Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Pond Boss Need some wooden pallets

I am Pond owner with fathead minnow. Their survival rate was too low. My friend suggested me to use wooden pallets to increase their production. Now I am planning to buy some pallets to improve the production of fathead minnows. From where can I get best quality wooden pallets?

If you have a door company near you they will give them to you. Their slabs come in on skids but are never returned.

I would buy a pack of cedar shakes from the lumber yard and hammer the thin end into the mud bank of your pond. They love them.

Dang near any industrial company should have them and will usually give them away. I get mine from our local John Deere dealer. Just make sure there isn't spilled petroleum or other chemicals on them.

I built 2 double stack pallet highrises for my forage pond earlier this year. They're working great. And they're made from hardwood so I figure to get several years out of them.

Building supply stores often have them in piles out back for the asking.

If there are predators in the pond, don't expect the survival rate to be longer than 3-4 months at the most.

IMHO survival of FHM is one of those, "It depends." I have LMB, SMB, YP, CC and WE in my pond. I stocked FHM in the spring of 2014 into a suitable habitat for their spawning and cover. I still have a thriving FHM population BUT, I also have tons of additional forage species like BG, PS, GSH and just stocked SFS, BNM and PSC this year.

IME FHM alone are doomed as a food source and will quickly disappear but, if you make a solid effort to diversify your forage base, they can survive and thrive.

IMO, add the pallets but think about what other forage you can introduce to your pond to keep the pressure off the FHM....

FWIW when I added lots of broken slabs of concrete and rip rap to my pond, the FHM made a great come back. IMO the slab concrete and rip rap are two of the very best habitat/structure additions you can make to your pond. Flat surfaces for the FHM and BNM, crevices for the SFS, mini-caves for the crawfish....

IMHO,FHM,LMB,SMB,YP,CC,WE,FHM,FHM,BG,PS,GSH,SFS,BNM,PSC,IME,FHM,IMO,FHM,FWIW,FHM,IMO,FHM,BNM,SFS........all in one post.

OMG, Bill, I think you have the record. LOL.......


Found it...

OMG is right.

Around here, it is hard to give pallets away. We use a lot of them for camp fires, making apple butter, etc.

Some friends own a Battery Mart. They get many pallet loads of batteries every week. The batteries are then sold individually. They are glad to have people come get them for free.

When I was still working at a large electronics hardware company, we got dozens of pallets and big wooden crates every week. I can't even begin to think of how many of the wooden crates were turned into sheds, rabbit hutches, etc., and how many projects and campfires our scrap wood products provided.

We really wanted to have people come pick them up, otherwise we would have to throw them in our dumpsters. Non-scheduled dumpster emptying was a lot more expensive than our twice weekly scheduled dumpster emptying.

I'd just ask around. You should be able to find a lot of companies gladly willing to give them away for free.

Ken

Thanks everybody for your suggestions. I have found the furniture pallet manufacturing company that offers wooden pallets as well as plastic pallets. Now I need some suggestions that can I use plastic pallets to increase the survival rate of fathead minnow.