Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Feeding Feed Training Largemouth Bass Plan

Ken- try chopping up or mashing some cooked shrimp to see if they eat that more aggressively. Or try chopping up into very small pieces some of your homegrown worms. A razor blade works as a good chopper. Don't use a lot of wet food, just enough to see if they will eat it. This wet food will make the water a lot dirtier so be prepared for more water changes if you try this.

To see if they are growing, compare the tank fish with their siblings in the pond.

Well, failure struck overnight! There were quite a few dead ones floating, and quite a few that were on their floating on their sides swimming in fast circles when I went to clean the aquarium this morning. I took most of them out -- dead, alive, or swimming in circles, and dumped them into an empty growout pond. Surprisingly, a lot of the ones that appeared dead, came to life, and a lot of the ones swimming in circles took off too. I'm going to keep feeding them ground fish feed. I've already taken a bunch of chopped up worms to them, but I couldn't tell what happened. Tomorrow I plan to get some dried krill to grind up and feed to them in the growout pond.

Ken - Do you think the problem was a water quality issue or a food - starvation issue? In raising fish it often does not take very long to loose the entire crop when things take a turn for the worse and often it is a water quality issue. Could you tell if food was in the lower gut tract near the anus of dying or stressed fish? With fish that small one can see food in the lower GI tract of the thin bodied fish.

I still have a few in the aquarium. I can check them in the morning. I changed half the water twice yesterday with water from the pond. I did measure any water characteristics. But, is sure was growing algae at a fast rate.

With small fish like that numerous deaths all at once can occur due to starvation but those fish were behaving odd as if it was water quality issues. Fish crowded like that, even small ones in a tank, the water quality can go bad fast. That is why we were suggesting flow through even a small amount to flush and minimize water quality issues.

Sounds like ammonia spiked to me.

Could have been. I wasnt checking water chemistry. Starvation is just as likely. This morning I saw a school of what I expect were their siblings. They were easily twice as long as the ones I threw into the brood pond yesterday.

Ditto - swimming in circles.