Originally Posted by FishinRod
Originally Posted by jpsdad
IMHO, a salt bath is unnecessary when the parent stock is sourced from the destination pond and the harvested forage isn't clearly infested. If there were a very bad infestation in the forage pond, I think I would err on the side of safety and use them as fertilizer for tomatoes or something like that.

Rusto and I recently helped Snipe and John seine and transfer fish from a forage pond. It was a lot of hard work!

There have been discussions in the forage pond threads of plans to "directly" transfer forage fish to the main pond. This sounds great in practice to eliminate the hard work of seining and it also reduces the handling of the fish. However, I can easily imagine a non-expert like myself missing parasites in the forage pond and moving them right over to the main pond.

Would you advise a rule for direct transfers, such as: ALWAYS dip net or minnow trap a sample of your fish for examination before making any transfers.

To emphasize what Bill has already stated. The corrective action when an infestation occurs is to drain and dry the pond in order to break the cycle. So if one has a forage pond that drains with forage into the destination pond, the cycle is easily broken by draining and allow to dry each year. So I would advise to source the parents from the destination pond and drain right into the destination pond without giving it another thought. Since you're drying the pond each year, there is no need to worry.

The problem with infestations occurs where the forage pond is allowed to hold water year round. Extensive shallows and numerous small fish attract the vectors (birds) and the parasite infestation increases over time.

Last edited by jpsdad; 12/07/20 12:05 PM.
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