Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose Natural Pond, thing of the past?

Comment was: "But our goal was a balanced pond that didn't require human intervention to maintain."

If after stocking fish into a pond,, anyone thinks or believes it is truly balanced, they only believe this because they cannot see the imbalance or lack of balance of the ever changing populations that comprise the entire food web within the unknown, murky waters of the pond.

I am not sure it is possible to continually have a "BALANCED" pond on a long term(10-30yrs) or even a short term (3-5yr) basis. This is like saying we are going to stock some animal into an confined or even open area. For an example,,,, let's use mice and cats in a large garage, barn, or outdoor pen. We will use a contained area because the pond is a contained area. Let's put 6 cats (boys& girls) and 50 mixed mice into our pen. With reproduction from both, how long do you think it will take for this initial stocking combination or numbers to get out of balance? What will our animals eat with out some supplimental feeding? Will the 6 cats be able to control the mice to maintain the original balance? What happens if cats get a disease or matted eyes and don't hunt well? What happens when the mice overeat the grain and forage that grows in the pen and the mice don't produce well. Will the cats have enough to eat? What happens after 6-8 years will we still have our original balance?

When just about all animals including fish and even bacteria are placed into a contained area for some sort or type of goal they NEED to be monitored and watched to maintain a "balance". A true initial balanced combination or community that has been 'stocked' by man, will almost always due to reproduction and nature's quirks eventually go out of balance. One in the current in the news out of balance example, are the moose and wolf populations on Isle Royale in Lake Superior. There are many other examples.

Very RARELY are public lakes balanced without the DNR monitoring, checking, fixing, or modifying numbers of forage and predator after seeing sampling results. Thus, this is the reason for angler catch or harvest limits or regulations. Setting harvest limits is even done for the individual Great Lakes and now attempts are being made to manage the Oceans which have been greedily over harvested.

In Summary - ONE ALWAYS NEEDS TO SAMPLE THE FISH TO DETERMINE THE CURRENT EVER CHANGING BALANCE WITHIN THE POND, LAKE, OR OCEAN. It is our job here to help you interpret the sampling results from your pond to achieve your goals.