Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Creating the food chain Creak chub?

The last pic is of a parasite infested fish. Could not determine, but guess not that it is VHS related. It is being eaten up by parasites tho. Bottom up!

Not a Creek Chub, or any other. Probably a sub species product that inter mingle in the shiner world.

The most recent pictures are not quite good enough to postitively ID the fish. They are a shiner species and do not look like emerald shiner to me. If they were larger individuals it might be easier to tell what they are. Young golden shiner do tend to have a greenish hue to the back area. If you take more photos try putting 2 or 3 in water in a zip loc bag. Sometimes that provides a good picture showing details of the fish. It is possible they are young common shiner.

What? Parasite infested? Huu?





Good call on the zip lock. I will give that a try. I held these in my hand all the way to the house then took pictures of them. The last picture was a larger one we netted.

See if I can crank up the DPI on the camera.

Cheers Don.

That last pic looks quite a bit different now.

Before, the bottom of the fish, half way up and the side and the head were all red and had a distinct white line that looked like mini cottage cheese.

Maybe my monitor is acting up.

Maybe time to clean the glasses?

OK here is some high DPI pictures. There was a bit of mud in the net and in the water. The Zip lock bag is a great little tool to take pictures of minnows.

These are all under an inch and out of the same school I scooped up in one scoop. I can scoop up thousands of these guys everywhere. They seem to really like multiplying in our pond for what ever reason.

Cheers Don.

P.S. on the parasite thing. Had me chitting my pants.

EDIT: pulled the picture to big for the post. Try downloading the files to see the minnows.

They're looking more and more like common shiners to me. Definitely not creek chubs and I don't think GSH either.

I was told that they were emerald shiners when I bought them. They grow up to be quite green and have large scales like in the first pictures of these guys. (see below) I do not know what they are but all of a sudden we have thousands in schools of 200 all around the pond.

This is an Emerald Shiner (Virginia Tech)



Notice how slender the body is compared to your pics.

They can get to about 3.5" in length, maybe a bit longer.

Your pic.

If we are using only color then I agree with CJBS they are looking more & more like common shiners. I am pretty sure that they are shiners. Good methods that you used to get them to spawn. Many shiners look quite a bit alike unless one can see small specific details that separate many of the species. We will know more next spring May-June when they are 1/2"-1" longer. Fish in a bag pics are better than those previous. Hint when you take more pics of fish in a bag use less water so the bag-water thickness is thin or narrow so you get a clearer pictures.

I have no doubt a good percentage of the fish sold to your were in fact emerald shiners. However, in larger northern lakes emerald shiners and common shiners are often found together. So when the dealer you bought your emerald shiners from collected the emerald shiners, he no doubt ended up with some common shiners mixed in. With you waterfall, you have habitat suitable for the common shiners to reproduce. I doubt the emerald shiners will though. The common shiners may actually be a better forage fish for what you are trying to accomplish.

Your fish raising efforts will be helpful to others who are interested in raising some alternative shiners species. The common shiner gets pretty large and bigger than YP can eat. They will be a good forage fish in your YP pond. Their disadvantage is the large ones 5"-6" will be bothersome when using small live baits to catch the perch.

Speaking of creek chubs. I checked my minnow traps tonight where my spillway leaves my 1 acre pond and there was 6 creek chubs in one trap. They were between 5 and 7 inches long I've never seen ones that large before. So when I took them out of the trap I noticed the tail of a pumpkinseed hanging out of the largest chubs mouth. I wish my camera on phone still worked so I could have gotten some pictures. I'm still in awe that a creek chub could go after a pumpkinseed.

Yes the creek chub have an unusually large mouth for their head size. In out perch pond we managed to end of with a few some how in the minnows put in last fall. When ever the kids catch one they get the green light to cut them up for bait.

That is incredible they would take down a small pumpkinseed. I guess in this world they live in if it fits it ships down the hatch.

Cheers Don.