That's good stuff snrub. The latter attempt where your pond got out hand reminds us how easy nature can get its' way. Now the FHM and RES blend in your mini-pond may answer alot of questions. Such as:
Will established FHMs clean out the RES beds of their eggs?
or
Will established FHMs simply control RES overpopulation? (too easy!)
Will FHMs become great forage for big RES?
or
Will FHMs tie up much of the pond biomass and escape RES predation?
4" RES playing at spawning in July? I've much to learn.
I think it was late June. Time gets away from me.
As far as the 4" fish trying to spawn, my thought was that if RES do stunt, the stock I got may have been stunted and were older than what might normally be associated with their size.
I ordered and got 200 fish from an Oklahoma fish farm truck. Hand sorted and picked out the largest 25 for this mini forage pond (the ones I could be certain were actually RES - quite a few obvious hybrids and the smaller size fish I simply could not tell - so they went to my old pond where GSF were already present). Five floated within the first week so not sure really how many I have left. I've seen at least five together at one time (when the pair were spawning) and there is another bed near the one I observed with the spawning pair. Five may be all I have left for all I know.
I have the same questions that you do. I think I put in an earlier post that was just going to throw the FHM and RES together and let them duke it out. See who came out on top.
I have recently built a sediment pond ahead of my main pond. It eventually will get an inflow rate where LMB from the main pond will get back up into it. But it may be several years as it will take a really big rain event. So for a while I have another (between 1 and 2 tenths acre) small pond that thus far I only have FHM introduced. If I get reproduction of RES in the mini forage pond, might put RES from it in this pond. Have been debating between that and trying to get some CNBG this fall from the south then later some Camelot Bell LMB to see if they will survive our winters. We often have mild winters, but last winter was a doozie. Still undecided on direction to go with this pond.
