Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Creating the food chain Don't want to mess up a good thing but

Start by assuming the pond is at it's carrying capacity.

If you want to add fish, you need to make ecological space for them. This doesn't just mean physical room - it means food and oxygen and water quality throughout the year to allow them everything they need to live. There are several ways to make that space.

1) Remove Current Fish: In the simplest example, if one wanted to add 400 lbs of LMB (say for "improved genetics"), one could remove 400 lbs of current bass.

2) Supplemental Feeding: This could be very pertinant for your CC and HSB, since they both readily take pelleted feed. You supply enough feed for the CC and HSB you add to live on. It's not quite that clean, because other fish (BG especially, perhaps YP, possibly even LMB or WCP) will eat some of the feed, and the CC and HSB will also eat natural food in the pond that other fish had previously been consuming.

3) Fertilizing: Not for everyone or for all locations. Many ponds in poor soil regions don't have enough nutrients occuring naturally in their water to grow the phytoplankton needed to support many fish. Fertilizing with the proper amount, at the proper time in these ponds can increase the phytoplanktn in the pond and hence the amount of animal life that can live there all up through the food chain.

4) Oxygen Management: Think aeration. Ensuring that all the fish you have (particularly when you increase the total mass of fish via 2 and 3 above) always have sufficient O2 to live. Remember - O2 to low for 15 minutes = dead fish.

5) Water Quality Management: Think aeration, possibly removing bottom water, possibly adding water from a well or stream. Maybe adding lime for alkalinity or removing cloudiness with gypsum or alum.

Combinations of these are frequently used. Lots of us worry about #4 and #5 seasonally.