growth rates. Smaller YP grow good in 80F-86F water, not the big ones.

Great info Bill! I wish i could cut and paste and send it in an email to the local DNR team. They insisted that perch cannot do well in a pond like yours and mine. We need to do only BG, LMG and channel cats. My young perch have grown like weeds even though pond temps have been quite warm and they seem to really like the forage options. I appreciate your input about differing growth rates depending on water temp and perch size..

As i was attempting to seine net out some undesirables in our pond last night I caught a very plump, perch that had been cleaning up the pellets as they sank to the bottom. I was amazed at how much they have grown since this spring. I'm very happy they are in my pond even though it isn't the ideal pond (mine is more shallow, soft clay bottom without much structure or very deep spots thought necessary for successful perch growth)

I'll probably run my aerator different times now that the hot muggies are behind us.

Ccreek - with feeding pellets to the YP that are 8"-9" long, you should easily see a 13"YP in a couple years even in your shallow soft bottom Michigan pond. When you catch/harvest some of your 12"-13" YP, send a picture of them to your local DNR team and tell them to visit Pond Boss for an education about growing pond fish especially yellow perch.

Isn't Michigan's DNR the one that discourages nonhybrid bluegill because, "you can't prevent them from overpopulating and stunting in ponds?"

I'd sure hate to be a bass in a hybrid bluegill only pond!

And grass carp are not allowed in Michigan because they fear they will consume desirable macrophytes. At the same time they say they are not effective at consuming macrophytes in ponds! You can't make that stuff up!