I'm new here. About the quillback: If you want to have a forage species that doesn't get eaten by the top predators, wouldn't it make sense to have the adult forage fish be too large to eat? A sucker, such as quillback, would not be competing with the game fish for food. They have a completely different feeding strategy. And the annual offspring of the large suckers would provide a reliable supply of prey for the game fish. If the adult forage fish are small enough to be taken out by the predators, you may eventually, maybe quickly, lose your source of small forage fish. Is there some reason why large suckers would be detrimental to your pond? I guess this all depends on whether quillback can reproduce in the pond.
