Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Feeding SAD Bluegill

Eric:

The other BG are now 2"-3" in length. When they were closer in size, before DK bulked up on mealworms, he frequently got medieval on their anal fins. Once he was much bigger (double their size) I stopped seeing him terrorize them; now #2 terrorizes #3 & #4 and DK is mostly oblivious to the little ones. I think he's so much bigger, they just aren't serious competition anymore and can be ignored as no threat to him or his food supply.

All of them are from seining I did in Sept 2004, so I am very certain they are 2004 YOY. Based on my records and memory, we put about 30 sunfish fingerlings ranging from 3/4" to 1.5" in a 70 gallon watering trough at that time (for mosquito control). In early January 2005, after a 5 day power outage when the trough froze nearly solid every day, we took out 16 survivors that were 1" - 2" and brought them indoors to the aquarium. DK was the biggest and has remained so.

Two of them died real quick and another 10 have dropped off sporadically. I beleive 2 or 3 of them were redears (based on side spot patterns, see below) but these did not thrive at all, grew thinner, and died in a couple of months. This was disappointing because I wanted to watch and see when the opercule differences from the BG developed.

This was originally the second largest, one I (at least wanted to) think was a RES: