Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Creating the food chain New pond FHM questions

The GS will have a better chance at long term survival if you get them established ASAP. For best success you want GS to be as big as practical (6"-8") when the predators reach 6"-8" long. When this happens the predators are growing in length much faster than the GS and larger predators eat larger year classes of GS. This increases the chances of longer term survival of the GS since the adults will be in the 8"-10" range and serve as brood stock.

Back to jbbies topic. For this small of a pond (0.04ac), consider using single sex sport fish; only males or females of each species. Reproducing sport fish in this size of pond will quickly overpopulate the pond habitat and management will become problematic resulting in poor growth rates and probably owner frustration. In small ponds best and easiest management of the fish populations is by using sport fish that don't reproduce or have minimal reproduction and forage fish that are prolific. This way the predators and panfish have a constant supply of food for good growth.