Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Feeding Grass carp eating pellets

I was feeding the other day and I noticed all the grass carp came and started eating the pellets with the rest of the fish. I also had a turtle come on in and join the party and eat the pellets. Is this normal behavior? Will the grass carp stop eating grass?

My GC ate the pellets occasionally.

Turtles don't take any training. They don't get enough to worry about.

Grass carp love pellets. My experience is that they will not ever entirely stop eating vegetation, but will probably get a greater and greater percentage of their nutrition from pellets. Now if you love to eat grass carp like I do, and can harvest them like I can, then this isn't all bad, but I believe that Meadowlark's experience is that you'll get a much better result from smaller grass carp that aren't eating pellets. I hope he'll add his opinion here on how to maximize the vegetation eating potential of grass carp.

I'm just now learning about this, but apparently the triploid grass carp are smaller and shorter lived than the diploid version, which could prove to be important information when it comes to managing grass carp populations so you don't end up with a bunch of big, lazy grass carp slurpin' pellets all day long.

Bruce,

My experience absolutely agrees with your statements...small grass carp are far superior vegetarian consumers than large grass carp.....further, in my ponds, only the large grass carp come to the feeders regularly. My experience says that the useful life of a grass carp in my ponds (useful life defined in terms of weed control) is limited to three years.

Because of that, I "replace" grass carp as they get to a size where their main interest appears to be pellet food.

Regarding turtles, DD may be right about them not consuming large amounts of pellets, but at $22 per bag for high performance Rangen feed that I transport many miles to the ranch, I don't have any feelings of friendliness toward pellet eating turtles.