Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Raising Forage and Bait Red Shiner experiment for alternative forage

Spotfin shiners, same as humans and especially FHM, have predictable relatively short life spans. If other fish are doing well in the tank, I suspect the stress of spawning weakened SFS and they died more or less of natural causes. Rarely is this actually witnessed in ponds with smaller dying adult forage fish. As old fish weaken, predators make very easy meals of these weak fish. No doubt in my mind that a lot of predators survive mostly by targeting and eating weak individuals. This I think is very true when you add small stocker fish to an existing pond. A very high percentage of these new fish quickly become fish food and are never to be seen again. What happened to all those fish that I added??? Natures way.