This thread facinates me because it is somewhat parallel to my situation. Sorry for the long post but I'm inclined to post the whole story based on the similarities to Ty's situation.
My pond in West Michigan is a 2.2-acre sand/gravel pit groundwater pond with no inlet or outlet. The edges are very irregular with several islands that appear similar to Norm's pond on a somewhat smaller scale. Secchi disk depths are approximately 6-feet. Chara has already colonized the upper 4-feet of the pond. The pond was constructed as an enlargement of a pre-existing 20'x 60' shallow (4-foot deep) pond located in the middle of the woods for at least 30-years (probably an old stock pond). We introduced lotus to the organic sediments contained in the area occupied by the old pond and so far, it has not been able to extend its range. We have added several large trees, a Christmas tree patch just like Dave's article, and concrete reefs in 4 to 6 feet of water.
Being impatient, I began stocking the pond before its completion and did not follow the best advise on this board, which would have been to kill everything and start over. That was before I was familiar with Pond Boss and rationalized that the biota in the existing pond would give me a jump start as the pond was enlarged. I later found that the small pond contained green sunfish, central mud minnnows and possibly a few bull heads as evidenced by a cloud of fry that was only witnessed one time (not the jump start we needed). The first thing I did was to stock a few LMB to control the former inhabitants.
The stocking record is as follows:
2002 mid-summer stock 70 3-5" LMB
2003 early spring, transplant 35 6-8" BG
2004 Spring, stock 12 4-6" channel cats
The BG were transferred from a nearby pond because we were unable to find any hatchery that will sell us native BG. The transplants have attempted two spawns with little to no recruitment that I can verify (think the male to female ratio is too high). Several of the BG have been found with holes in their spine or snapping turtle bites removed, so I'll be looking to add more and try again. There remain fair numbers of green sunfish, however, they become hard to find by late summer. I believe that this has become a LMB dominated pond with three year classes visible cruising the shallows by late summer. We have added several gallons of fatheads and emerald shiners each year with small numbers of shiners surviving to the following year before disappearing. The forage base appears to consist of green sunfish, limited BG recruitment and LMB fry plus whatever insects, etc, are available. There are also a few crayfish available.
The blue herons have reduced the original LMB plants to around 25 based on my feeding observations. They are now aprroximately 13" and appear fat and healthy. We hand feed Melick Aquafeed LMB formula twice daily (thanks Cecil). Last spring, in an attempt to add a broader forage base and limit snails, we obtained 250 1-2" redears, which were allowed to grow out in a separate shallow pond that only contained large numbers of fatheads. As a bonus, we also received 25 1-2" SMB, which were raised in the same pond. This fall, we managed to transplant 50 of the redears to the larger pond at a size of 5-6". Three SMB were added to the large pond, which had grown to 10". There are still about a half dozen SMB in the shallow pond but my bass wrangling parties have been no match for them and my friends have grown weary of the cold water.
In 2001, we also added relatively small numbers of hexagenia. This summer, we had quite a mayfly hatch and I found large numbers of wigglers burrowing amongst the chara while deepening an area of the pond. When an excavator bucket was removed I was surprised to find that the chara was literally crawling with large wigglers.
So this is a smaller scale experiment that is similar to a few of Ty's goals with about a year head start. Too early to tell how it will turn out but I'm willing to do the extra management for a little more diversity. If I can't tinker with it constantly it wouldn't be as much fun. Would appreciate any comments.
