Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Feeding Bluegill diet/ water quality

Cecil has provided some good basic info. Technically BG and many other fish that can be trained to eat pelletized food can begin feeding on artificial food as soon as their air bladder in filled with air. This is at very young age and small size as Cecil indicates. At this size the food is the size of fine powder. Generally, the smaller the BG are the more often they will feed if food is available. Generally the more BG that are feeding on pellets, this does take some of the predation pressure off the natural food items. HOWEVER, IMO this will not result in a high enough abundance of extra invertebrates to comsume a noticable amount of nuisance algae. What in reality actually happens is added nutrients sources from pelet feeding increases algae growth / production. Plus more BG will recruit into the population due to added food reserves. Catch 22 type of thing.