Thanks for the response 4 corners. The pond has been doing pretty good. If you saw my other posts you know I enlarged it from 1/8 acre to over 1/4 acre. Added a dock and an aerator. This spring I stocked one quart daphnia, 1000 FHM, 10 HSB, AND 6CC. Had leftover LMB and BG, tons of trapdoor snails. Stocked crayfish a few years ago before it was illegal. Don’t know if there are any left in there though. Planted some pickerel plants, blue iris and a couple potted Lilly pads. I hand feed aquamax every evening from spring to fall. Took a while for stripers to feed. But once they started they are voracious feeders and are a blast to watch. Stocked them at 6” in May. The three we kept were between 12” and 14” in August. My pond still is fairly turbid from the aerator. Was hoping it would settle better after a few months. I can see fish about a foot down when I feed them, so it could be worse I guess. I was getting very inconsistent ph readings through summer. Mainly got readings around 6.0 with test strips. Dumped a few hundred lbs of lime. Had a friend with a better tester come over and told me it went up to about 8.0 ph. The only downside is that I had a pretty substantial algae bloom in late fall. And everything still has a light covering of fuzzy algae.

I never thought about transporting a test group of trout. That is a great idea. You said you used tall garbage cans. Did the hatchery fill them with their water or did they have them bagged? I am about an hour and a half away from them. I think I’ll email them and see if that is an option. Very little ice so far this year but I will have open water with the aerator running even if it freezes over. Should I wait for a day with temps above freezing so the water in the cans doesn’t freeze. Hour and a half in back of truck. Thanks again for any input.