Lots of theories, generalities, personal experiences, common sense, locations/climate, etc.
My personal ones from my place. About 5 miles South of Bowie, Texas. I don’t live there.
I prefer to stock too many smaller size bluegills and throw the feed to them. Oh yeah, add in too many fathead minnows. When I later stock predators, (bass, Cats, HSB, etc) I want them to go to sleep with their mouth open and wake up with a full belly.
Regarding balanced numbers of predator/prey, I think that happens for about 15 minutes in the life of the pond.
Correct Alkalinity, ph, etc can drive you nuts and financially embarrassed.
It took the water turkeys(cormorants) 20 to 30 years to find my ponds and almost clean them out. They appear to have hit me again while I was recovering, about 6 months, from some pretty nasty surgery and couldn’t adjust the cords over my pond that I call cormorant excluders. Oh well, I expect to mostly start over again next Spring.
Regarding location: pick one where it rains. I didn’t. When I first met Lusk, a long time ago, and told him where my land and new pond were, he said that he had been watching radar for years and wondered why the rain clouds always split when they hit that location. That hasn’t changed. We either get frog strangling rain or extended drought. Right now, I’m 4 to 5 ft low on both ponds. Tornado hit the town yesterday and I got 1/10 inch of rain.
Oh yeah, don’t lie to the wife about costs of the pond. You’re gonna get caught every time.
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