On a positive note, the buzzards I think were happy today.
I am impressed with your dedication to managing the "total ecosystem"! Still sorry about your fish kill though.
For a separate positive note - based on your postings I believe part of your pond management efforts are due to a pursuit of knowledge. I hope you enjoy starting a new project on the RES/SMB pond now that it has become a blank slate. If so, then I expect some entertaining Pond Boss postings in the future!
From the fish I observed on the bank, they all seemed to be suspiciously almost the exact same size. I did not see any smaller fish at all. So if I am lucky there will still be plenty of smaller SMB that will come roaring back. The HSB are probably toast because the ones I put in were all in the same size class so I am guessing most of them were among the 50 or so fish that were floating along the bank. Fortunately we put HSB in the other ponds so I will still have lots of those.
I knew that pond was pretty heavy with SMB based on my observations last fall feeding them for a month or so before winter. It was probably a mistake when we put the HSB in there, only adding to the likely over population problem. The weird part to me is that none of the other ponds had an observable problem. No fish floating on the banks.
This is one more situation about multiple ponds I have noticed before. They can have vastly different outcomes and situations despite being right beside each other. If I only had a single pond my observations and perhaps conclusions might have been different when something happened, compared to where I have multiple ponds and a certain situation only happens in one or two or them. They can be so close together, yet act so differently at times. Can be clarity, weed pressure, fish catchability, or a bunch of other things I can't think of at the moment. The fish kill is just another episode of how one pond can act completely different than an adjacent pond when seemingly exposed to similar conditions.
