Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Renovating a Pond or Lake? Natural North Florida Pond

Water soluble pond fertilizer is a good option. Most Co-op have 0-46-0 but you need a platform to use it (keep it in 3 feet of water or less and not in contact with the pond bottom soil.

did you leave a few in the pool to spawn? The pool could serve as a mini forage pond for stocking ...

I'm willing to bet there are a few remaining in the pool. I was using a little cast net that's probably easy to outswim. I think I'm gonna thin out the gambusia to give the good fish more food.

I've been looking forward to fertilizing the pond all winter and after some water tests yesterday, it looks like I'll have to wait another year. All the winter and spring rain has the water level up a foot or so. I think the rainwater ran through all of the oak leaves on the ground and re-acidified the lake. The pH is still at 6.8 but there's no detectable carbonate hardness.

I guess I'll order another load of lime and put it on land around the pond so that the tanins can be neutralized before they get in the water. I've also been thinning the laurel oaks.

Any thoughts?

Caught this guy yesterday. Good'n fat. I presume he's bulking up for spawning season.

that doesn't look like a CNBG, it looks to me like a regular BG. Did you stock them or are they natural? Seems in your area you would get CNBG but possible to have regular BG natural in your area too??...or in integrade..?

Could be some plane jane BG mixed in w/ the CNBG. Seems to be quite a bit of variation in the big males as far as their coloration goes.

I wonder if you have any hand painted bluegill genes mixed in,. How close are you to the apalachicola river? I assume you did not stock the BG.

I didn't stock it. It's had fish since it was a public swimming hole 60+ years ago. Who knows what genes are in there. It's pretty far from the Apalach. The Chipola isn't too far away but it'd take a Jesus flood to connect those bodies of water.

Not seeing many small bream and lots of skinny-ish bass. I guess the bass ate all of the available food this winter. I like that it's making the bream big but I'm going to institute a fish fry in the coming weeks to thin the bass heard. All bass under 14 go to the grease.

Since the bass are so hungry, it's probably safe to assume the dozen shiners I released have been converted into fish turds. Hopefully the fry I have coming in the next couple of weeks will recruit well.

def CNBG looks in this fish...

Sure is a pig, Very nice looking fish.

Nice male !

I finally got up with the local co-op in regard to fertilizer. They can give me 11-54-0 which I assume is Monoammonium Phosphate or MAP. If the recommendation is 50 lbs of 0-34-0 per acre, I presume I'd need to dial it back to 31ish lbs. I'm gonna check the hardness one more time to make sure it's still at or above 20ppm now that the amount of water has nearly doubled. If it still looks good, I'll give it a conservative go. Sound good?

A good idea to go conservative until you see how things react. When a limiting factor (alkalinity , or low P or low N etc) is removed/fixed things can change quickly and in unexpected ways. Some newer research indicates that a little N in the pond fertilizer mix can help but you don't want a lot in most cases. Standard suggestion is 0-46-0 (0-45-0) while most fish pond fertilizer (water soluble)has some N but in low %.

Thanks Ewest. The 11-54-0 is all I could find.

That should work.

Shiner fry showed up from Anderson today (1 box/250,000). I didn't count them but it was certainly a cloud. Albeit last minute, I put in some fertilizer while I was there. I picked up about 220lbs of MAP (11-54-0) from the Co-op for 65 bucks. I probably dispensed 100 lbs of it into the water via a 5 gallon bucket. It was raining and I didn't have a lot of time so that'll have to do. Time will tell how all that's gonna work out. I suspect there are a bunch of Gambusia swimming around with bellies full of fry.

Great pictorial story ! thank you. I hope we get future installments on this

How are your Shiners doing Jim? We bought some from a different source last year and they are thick in our pond.