Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Creating the food chain Golden Shiners - What size to stock?

Rod - I'm gonna think outloud a bit. If I'm off base I hope somebody will chime in to correct me.

On your questions above I'm curious if GSH are considered the only forage in the pond? I would assume there is a carrying capacity of forage for the pond vs predators. With too many mouths to feed or too many places to hide there's likely no way to balance good relative weights. Either the predators eat themselves out of house and home or they spend too much energy trying to feed.

Part of my forage plan did involve GSH (because Threadfins and NE Kansas and the size of the pond a 1.5acres aren't a good fit). While the GSH and Threadfins aren't the same, it was the closest I could come to for a bigger bite and sustainable food source. My stocking plan involved getting these started before LMB or YP. I wanted these fish to be larger than LMB or YP could consume when they hit the pond. Thus, hoping for spawns which could feed and grow our predator stocking.

This was also part of the reasoning for our early stocking of YP (pre-spawn this spring) and tilapia as well....and will be used with crawfish this fall.

Ultimately, giving multiple forage options to the predators in the pond vs "The forage fish are ruthlessly hunted and probably extirpated in the pond". As one wanes and is still available in smaller numbers one of the other options is more readily available shifting predation to the more common available food source - or at least that's my hope.

I wonder if trying to establish a new forage species in a pond would be more successful if some focused effort was placed ahead of the stocking into removing some predators. I suspect that if smaller GSH are used more of the predators will be able to hone in on them and require a larger stocking quantity.....If larger brood stock is used there's a chance that they won't spawn. In either case I think decreasing the ability to be eaten by reducing predators in the pond helps.

Not quite ready to put the "All you can eat" buffet sign out yet....but it's coming! Pic of the recent hatches in to the pond from this evening. It was amazing to see all those baby fish pushing floating pellets around in the shallows. Yep....feed trained 3/4" fry.....it's a great thing!