Water results are in, I finally caught a few of the many thousands of minnows and took a few pics and the MDOC visit is over....and that went very badly after the first three minutes.
As for the water samples, I have attached a copy of the report. Hopefully. I have never used our printer a single time as a scanner, the preview seemed ok, lets hope so. I ordered the "poultry" test as advised, based on the information that was enclosed with it, if I were watering chickens, I have great water. I have tried to study the numbers I can find elsewhere on the site, I think they are ok, but I need some feedback on this please.
The fish. There were, and still are, hundreds of thousands of them it appears, and I was only able to net these, and they only represent the middle size, many are so very tiny they appear to be water fleas, they are that small, others are maybe twice as large ( 2" I guess ) as the largest one you can see in the photo. I THINK it is a massive spawn of FHM, but I am just winging it here.
The visit. Maybe best not say much about it, I mentioned before that over the phone call setting up the visit they made it clear they were not pleased that I was also working with PB gathering advice. When they showed up, the first question was how much the pond had cleared up since adding the copper sulfate. I explained that I had not done so, I had informed them of that only two days after they had asked me to do so, and why I had not. I did not mention of course any persons name, etc, but in general told them that it had been made very clear to me that with such a heavy alage bloom, such hot water, and an unknown fish denisity and without any aeriation, I was in great danger of a fish kill and advised to hold off on any such drastic action until more could be understood about what, if any, problems were present.
That was met with a very sharp "Well why are you bothering me and wasting my time if you have so called "experts" ( who, by the way, this young agent went on to tell me that none of the people on PB were correct in that assumption ) are helping you"? Frankly, I was shocked and caught completly off gaurd by the hostile attitude, which only grew worse as the visit continued, as this person was highly agigated by my PB affiliation, who they were very familure with.
When asked questions why the pond was built a certain way or had certain traits, I explained that the folks that built it have been doing so as a full time living for 35 years. Then they informend me that didn't matter one bit, they did't do anything right, etc, it goes on and on, just wanted to argue and tell me that everyone but this person was wrong, knew nothing, etc. When I was told that " when it rains hard, your pond will overflow right here, I had enough and VERY polity told them that the pond has overflowed on 4 occasions due to heavy flooding, I stood in the spillway every time, and they were not even remotly CLOSE to being correct. Basically called me a liar, said they did not care, it would overflow where they say it would, despite my eyewitness account all 4 times.
So, that was a real mess. The visit was not constructive as this person was very agitated from the second my work with PB was out, which was not a secret, I sent them an E mail with the pictures and videos. They admited to getting them, but claimed they never got any E mail about not using the copper sulfate, etc, even though I explained again that I only sent ONE E mail, the pics and message were all on the same E mail.
I am sure this person was not respresentative of the MDOC, just a fluke, luck of the draw I suspect. I have spoken with several other agents in the past and they have all been excellent. I should have suspected a problem, I mentioned a few posts back this agent was about to unload an earful about PB over the phone and checked at the last second. To bad, it was immediately clear in the first 5 minutes of the walk around the pond that I was dealing with someone that had a limited knowledge of ponds, but felt some pressure for whatever the reason to bluff their way into a role of the " know everything"....
Wish I had a better report, but at least I have the water samples ( which I THINK is ok, even good? ) and some pics. I think the pond will be ok, all of you have laid out some plans for removing the large CC, etc and I think it will settle down to a little more of what we would like with time.
Thanks to all, please let me know what you think of the water....and are those FHM? Whatever they are, there certainly is a healthy number of them of all sizes.
One last thing about those fish. IF they are FHM, and I suspect they are, pretty slow I noticed as they get bigger and fatter, shouldn't that make a good food source for all the 6" bass I have roaming all over the pond waiting for a bug to hit the surface? I understand it is not worth the effort for larger bass, but isn't the fact that I ALWAYS seem to have a large population of these small fish year round a partial indicator that perhaps I don't have enough bass in the pond to dent their numbers to much? Don't the large BG also tear into these when available? I am just thinking out loud here, it just seems like a math thing to a certain degree....if these are slow, tasty fish and I had a LOT of bass and BG in the pond, I wouldn't normally see so many of all sizes nearly all year around correct? I realize there is a lot more to it, but than can be one suspect on the list correct, low numbers of prey fish?
