Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations First fish kill

I just noticed my first fish kill this afternoon. I have about
15-200 small bg dead. ALL of them are about 3 inches and smaller. I did find a couple still holding on barely gasping for air. I was thinking that I may have an oxygen problem but all the other fish are very active and are feeding like crazy. The weather has been very nasty with large amounts of rain for the last couple of months with temps in the 40's to high 50's with no sunshine. The sun has finally shown it's self yester and today bringing the temp to the mid 70's. Any Ideas on what could be going on?

Thanks!!

Shawn, do you think the dead fish are YOY?. If YOY they could have gone into winter with too low of food reserves and died as many YOY do with not enough fat for winter.

Bill's comment matches my first thoughts. It's pretty common around here for fish that enter the winter that are part of huge year classes to be calorie starved going into the winter and they perish.

...or even die...

Although we should not completely dismiss the possibility of localized shallow water low DO that may be affecting a few small fish in a shallow segment of the pond.

Does YOY mean the fish are less than 1 year old. If so they are. I figure these were hatched as late as October. Now that you mention it, most of these fish were very skinny. I have not fed since the begenning of November so these fish were on their own. The fish were found on the shallow end of the pond but the wind was blowing in that direction.

I've got YOY's that have been indoors all winter (actually they are now age-1's) that, in spite of being in a nice 50 degree hot tub and fed pellets every day are dying from the long winter. These are the fish that are the less agressive ones and are starting to starve. I don't want these fish anyway in my "program", but it's still interesting that I'm losing a fish or so every day. In a pond it would be much, much more harsh.

condelloschwich...

he he he

sorry..my bad....back to my corner now...

It does sound kind of bad, doesn't it? I'm feeding them, I swear!! They just won't take it. They cower in the corner of the tank while their bigger, tougher siblings have all the fun.

ShawnB, Yes YOY means Young Of Year - YOY.

Thanks for the info guys. I figured I would check with you before i freaked!. I'll keep a close eye on them for a couple of days.

Like I said before, all of my larger, older fish are looking good and are agressive right now with the warm weather.