Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations planning a PB member Yellow Perch experiment

I am just guessing that we have tones of extra little ones. I have the air stones inside the glass filters on a valve and will keep an eye on the flow. Yes it is best to just run the stone. With the angel fish we were working with only 200-300 eggs and always run just the stone. Man this ribbon is well fertilized with less than 2% white eggs.

We are going to take lots of pictures. The boys thinks this is just great. We hatched out some shrimp three weeks ago and fed them to his aquarium in his bed room. I have never seen tropical fish so fat in my life. Thought the zebra danios were going to pop.

At the pond today. We had 1 3/4" of rain in the last few days. The pond is up about 12".
Temp is at 58*. No ribbons observed. In fact, I haven't seen any ribbons for a few weeks. Just the original 4 or 5 I observed a few weeks ago. Hopefully, in my absence, more ribbons were laid, and they will hatch even with the additional 2.5' of water.
There's still very aggressive feeding going on when the feeder goes off.

We also had a big wind and rain event the last 48 hours. The pond came up at least a foot and is past the 'high water' mark. I had to leave town from last Fri till yesterday. I wanted to protect eggs to see if they hatch but not have them go in my pond. I put them in a kiddie pool and left. I came back and the kiddie pool was underwater. So much for that idea.

I didn't see any fry, but most egg ribbons also looked pretty much as I left them. THe water was bitter cold so perhaps the eggs don't hatch till it warms a bit again? Some of the strands did have the 'empty look' with some straggling white eggs left so those may have hatched already.

I moved them all to a 5 gallon bucket, probably will just dump them now. I did see one ribbon that looks more fresh, but with the water up so high it is now in about 2 feet of water, I'll leave that one.

Setterguy, the 4 or 5 you saw before will give plenty of opportunity for YOY perch this year. THere will be other ribbons you don't see, always. Glad to hear your pond is still filling. Send pictures if you can, also how much to go before full pond?

Here's a pic of the pond from yesterday. My dog is retrieving a dummy. It was about his 20th trip. Trying to wear him out. He's a bit on the hyper side. The pic shows I still need to come up about 2.5'. I'm up 2.5' this month. We are finally near normal rain for the year. Not sure about overall for the last 12 months. Before the recent rains, we hadn't had any rain (with runoff) since August.
http://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll280...7DA195CED7D.jpg
I caught, and kept eight YP yesterday. Made a delicious lunch! I caught a few SMB, then it went 100% HBG. I should have taken a pic or two of the YP. They all actually seemed smaller than last year. While my HBG seem to have doubled in size.
I'm feeding Optima. Maybe it's not helping the YP? It sure is helping the HBG.
Are these normal looking HBG?
http://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll280...802AD5E7D5E.jpg
http://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll280...CA119E6CDBB.jpg
http://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll280...CDBFA95B83B.jpg
Not all are this large, so maybe I've had some recruitment.
http://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll280...66DACC454C7.jpg

Lots of perch ribbons up here in Ontario. Water temp is 45 and we are seeing 3-4 per day.

The ribbon we placed into some tanks for hatching was laid April 4th and yesterday 5 days in we are now seeing a black speck starting to move in the eggs.

The main key is time without heat. If the water is too warm the un fertilized eggs will mold or fungus. This mold will move to the good eggs if the mold can get heat and move fast. Cooler water slows the mold allowing the good eggs time to hatch before the mold finds its way.

After day two we checked each ribbon and pinched off as many white un fertilized eggs as we could. Then placed the ribbons back into the tanks. Too much ribbon in the wire tubes to keep them under water will not let good water flow past the eggs and the clump will start to heat. Once that starts that chunk of ribbon is junk and full of mold. We learned this because the ribbon we had was very big. My son was loading up the wire tubes with ribbon and as we got to the end we run out of tubes with lots of ribbon left. He just stuffed the last two tubes full of ribbon.

I think if you lived in a warm climate and could not get the tanks heat down you could use a good dose of Methylene Blue and raise the heat to speed up the eggs. The Methylene will keep the fungus from living and the extra heat will move the eggs along quicker.

We are just using the pond water at 62*F and good air flow. Should see some hatch this week and will post some pictures of out little ones.

EDIT: Yes now that the spawn is just about over the perch are smashing the worms in the evening.

SetterGuy... I'm no HBG expert but I don't recall them having the red/orange around the opercular flap???

Good new good news the perch have hatched over night. I can see some swimmers but not all have hatched. I expect to see many many over the course of this week.

Going to have to start the shrimp hatchery up.

Thanks, I have no clue. I bought them from a local hatchery in NE Mo. He told me they wouldn't reproduce too..

Hello.

Wow, here in south of Québec, we still have ice on the pond,I just have Yellow perch in my pond.

A+

Dono,
can you post pictures of the swimmers? Probably hard to photograph, maybe put in a glass jar? I'd love to see what they look like as soon as they leave the egg.

I tried to save some ribbons to watch for swimmers but I think most of my eggs hatched before I got back in town to tend to them. Only one new ribbon mid way through last week. WE had cold, rain and wind so hopefully too warm of temps was not a barrier for a good crop of new YP for us in MI.

Any Minnesota folks with an update on ribbons?

I will take some tonight. The little guys are just so clear with two dark eyes or what looks like eyes. I bet there is 20 or more in the one tank that have hatched now today. I will see if I can put a white back ground behind the tank and shoot some pictures.

Here is some of the best pictures we could take of the little guys. They are really really small. Just luck that the air stone was in the back ground.

Started the shrimp last night will start another batch at noon today so we will feed every 12 hours.

Have not been to the shop today yet but do expect many more to have hatched over night. It has been exactly 7 days with tank temps at 63*F

All the little black eyes in the ribbon are going to be good viable young. The only problem of massive amounts of live will be if they can fit the brine shrimp into their mouths and get to the stage where they can take crushed pellets.

Cheers Don.

Dono - Perch fry will range in size from 5.5-6.5mm long. The larger, stronger fry will be the main ones to be eating your newly hatched brine shrimp. I suspect many of the smaller fry will perish which is a good thing because you could have a hard time hatching enough brine shrimp eggs to feed thousands of fry. Brine shrimp probably grow fairly fast so the optimum size for fry to eat are the newest hatched shrimp eggs. Perch fry that are eating should also grow fast and could gain 1mm(1/32") per day.

Few more pictures. There is thousands of these little guys.

Hello.

Wow, good job. Did you thought give them infusoria (Paramecium).

A+

Short video of the hatch after we fed shrimp.

No infusoria just brine shrimp. I was shocked at the number of young that hatch from one ribbon. We threw out 60% of the ribbon and have thousands of baby's. We can loose some of the smaller mouthed ones in the next few days.

We cranked up the heat to 70 this evening for the tanks to help the little guys along.

in natural lakes/ponds, the water won't get close to 70 for weeks. How will or how do the eggs laying in 50 degree water hatch in natural conditions? Not sure I follow how the 70 degree water helps them hatch when there is concern about fungus at warmer temps too. Newbie for sure here...

Yes so we took the ribbon out when the pond was 39*F and placed it into tanks that we held at about 61-63. The warmer the better this is why we see young hatched in 6 days and the most on day 7. The warmer the temp the faster they will incubate and hatch. We bumped the temp tonight because we have five tanks full about 25 gallons total and there is millions of these and all we are targeting is 500 max. That is giving away 300.

As we get die of we will siphon them out of the bottom of the tank and will pull the rest of the ribbons soon.

Everything is hatched out today. The next three days will let use know how many will live. The fry will live off the yoke sack until gone for three days after that any that are alive will be eating the brine shrimp.

please take detailed notes and lots of pictures. Even if someone else helped you do the write up and you provided the rough notes and pictures, this would be a most helpful article to include in the PB mag.

Did I miss the YP ribbons in central Indiana, or might they still be coming?

Hi Rah, I saw my first few ribbons on March 25th with more over the next several days. They were mostly on pine branches I had put in for that purpose but I did see one on the pond bottom.

Thanks Gary - Looks like I must have missed them.

Do you hear or see toads singing? They are all done spawning if the toads are singing every night.

Interesting note. We caught some perch to eat the other day after the spawn. One female had eggs in her but they were very un developed. The female was 12"s long with three crayfish and one worm in her. I was thinking she was much younger then her size or will spawn later in this year. I don't know for sure but maybe after they lay the ribbon they are ready with more and start to develop them for next year right away after.

Cheers Don.

Most of what I hear are spring peepers, I think. Not sure what toads sound like. With all the 4-5" perch that have come out the drain pipe, and seeing schools of 1-2" fish that must be YP, GSH, or FHM, I think my planned addition of 10 SMB will be OK in terms of them having plenty to eat.