Just a heads up on my weekend stocking adventure. All went very well, I think.
I went to purchase 500 (2-4") HBG, 40 (4-6") HSB, and 50 (2-4) RES from Harrison's Fisheries in Hurdland, Missouri from Kurt Harrison. Kurt was pleasant to meet and enjoyed his fish farm very much. It was impressive.
I took 4 x 55 gallon barrels and 2 x 35 gallon barrels and some contractor plastic bags because my barrels did not have lids. We filled the barrels over 3/4 full and put the HSB in a 55 gallon barrel by themselves and the RES in a 35 gallon by themselves, then divided the HBG amongst the remaining barrels and zip tied the bags closed with little to no air trapped in the bags. It was 70 degrees that day and I drove the fish home over the course of 2-1/2 hours. The water in the barrels at that point was 60 degrees as was the upper level of the pond's water column. I would not recommend doing this with a 1/2 ton truck, my 3/4 ton was slightly overloaded, but handled the job just fine.
We transferred some of the water and the fish into buckets (about 30 fish per bucket with 3 gallons of water) and set them in the shallows for 20 minutes and then added a couple gallons of pond water to each bucket for another twenty minutes then dumped them into a floating net contraption that I made so that they could be greeted and set free on a personal level. See pic...I did find about 5 golden shiners and 1 creek chub mixed in , but no problematic hitchhikers. the minnows are now in my buddies "Missouri natural" aquarium.
All in all, it took from 9:30am (at Harrison's) to 2pm before the last fish was set free. The HSB started to stay near the top of the bucket right before they got dumped into the net, but never gulped at the surface. I can say that the amount of fish slime in the barrels and buckets was a bit alarming. I took that as a sign that the fish were stressing to a certain degree, but they never really showed signs of O2 deprivation. There was some casualties, mostly RES, but Kurt said they would be the most difficult to transport and gave me a lot more than I ordered and said..."if any of them die, they are the extra ones I put in" and I lost about 10 of them which was far less than the extras he put in. In the end, it was a good day. I ended up with 42 HSB and 90 plus RES...I did not count the HBG, 500 would have been pushing my patience.
Thank you all for contributing to my success!
