Thanks all. It appears that I can probably sleep nights unless my environment gets altered by acid rain, large amounts of plants with a tenuous life, etc. Or possibly a large rainfall after a long drought.
Not a lot I can do about acid rain and we don't seem to have much problem with it in North Central Texas.
Plants can pose a threat but grass carp have taken care of the pondweed. They aren't doing much about the coontail.
Large rainfall after a drought is always a potential problem here, especially the drought. For that reason, I quit fertilizing 5 years ago and haven't had a DO crash since. It is not unusual to have 20 to 25% less water volume by the end of the summer.
I wasn't consciously thinking about it when I posed the question but I'm thinking about experimenting with tilapia. The potential biomass problems combined with the ever present lack of rainfall worry me. A couple of years ago, I put a pound of fatheads, 100 bluegills and 25 channel cats in a small 1/8 acre pond. They spawned predictably and I seined heavily twice and added the minnows and BG to a neighbors new pond that I now own. Then I quit because I couldn't get anyone to help with the seine. They kept spawning and polluted the water. It turned into a nasty looking green mess and everything died. That leaves me losing sleep about tilapia in my 2 one acre ponds. On one hand, it could put me over the top in bass growth, take pressure off bluegill for a year and go from a ho hum water hole to a really good one. On the other hand, I'm remembering the polluted mess that Mama Nature and I created with the forage pond. The greatest tilapia and resulting BG biomass should come about the time I have the lowest water level.
Larry Hartley (Meadowlark) has done great with tilapia but he is in East Texas and the difference in East Texas and West Texas is a 4 letter word R-A-I-N.
Hey, one thought. As filter feeders, would tilapia help clean their own water?
