Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Feeding When to restart feeding, and when to stock forage?

BJNick, I have seen referenced that a Texas Hunter feeder feeds around 1/4 lbs/sec. So in ML10, that's about 3/4 lbs per day. In a 2.5 acre pond, he is starting with around .3 lbs/acre day. It is good to get the fish which have been off feed over winter ... back on feed. I think the suggested cup a day to start is a really good recommendation until you are confident that they will consume what you plan to feed them.

You should have a plan. That is ... an understanding of how you will limit the amount of food that you will be feeding annually. You should understand what that is on a per acre basis. For example, 4 - 40lb bags is 640 lbs of feed per acre. Contrary to what some say, you can feed too much. For example, fish will consume more feed than they can efficiently convert. So ... if you feed to satiation, this would likely occur. They would eat more than they can efficiently assimilate and poop out the rest. The pooped out feed and wastes of metabolism are recycled in the food chain.

The most efficient way to feed is in proportion to the metabolism throughout the warm months. This entails increasing the feed rate in warmer water. I think most members adjust feeding in this way though probably guaged from the response to feeding and how long it takes to finish off a feeding. A schedule based on metabolism for a Knoxville location looks like this:



You could feed more than that. Swingle limited a 45% feed to 10 lbs/day with BG. Above that, they experienced fish kills. This schedule does not exceed 40% of that. Aeration would allow higher feed rates with less risk of fish kill. When feeding protein limited to 2.24 lbs/day (7 lbs/acre of 32% feed daily) ... blooms were maintained in TP production ponds. That was a nitrogen mobilization rate of .35 lbs/day or about 10.64 lbs nitrogen per month. The maximum rate of nitrogen mobilization from the schedule above is .2624 lbs/acre per day. It's about 75% of the nitrogen mobilization in the TP study and so you may see a decent bloom during the warmest part of the schedule. IDK. Whatever the case, given you have a new pond ... it would be interesting to follow your feeding and associated secchi throughout the season to document effects. Would be great if we did that ... if we had a baseline of your pond's alkalinity.