I am curious on the TP. Almost everybody I see online that sells brood fish sells them in 3-5 female with 1-2 male. Why is the 50:50 mix important?
I'm not sure if your assumption is incorrect or not Bill. I was curious if you had some info I hadn't seen and I don't know if my supplier this year provided 50/50 mix. My loose plan for next year would be to have a divided stock tank (hardware cloth separation) filled with pond water that we could aerate or continuously fill from the pond temporarily when the fish come out. Supplier's 6-9" TP in the stock tank and then sex them. All females go from stock tank and males returned to stock tank on the empty side of the tank. After the sexing put in one male (largest available) for every 3 females we stocked.
If it didn't work...I be out the cost of a stock stank, aerator/pump and some time. If it did, I'd save on whatever the forage consumption from those males was, be it pellets, fish, and some of the plant life.
Originally Posted by Bill Cody
I was told maybe incorrectly that YOY TP are crafty and soon learn to be pretty good at escaping predation and thus YOY are not well eaten by predators and the YOY were not considered an ideal forage fish until the TP were sluggish and dying due to cold water 48F-55F conditions and depending on variety /specie of TP.
I asked this question earlier on evasion of BG vs TP as forage. It's not in any of the reading I've done as an answer, but from my personal observations on the forage in the pond through visual hand feeding samples and traps (I have not seined). My BG counts are not nearly as substantial as my standing weight of TP size for size. In the short vids I posted above from today many of those fish are TP of various sizes. I'm sure there are some BG mixed in as well. My small size and qty of LMB are probably not good for valid scientific sample.
Part of my hypothesis was that the 100 YP were 100% forage consumers this year as I have seen no evidence of YoY. Watching the vids today I also wondered if the TP also might have contributed to consumption of BG YoY just due to the sheer numbers of them in the vids.
My next sample of LMB is around Oct 19. Hoping to catch a couple to see if RW's have changed.
Last edited by Boondoggle; 09/29/2408:33 PM.
1.5acre LMB, YP, BG, RES, GSH, Seasonal Tilapia I subscribe to Pond Boss Magazine
