Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose Suckers?

Many fish especially omnivorous types will eat fish eggs. Bgill and about every Lepomis (sunfish) will do it, many minnows will do it, trout do it, even humans do it. Any fish egg laid in a vulnerable position will probably soon get consumed by another fish, invetebrates and no doubt puddle ducks. Nest spawners are very defensive and defend the nest against most all invaders. Goldfish or koi in moderate numbers are not usually heavy predators of eggs of nest pawners. I've seen bgill bump and bite humans trying to get them out of spawning areas. Broadcast and nonnest spawners are usually adapted to lay more eggs to compensate for egg predation. Often egg laying location helps in success of the hatch and often helps in reducing egg vunerability to predation. This behavior trait brings into play the concepts of habitat diversity that is available in ponds vs lakes. Larger systems sometimes are better suited to sustain diversity of the fishery due to more specialized habitat diversity being available for successful spawning in the larger systems. Some species will not be able to succeed in small systems due to improper habitat or even due to unnatural crowding during various life stages. This brings us back to full circle of TyW33's original question; fish diversity for ponds. One might be able to stock them into a pond but will they be able to maintain populations against all forms of predation and competition? This may or may not be good based on the goals of the manager; it all depends.

Off topic. Threads often digress from the original topic due to the complexity of the aquatic habitats. Everything in the ecosystem is interconnected to everything else. It is hard to discuss one topic or change one item in the system without impacting something else that impacts another thing; food web; circle of life and all that stuff. Pond and lake ecosystems are not a simple food chain of one or several taxa.

Discussion about posts on this board:

TyW33 may call our discussions bickering but I do not. I call most of it questions and discussion sessions. Things usually get passionate when misinformation is delivered or perceived. Many of us deal constantly with mistruths from much of what we hear from the general public. We try to combat it in various ways.

If someone made the statement that koi are goldfish (or vice versa) or koi are basically the same as goldfish in a group of knowledgeable fishery people or in the college ichthyology classroom or even among a meeting of goldfish or koi fanciers do you think no one would bother to correct you just because you are a student or because you haven't yet taken ichthyology? You made what I perceived as an emphatic statement that was incorrect. I challenged you. Other casual readers could easily take what you wrote as factual. I basically asked you to prove yourself and additionally teach yourself the differences/similarities between koi and goldfish and then come back and edit your information. You could probably get all this info from various spots on the web. If your information is read by others who know differently from what you stated, then your credibility or reliability as an author/expert is tarnished or compremised.

Asking a question is one thing, but when making a statement of fact be able to back it up if you are challenged. By starting your Apr 17, post with "anyone ever seen koi?" this portrayed or delivered an attitude. There are numerous fishery biologists, fish raisers, & fish lovers here that frequent this board, most all have no doubt seen koi. I was trying to get you to fix what I thought was a problem. After you studied the facts and you still felt you were correct about koi vs goldfish and could prove me wrong then I would stand corrected and fix MY post pertaining to what I said about your koi and goldfish issue. My major professor in college always said "show me I'm wrong and I will change your score". That is very fair. I try to help and teach on this board.

When I see what I understand as bad information anywhere I am participating, I will challenge it. When I am proved wrong I am always willing to change, adapt, and learn..

Suckers are great gamefish! They are every bit as good of fighters as catfish. They are also great to eat but because of lots of small bones, they can't just be fried as many fish are. Read the book "Fishes of Minnesota" to get some ideas about cooking them.

Also, don't let everyone talk you out of your ideas, they all have validity. Most people think that there are only a few gamefish species in this country. It is all in their minds!

Up here in MN white suckers are often sold as "Pike minnows" or "sucker minnows". People use them for pike and musky. And they fetch a fair price for a 3" minnow, ussaly over 50 cents apiece! Gollon Bros. sells suckers up to 20" for musky bait, I wonder how much those go for.
If white suckers do spawn in a pond with out water flow would it work to use them as a monoculture? In some ways it might be like free fish (after you pay for the pond), they wouldn't need to be fed or managed, just harvasted.
I was thinking a fairly small pond, maybe around an acre or two and deep enough not to freeze out, full of bait. It would be non-drainable, harvest would be done with a fyke net, cast net or siene. The ones that were to large for bait could be returned as breeders and the others used as bait.

In most culture situations, the fish are moved to different ponds throughout their lives. This helps ot increase hatching rates, growth rates, carrying capacity,cut down on diseases, and the design of the ponds makes it easy to remove them. I have seen the Gollon brothers system and the fish are hatched indoors and moved outdoors.

Thanks for the info. So if fish are going to be moved then the ponds should all be drainable. How does gollon get the suckers to spawn in tanks? Hormones? or some other trick?

they use indoor raceways and are dependant on water temp and I would assume photoperiod comes into play also. They bring the brood fish in when ready. They have a nice outfit there, almost worked for them. The ability to drain a pond is very important for maintenance, parasite control, and non target fish removal.
Robert B

They must have aquifers or some natural source of water. Chilling or heating that much water would cost a fortune, especialy a non-recirculated system. And recirculated systems cost a fortune too. I wonder if my pond plan, maybe with the addition of a drain, would be suitable for supplying one bait shop or for personal use?

We are really getting off on two different subjects here. One subject is raising fish for profit, suckers in this case. The second subject is adding diversity to our ponds. I would like to have someone else start a discussion about various methods of raising bait for sale.

That leaves this discussion to the subject of adding diversity to our ponds/lakes.

The first think I want to say to Ty is to keep at it! You force everyone to think and that exposes some of the nonsense we believe.

Pure BS: A pond will only support so many pounds of fish called the carrying capacity. It's astounding to hear so many professionals fall for this pure and total BS. Living things tend to greater diversity. There is a benefit to this diversity, energy and resources are used much more intensively. In simple terms, a low diversity fish pond might have a carrying capacity of 400 pounds. The same pond with a high diversity might have a 500 pound carrying capacity.

This happens because with a low diversity pond, each species is a generalist in using the resources of the pond. With a high diversity pond, the species are all specialists in using the different resources of the pond.

I just wanted to add an illustration to my comments about carrying capacity. Many people think that carrying capacity is a constant. Say this number is 500 pounds per acre. Some people think that if you have 4 species, each species would have 125 pounds. If you add a 5th species, each species would only have 100 pounds.

You can see that this isn't true by thinking of LMB. Using our illustration above, if you want to raise LMB, the addition of bluegills is just a waste. You could have 500 pounds of LMB and forget the forage. We use forage species because they use parts of the environment that LMB don't. That is true of every species we add, they are all a bit more specialized in using the environment than other species. The total amount of biomass increases. However, because of the increased competition, individuals don't grow as fast or get as big as they would without this extreme competition.

All of this is to say that in general, your idea of another forage species is valid. The point that Dave Willis was making is that white suckers are very good at exploiting this type of environment and may dominate this lake.

Dave recommended that I add white suckers to my 4 acre lake because I have such a preponderance of large predators. If you should add white suckers, make sure you have enough predators to control their numbers. It can be done.