Pond is 17' at the deepest spot. One diffuser at 17' and 2 at about 10'. I put a thermometer on the bottom between 2 diffusers. I'm losing 2-3 smallmouth per day plus a large BG or two per day. No small fish. The smallmouth that have had problems can be seen in shallow water, loafing with no apparent fear of my approach, which is very odd. The next day they are dead.No marks or discoloration and strong looking fat fish. I dont know if you can have too many minnows,but there are more minnows than I've have ever seen anywhere. I'm just wondering if it could be reaching capacity.The entire shoreline is teaming with minnows at all depths.The rest of the lake has large roaming schools of golden shiners. I'm talking about 15-20 ft circles of them especially around the diffusers. They sit in large groups facing directly into the bubble stream and are preyed on heavily. Feeding times are 7:30 am and 6:pm and response is strong. The only thing that I've changed recently was the feed. I went from aquamax 400 which is partially sinking to 500 which is a totalling floating ration. I have seen a few dead crawfish along the shore.Crawfish appeared naturally/ not stocked. There are also lots of bullfrog tadpoles that are constantly coming to the surface. I have not seen any fish piping. The troubled SMB just sit in about 8-10 in. of water until they die, almost as if they are blind and deaf.Near their death they can be dip netted without a response.
Is there such a thing as super heating? Like the super cooling that I've read about here. Maybe closing the valve on the deepest diffuser to allow some cooling to take place would be something to try.
Some good news! At the time of this edit, there were no dead fish today. We had 1 1/2" of rain yesterday evening.Maybe that helped some.I don't know
Last edited by verdehoy; 07/31/10 02:23 PM. Reason: update
