Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Overall success, but still a tail of whoa...

No question, my BOW is doing the best it's ever done. Am Pondweed is growing. So is chara. Perhaps as a result, lots of small BG for the first time as reproductive success finally achieved.

Feed trained LMB are eating ravenously, fat & aggressive. And I had 70 HSB plus 150lb of TP stocked today. Even my previously acidic pH has improved to 7 after last fall's liming. No water turkeys, no Canada geese, not even a GBH sighting.

So why the "tail of whoa?" Well, that would be the nasty state of many of my sacks of Optimal Fish Food. Tracy & I combined to get half a pallet, and he very kindly transported it to my BOW for loading in my trailer.

Unfortunately, it rained like crazy while this transport & loading happened. The sacks are not waterproof, as I discovered later: many are full of toxic rotting feed which cannot be used.

Frankly, I wasn't aware of what exposure to heavy rain could do. Today I opened a sack that was STILL WET inside, many weeks after being loaded in my trailer! Sadly, I had to throw away most of it.

The moral of the story: If you have sacks of feed that are exposed to the weather, have a tarp handy just in case. You'll be glad you did!

PS Maybe this sounds like I blame the Optimal folks. I don't. Should have thought of this myself when I heard the weather report.

Just goes to prove an old adage of mine:

Wisdom comes from experience.
Unfortunately, experience usually comes from a lack of wisdom!

For some reason, the problem did not occur in the LMB food sacks. Not sure why...

Hmmm...I figured the optimal sacks were waterproof, they are plastic after all. Lesson learned for me based on your experience. I can state I left a bucket of OBG overnight on the dock and of course experienced a rain event. Feed got soaked. Whenever that happened with Aquamax I'd toss it out as it would quickly develop mold. To my amazement the OBG almost entirely dried and only 5% or so developed mold at the very bottom of the bucket. When I spoke with Dustin at Optimal he let me know they apply a mold retardant agent and that was likely the reasoning behind my experience. Just another reason I've switched over.

Optimal folks are solid, I'd give them a holler, explain your situation, they may be willing to help you. If not, consider opening the bags and allowing the feed to dry out. It sure worked for me.

I don't know if that's creative spelling or an instance of rare, under appreciated cleverness.

If the ladder, take hard that someone noticed.

Good idea, I'll do that. Didn't realize they had mold retardant in the feed, otherwise the situation would be much worse.

By the way, I think I've figured out why the BG feed sacks have issues but the LMB sacks seem fine: Geometry. As in, much larger pellets necessarily have much larger air spaces between them. Thus, water that seeps in LMB sacks evaporates rapidly and is gone before doing harm.

Punny thing, nobody noticed...

I made one small EDIT to fit me!

True that. ESPECIALLY with a pond!

Umm....latter, rather.

Anth get air/sun on that feed ASAP, and while I'm far from a fish food expert, I suspect if the feed dries up and you don't witness any whitish mold growth, it's ok to feed. I did this anyhow, and haven't experienced any morts as a result and this occurred about 4 weeks ago.

Good advice, though in some cases the mold is already there. At least it is usually pretty easy to see, but I have to be careful that neighborhood dogs don't eat it if I throw it into the trees.

Maybe get some cheap trash cans at wally world or something and get the good dry feed into those...then spread the rest out on a tarp or sheet and put a fan on them...as it dries put it in the trash cans. Just a thought...may already be too late?? Sorry to hear but awesome news on the pond!!

Anth it would probably serve as good fertilizer for the garden if you have one...at least it's not a total loss. I know areas where I've dumped moldy feed on the farm had very tall and lush grass the rest of the year.

Peachgrower, I wish I'd done what you suggest a month ago. Would have saved a lot of feed! Maybe I can save some even now.

TJ, thanks for the garden idea. That's better than just throwing it out into the woods!

Frank, sorry to hear about the fish food. Here is how the feed got wet .The delivery truck showed up at the gate of my place with no shrink wrap. Or I don't remember any shrink wrap. I have had several delivery trucks deliver Cargills fish food and it was always shrink wrapped and I was surprised when they opened the door on the truck and I saw no shrink wrap. Driver and my grandson and me unloaded the pallet of feed onto my trailer and because I was not familiar with the Product I did not separate any of my order from Franks order. I just started the 30 min drive to Franks place. A severe thunderstorm with rain hit me shortly after I started my trip, about half way there, it rained so hard I almost had to pull off the rd. When we arrived at franks it was raining a little but not all that bad. Frank helped us separate and unload his sks and put his in dry storage. I was disappointed a little because I did not get to visit or see much at his place due to the light rain. So we returned to my place with my fish food still on my trailer and we unloaded the trailer that day at my place. I have had some clumping and have had to clear the TH feeder a couple of times(which was a pain) but it is what it is. I wanted to try the Optimal and Frank helped me get that done as we split an order. I am guessing mine may have dried out a little on the drive back to my place. Wished it would have turned out better for you Frank. One more thing is the food on the trailer was mixed up with different sized fish food and we stacked it two sks high on the trailer. Some of mine was on top layer and some of his on top layer so only thing I can figure is the drive back to my place help to dry out some of the wet sks. Thanks again for your splitting the pallet Frank, just wished it would have worked out better.

Oh! Glad all is working out for your at your lake!

Hey, Tracy, thanks again for your efforts! I'm glad you haven't had the magnitude of mold issues in your feed sacks. Takes time to pick through the bad stuff, and sometimes I've had to throw away the entire sack.

Only problems were in the BG feed, none at all in LMB stuff. And those giant hand thrown LMB pellets are a total blast -- my grandkids could throw it all day just to see the bass explode on it.

You'd be most welcome to visit any time. Right now things seem pretty good with no major issues, though I'm sure this will change.

By the way, how is your piece of paradise doing? Last I saw you seemed to have some success in reducing fertility. Did you have TP stocked?

It's all good right now. The Alum Sulfate additions really cleared up the cloudy water and now is the clearest water I have ever had, and Bob Lusk said you want clearer water in the summer months so we will see, I guess. And the fish seem to be doing well. I had some feed trained lmb, Tp and some HSB delivered from Overtons the week before last. And like you described, the lmb and hsb blow up on the Cargills feed that they brought with the fish. I am picking up some Purina LMB and MVP feed today from my seed and feed store. I like the idea of the larger sized Purina lmb feed because right now some of my larger cnbg are stealing some of the larger sized Cargills feed 3/16th when I hand feed.

Tracy, are you talking about hand feeding 3/16", or 3/8"?

Not sure about Tracy's, but my Optimal LMB feed is 3/8. Hand thrown is a full 1 inch, feeders cant handle it.

Sorry guys, 3/8" lol. Plan on testing the 3/8" in my TH Feeders next time they are empty. But I don't think they will throw that size feed unless I can come up with an idea on how to spread the spinner plate area to handle larger size feed and I have already adjusted the feeder to feed the 1/4" cargills.

Tracy, Walt Overton adjusted my TH feeders so that they now throw the 3/8" LMB feed.

anthropic, I might try to watch that feeder throw every few days. My TH's throw 3/8" pellets reliability about 95% of the time. Adjusting the spinner plate sure helps, but if you take the side panel off and look at the clear guard that funnels the food from the spinner to the blower, it's shaped almost like a champagne glass. If the pellets get backed up using 3/8" pellets, the bottleneck is usually right at the top of the "stem". It's a flow thing.

Thanks! You're right, I have noticed that there seems to be more congestion & that feed sometimes dribbles out toward the end of the time. Still, my TH feeders do the job acceptably, though I have to watch them more carefully now.

What I'd REALLY like would be a special LMB feeder that could handle 3/4 to 1 inch pellets. My bass go crazy over these.

Me to Frank. Walt at Overtons, said he would talk to TH Feeders about making a production run of feeders that would throw the bigger feed. Said he has several customers that are interested. There are some smart, handy members here that might see a way to change the throat of the feeders, or do something that we might do as an owner of a feeder. Someone who is Handy as a shirt pocket might do