Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose Cecil envy

As we have come to expect from you, nice BG Bruce. I don't know which is more impressive to me personally, the big age-0 or the half pound age-1. I guess the former will be scariest next year when he weighs a pound.

I have been keeping 27 RES in my PBR since Sept 9 (the last 17 added then, 9 two weeks before that, and the first one is the survivor of 2 that went in at the middle of July). With the goal of pellet training as many as possible, I utilized tactics which started by feeding only freeze-dried krill and a small quantity of pellets every day. I have fed a "dessert" (after the main course of krill and/or pellets) of live, natural food (earthworms, beetle grubs, or mealworms) every 5 or 6 days on average. Initially this was to get some food in the RES which were more reluctant to eat pellets, so as to keep them alive and healthy long enough to have a chance to pellet train; since they have been eating pellets I have continued the desserts every 5-6 days to give supplemental animal protein in addition to the artificial diet (iaw feeding studies ewest has provided).

My experience has been that at first a few RES will take krill on the surface. Most of them will initially eat krill on the bottom of the tank after it has waterlogged and sank. The number of RES eating krill at the surface increased over the first two weeks, at which time it seemed all or almost all of them were eating krill at the surface. At this time I began decreasing the quantity of krill and increasing the quantity of pellets fed each day. After another two weeks the RES cleaned their plate of a 100% pellet meal for the first time.

I think Bruce's progress with his PBR RES has been commensurate with mine, given the difference in metabolism from water temperature (55 deg F for Bruce, 70 deg F for me) and the fact that he is not present every day to feed (given the difference in metabolism, it seems he is probably feeding often enough for how much they would eat).

The technique I used seems to work well with the RES over the range of lengths in my PBR (initial sizes ranged from 3.5" to 6.75"). I have been tracking the growth of the larger ones and it has been pretty good; Bruce thinks that the group photos indicate that the body condition of the rest of the RES is good too. There is at least one small RES who is noticeably thin, undoubtedly because he/she is living on the desserts rather than pellets. There could possibly be one or two other small RES that aren't doing as well but I have only seen one at a time.

Here's a group photo from Dec 10:


and here is the largest RES in the PBR. I'm assuming he was 6 3/4" long in September, with growth to 7 3/4" on Nov. 18


and to 8 1/2" on Dec. 10