I guess I'll resurrect this old thread based on an experiment I started several days ago.
Four days ago I saw a huge cloud of tiny fish begin "herded" by a huge LMB. I discovered they were newly hatched LMB fry. A friend and I got a net and captured several hundred of them with a deep fine-mesh pool cleaning net.
I put them in a 10 gallon aquarium with just an air-stone. I had some in another container with a filter, unfortunately, they were so small that hundreds of them got stuck against the filter intake and died. Here is the aquarium with the airstone and bass.
Based on reading an old paper by our good friend Dr. Dave Willis, I'm weaning them off of plankton. Once or twice a day I'm cleaning the bottom of the aquarium with a siphon, while I remove about half the water. I'm replacing the water with pond water. The pond is currently experiencing a good bloom.
I'm using a coffee grinder to grind Ziggler 42% trout feed into a fine powder. They seem to be loving it. I've been feeding them 5-6 times a day. Last night I left the aquarium light on, and left the little feeding door open on top of the aquarium. This morning there were lots of little bugs on top of the water. So far, these little critters seem to just be eating plankton and the fish food.
From Dr. Dave's old paper, he says they will die in 5-7 days if they aren't getting properly fed. Today is day 4, so we'll see. As of this morning, not a single mortality.
If they make it to at least an inch long, I'll put them in a 40 gallon container. If they make it to at least 2 inches, I'll put them either in a 300 gallon IBC container, or we'll put them in brood ponds. I've currently got an empty brood pond, and we'll replace the RES in a friend's brood pond. (We put 2-3 inch RES in the friend's brood pond last fall. Most are now about five inches. If the feed trained bass live, it will be time to transfer the RES to the main pond, which has bass to about 20 inches.)
I'll keep my experiences with feed training posted here.
Ken
