Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Creating habitat structure and carrying capacity

This has to rank in the top ten best threads ever on this website. Good stuff, guys.
I have a couple of thoughts about carrying capacity, too.
Fish hatcheries often strive to push carrying capacity to its limits with heavy feed, aeration, exchanging water, etc. But, hatcheries are normally single species fish populations, with no habitat.
One important factor that hasn't been discussed is just how dynamic a fishery is. With the "best" habitat for bluegill, for example, baby fish are allowed to live for a longer time, gaining mass from plankton and insects. They quickly grow from 10,000 per pound to 30 per pound, if they have enough habitat and cover for safety. That extrapolates to more bass, which shifts "carrying capacity" to target species. If you were able to analyze Bruce's male only bluegill pond(s), you would find a few giant bluegills and millions of large insects. His "carrying capacity" is tied up in totally different living forms than multi-species, mult-size fish populations.

This is an update to include the principals of energetics into the concept of carrying capacity. Bruce introduced the thought with his explanation of energy use (Ray) concept of energy input equaling the dry mass of material. The concept is used in biology and is called energetics.

Energetics is the scientific study of energy flows and storages under transformation. Because energy flows at all scales, from the quantum level, to the biosphere and cosmos, energetics is therefore a very broad discipline, encompassing for example thermodynamics, chemistry, biological energetics, biochemistry and ecological energetics.


Here is the 1st principal which Bruce covered

First principle of energetics
The increase in the internal energy of a system is equal to the amount of energy added to the system by heating, minus the amount lost in the form of work done by the system on its surroundings.
Here are the 2nd - 6th

Second principle of energetics
The total entropy of any isolated thermodynamic system tends to increase over time, approaching a maximum value.

Third principle of energetics
As a system approaches absolute zero of temperature all processes cease and the entropy of the system approaches a minimum value or zero for the case of a perfect crystalline substance.

Fourth principle of energetics
There seem to be two opinions on the fourth principle of energetics:
The Onsager reciprocal relations are sometimes called the fourth law of thermodynamics. As the fourth law of thermodynamics Onsager reciprocal relations would constitute the fourth principle of energetics.
In the field of ecological energetics H.T. Odum considered maximum power, the fourth principle of energetics. Odum also proposed the Maximum empower principle as a corollary of the maximum power principle, and considered it to describe the propensities of evolutionary self-organization.

Fifth principle of energetics
The energy quality factor increases hierarchically. From studies of ecological food chains, Odum proposed that energy transformations form a hierarchical series measured by Transformity increase (Odum 2000, p. 246). Flows of energy develop hierarchical webs in which inflowing energies interact and are transformed by work processes into energy forms of higher quality that feedback amplifier actions, helping to maximise the power of the system" � (Odum 1994, p. 251)

Sixth principle of energetics
Material cycles have hierarchical patterns measured by the energy/mass ratio that determines its zone and pulse frequency in the energy hierarchy. (Odum 2000, p. 246). M.T. Brown and V. Buranakarn write, "Generally, energy per mass is a good indicator of recycle-ability, where materials with high energy per mass are more recyclable" (2003, p. 1).

Another way to look at this subject (as if we need more input) is the limiting factor. If spawning sites are preventing better reproduction of shiners or fathead minnows or mosquito fish then adding spawning structures can increase those species which will translate into more game species.

If you have a square foot of open water it is probably doing a less efficient job of converting sunlight into food for mister bass than a square foot of you pond covered with some sort of vegetation.

So increase food production by adding things that provide more food and the carrying capacity has just gone up. The key is to think of what you put in your pond and is it going to increase production of food.

The stuff you can do to your pond that have the biggest effects are generally going to be those things that effect the base of the food chain and not the predators themselves.

TTT for a great read.