Very, very kind of you to offer use of your equipment to move fish! I think if we continue to exchange information and experiences (and failures) that our chances of raising big fish go up and up.

My water has an extremely high hardness levels. 189.2 mg/L CaCO3 to be exact. One of my lined ponds which hasn't been stocked yet has tens of thousands of snails already. It seems plausible that they are eating algae as you suggested, because there isn't a whole lot else for them. This pond is BEGGING for redears. I might have to find a way to sequester one area of the pond to keep the snails from being completely wiped out.

Pellet trained would be even better of course, because the redears would have some forage diversity.

Was that redear hybrid by design or an accident? I wish I knew where some redears hybrids might be available too but there's not much to be found on the internet.

I wish I could remember a little more from college about aquatic invertebrates, but this pond has some smallish insects, maybe 4mm or so that have a pair of "oars" that they propel themselves about with. They look like something a centrarchid might find tasty, but I don't know what the heck they are. Just guessing...but they look like they might be a creature that would like to eat zooplankton.

Holding a redear sunfish is like running with scissors.