Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Raising Forage and Bait FHM, GSH Lifecycle Confusion

How big or what is the length in inches of most of the offspring? Measure them do not guess. From your initial description, it sounds to me like there were too many fry who did not get enough to eat, thus their small size at the end of Sept. For the amount of stocker fish that you added, I think you probably initially added too many breeders who produced too many over crowded fry that did not get enough to eat. Too many fry can easily over eat the zooplankton bloom and growth is slow. FHM fry hatched in late spring and if received enough food should be at least 1.5" to 2" long by end of October. These 1.5"-2" offspring should be large enough to spawn the next spring.

Did you fertilize the pond and it produced a good green plankton bloom? The other option would have been to daily feed the fish a finely ground good quality protein fish pellet meal to enhance growth.