Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Feeding Coppernose, Redear feeding in a small pond?

Hello all! I've done some searching and have found a few answers to feeding related to some large ponds or lakes, but have been unable to find an answer to my question.

I have a small 1.75 ac pond freshly stocked this past winter with coppernose, redear, and fathead minnows. I'm wondering if feeding the bream this first year and possibly the following year would be of any benefit to get them off to a good start? If I only feed them for this first year and not anymore would that do any damage or should I continue to feed them every year? I plan to add bass this summer and possibly some channel cats in the coming fall winter.

Also, what type/size of feed would be appropriate for these fish?

I'm located in central Mississippi.

Thanks!

us efeed small enough to fit in the little ones mouths. 1-3 inch bluegill have very small mouths so use a pellet that is around 1/16 of an inch. continuing to feed your bluegills is a great idea. especially after the introduction of bass and catfish. you may need to build a feed ring after you get the catfish to keep the cats from pushing the bluegills out of the way. one note about redear: i have never seen them eat pelleted feed. i have been raising them in an intensive setting for some time and i have had to use bag feeders with hay and fertilizr my pond heavily to see them grow. i believe that thier primary diet is bugs and worms etc. fertilizing your pond will help things like rotifers and copepods get established. redear are great though as far as forage goes.

Fletch, Bag feeders with hay? What are you doing? Are they eating the decomposing hay?

He is probably using hay in coarse mesh bags to produce zooplankton. Zooplankton and to some extent insect larvae would feed on the decaying hay and assoc. bacteria. Fertilizer produces more zooplankton than hay. Hay is primarily for young panfish. Panfish soon grow too large to efficiently feed on zooplankton. Panfish raised exclusively on zooplanton grow slow compared to those who have access to an abundance of larger food items such as insect larvae, amphipods, and larger fish fry.

Thanks for the response Fletch! I'll see what the co-op has with a pellet in that 1/16" to 1/8" size.

I've been reading about the homemade 4"pvc feeders that some have made, and have plenty of pvc so I may attempt this as well. Though I'd prefer to go out and just hand feed them I believe.

i use hay bags that you would use to hang up in steer pen or horses. whatever. it provides some zooplankton but the bugs are atracted to it.i fertilize to get the plankton. red ear are hard to raise commercially. when i was a kid there was an old fish farmer my dad and i would go see in crockett texas that would keep his catfish heads and grow maggots to feed his small bass and red ear. i dont have acess to large amounts of catfish heads but its a thought.any of you guys know of that old man i cant think of his name.

JM, the feed ring is only to provide an area of feed that the wind will not blow away. catfish will tend to feed in the open water and follow the feed across the pond with the feed while the bluegills will stay and feed in the ring. you can still hand feed them just toss it in the ring.

Aye, will do. I picked up some fingerling feed today and am about to go build a little ring to tie up and float out a few feet from the shore. Thanks for the info.

Well its been just over a week since I started putting out very small amounts of feed in my feeder ring. I've got lots of fathead fry all over the pond, and the adult fatheads are the only fish eating at the ring so far.

I also noticed turtles showing up and eating the feed.

It appears the redear are starting to spawn, I'm getting a thermometer tomorrow to check the water temp, couldn't believe I didn't have one lying around here anywhere.

Anyways, how long should I expect to wait before the coppernose start showing up to munch?

It may take a while for the bgill to show up at the feeding area. With lots of fathead fry available, the bgill are feading heavily on them and aquatic insect larvae/invertebrates & crustaceans. When these food sources become limited then they will start searching for other food sources and will show up at your pellet feed station. Redears will feed heavily on small snails (bigredears eat larger snalis) if available otherwise they will utilize insect larvae, invertbrates and cructaceans. Probably very few R.ears will ever eat pellets for you.

Ah well that gives me an idea of why I haven't seen the coppernose, there are definitely lotsa fatheads. Amazingly I remembered reading somewhere about the redears not really eating feed and haven't expected them.

The little fatheads are growing pretty fast it seems. So I'll expect to maybe see the coppernose after they all get to big for the coppernose to eat. I'm probably just overly anxious to see em

My water temp was at 75 on the dot the past two days, so perhaps I was correct on the redear spawning.

Thanks for the heads up.