Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Creating the food chain dragon Fly Larva

I recently drained and nuked the small pond at my new home. I refilled it before I went on vacation and dumped a few rosy FHM in it before I left.

When I reurned three weeks later I notice a very large number of dragon fly larva all around the pond at night when I look with the flash light.

What likes to eat them, WIll they wipe out my FHM?

Bobby, I would think that it might be the other way around.

They are bigger than the FHM.

Bobby, depending on the species, they can be in the nymph stage up to 3-4 years, and they will catch and eat anything in the pond that they can, including fish.

I kinda figured that, I am just amazed on how many I see. Nothing in the pond big enough to eat them. I guess they are having a hay day.

I would have thought, evidently incorrectly, that they would have been eaten when they were tiny.

Dave, I'd wager to bet that a lot are, but just like other things in the wild, so many eggs hatch that some don't get eaten.

Dragonfly and damselfly larva.

One that came from my pond this spring, a bit larger than the one above, about 4" long, a bit hard for bluegill to swallow!

A type of "Darner", see Bill's post in this thread.

http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Main=23736&Number=298258#Post298258

Holy crap! What shoe size do you wear? Your foot must be about 8" wide if that thing is 4" long!!!

Those dragonfly nymphs are usually more like 1.6"-2" long. A full 2" one is a big one. Never saw one a full 3" long.

My apologies for my error in estimation. I had no intention of creating a 'fish story' or embellishing the size. I don't carry a tape measure and have nothing to gain by overestimating the size, it was a guess as I was typing and trying to recall how big it was from a year ago, but obviously I guessed wrong.

My main question in even taking the picture was that I had recalled folks on PB saying they make good bluegill food and I was trying to figure out how a bluegill could get this thing in its mouth even if it was 2" long.

I will try to be more exact with my estimates.

Tough crowd here....

BG would tear a danner larva that size into pieces if they couldn't fit it into their mouth. I have seen BG do that to similar sized crawdads.

I've caught GSF dang near the size of the lure I was using.

Many, many (many) years ago, while trolling in towards the cabin for the night caught a Northern Pike in one of the Lake of the Woods lakes in Ontario that was about the same size as the mud puppy lure I was using (maybe 6" long). (that has been so long ago, about forgot I even fished any at all way back then. For a few years went every summer there to fish for Pike. Don't know why, I never fished any of the rest of the year. I guess it was just the thing to do when in that area).

Have often wondered about the small fish attacking such large prey. Is it just because they are so hungry they are desperate? They must be successful at least once in a while, or a person would think nature would have taught their generations of evolution to not even try.

Us men are pretty sensitive anytime the subject of length comes up.

I use to raise a dragonfly larva in an aquarium (like the big one pictured). I had some small minnows 1-2 inch long about 30 of them and baby catfish..I only had 1 dragonfly larva. At the time I thought it ate worms and would give a worm a day. It was about an inch and a half long but I soon noticed my minnows disappearing every day. That son of gun ate 3-4 minnows a day! It was amazingly fast underwater, and expert at ambushing... it would strike/pounce on the minnow, latch on to it and eat it alive..its an amazing predator to watch... It didn't prefer the baby catfish but had a voracious appetite for minnows. I would suspect a bunch of those could do damage on any minnows populations less than 3 inches long... fatheads are a lot slower then the creek minnows I had in there..so I suspect you are keeping them fed..On the good side A single dragonfly can eat 30 to hundreds of mosquitoes per day.

And that big one you have in the picture..well I wouldn't put my finger in a aquarium with one of those in there....just sayin...

I learned some thing today lol! I didn't no those were dragonflies, I have a lot of them in my pond. I would pull them out of water when I pulled cattails by hand.

Generally the largest longest ones are not real abundant in ponds with bass predators and large BG because they are easy tasty food items when dense habitat is sparse. Smaller dragonfly and damsel fly nymphs are more common types in LMB-BG ponds as in the picture by Shorty.

One dragonfly, 3 to 4 minnows per day. WOW! Think of what it's metabolism must be.

No such thing as a dragonfly larva - Nymph or niad is the correct term - Trained as an entomologist.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nymph_(biology)