anthropic & Tracy, I'm sure there were heavy nutrients too, but the silt got them. It hit on 3 different occasions over a month, and it was the color and clarity of creamed coffee. Visibility was almost nonexistent. If it just been an issue with the hatchery pond, I would have just pumped in water from the big pond and flushed it. Unfortunately, I had approximately 2 acres of the same mess at the top of it also. There was no option for water changes.
The hatchery pond has water primrose, smartweed, and rush completely covering the banks. It's still there for 2 reasons. One, it controls nutrient levels to the point that there is zero algae present. And two, it's cover for fry in the spring to fall months. They'll get whacked even in a single species pond, and they require protection just like any pond. Last year I treated the plants with Sonar in late September/early October to eliminate the plants, and throw the sheep to the wolves before I seined the pond. Their life expectancy in the big pond would be about 5 minutes, so having them eaten in the hatchery just targeted calories to the CNBG I was focused on.
At this point I'm just bucket stocking XL CNBG back into the hatchery pond to get it restarted while I wait for my water test results to come back from A&M. No more fish projects for a while, just forage. I feel comfortable doing this because the silt has stopped, and the few remaining CNBG are feeding daily again.
