I drained my tank today and transferred all the remaining FHM to the pond. There were several hundred (mostly juveniles) in there. Over the last few days the water had went from green to brown and I had seen a few dead adults. Hot weather and an algae die off had taken the tank to its limit and it was time to shut it down. Still not bad since I had only done 1 water change all summer and even that didn't include cleaning the sludge off the bottom.

I would consider it a modest success since I had turned a dozen broodstock into hundreds. It was a minimalist system with no filtration or aeration. I just wanted to see what could done with it as is. I still think that fry growth was slower than it would be in a pond but pecking at game fish chow once a day is a less than ideal situation for them. Even so a lot of the early spawn had made it to 3/4 adult size.

Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?