Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Learn from my mistakes!

I'm losing five to 10 bluegills a day in my 1/10th acre bluegill pond. Why? Probably because I put in 500 6 1/2 to 7 inch fish last spring and they are now 8 to 9 inches. Good growth but apparently they have reached or surpassed healthy carrying capacity and are succumbing to stress and disease. I'M WEARING MY SIGN!

I'm also losing about that many after I transferred 180 to the big pond via angling. Most likely that's because moving fish is stressful and moving them if they are already stressed is even worse.

Live and let learn I guess. I will be seining and draining the pond Saturday with the help of Bill Cody and let the chips fall where they may. I may just fillet a good number of them other than a select group of fast growers that I will put into my perch pond. I did put four or five bluegills that were definite males and looked like they were on steroids into the perch pond, and they are doing fine. No crowding - no stress.

Hopefully some of the males will survive this in the big pond, and I will be able to cull them out of the big pond this fall and put them back into this pond AT A MUCH LOWER DENSITY!

So you can have too many fish and it can be stressful to fish causing disease! Your fish could even end up floating all at once like Bruce's! I'm on my way to being a certified fish farmer. You have to kill at least 10,000 fish to be part of that hall of fame.

Thats how you learn your limits. Live and learn.I tell my kids that all the time, but they just kind of look at me funny.

Cecil,

Can you estimate the weight of the biomass in that pond? It probably is roughly equivalent to a stocking rate of 15000 per acre of 3 inch BG? ((500 * 9 inches* 10)/3) Does that sound about right?

Cecil, I thought yer big pond was already LMB HEAVY (I believe ya said there were already 300 LMB, some BG, perch, and SMB). Is there any room fer 180 more fish in there? Also sent ya a pm, didn't wanna get anybody riled up on here. Ya know how conservative I am. Bob-O PS I never heard from the ETs bout zappin my swamp pond deeper, and I been wearin my tinfoil pie pan hat the whole time.

Bob,

Yes, Bass are heavy in the other pond but they are fine. I feed them and they are not as dense as this pond was/is with bluegills. Putting bluegill in there is only temporary as I have no other place to put them. I took out most of the perch and hope to take out smallmouth no later than this fall.

I sent you an email.

I'd say a minimum of the equivilent of 3000 pounds per acre this spring. I had at least 480 bluegills that averages a half a pond = 240 lbs. 1/10th acre X 10 equals one acre. I put in 20 yellow perch that averaged 1 lb., and God knows how many bluegill fry are in the pond. Wouldn't surprise me to find there are at least 50 lbs of fry in the pond.

I was told by a biologist to never go over 2000 lbs. per acre with fish of the sunfish family in aquaculture ponds unless you add additonal areation.

This pond didn't have flow-through from your other ponds? If so, how much?

No it's not a flow through as it's higher than the other ponds. (Something I'll change in the future.) Once I realized I had a problem I've been pumping in cooler trout water with a sump pump and dropping it in via gravity to create aeration. Not enough to creat a rapid temp change but enough to flush and add cool aerated water. Now I am draining with that same sump pump to facilitate seining and clean out come saturday.