Originally Posted by FishinRod
I think the plastic habitat you have posted is awesome. However, I don't think it is dense enough to hide GSH fry in a pond without vegetative cover.

If you are super worried about adding organic material, you can just start a bonfire and stick the cedar in it for 30 seconds and burn off all of the needles. (Someone on the forum cleaned their's with fire, but I can't remember who?)

I was just thinking that with the trunk on the bank, all swimmers can easily see them, and you can pull them out at any time when they are starting to decay and/or pi$$ing you off!

I can't remember, did you put BG in your new pond? There have been mixed reviews on Pond Boss about them nipping at swimmers. If this is the main swimming pond for your family, I would be interested to hear if lots of swimmers teaches the BG to stay away, or if they become acclimated to swimmers and lose all fear?

There are some grass&weed clumps that grew down on sides of pond last summer/fall before water came up that might help them untill a little natural underwater vegatation grows?

We didn't put any bluegill in. We put 100 Red Eared Sunfish in last spring when we added the other fish, I was told they are much more "shy" and shouldn't bother swimmers or over populate and get out of hand. I have seen a couple of small schools of them under the dock, but they don't seem to want to bite on anything we have thrown at them...they look like they are around 6" now. Hopefully they can self-sustain and grow huge so we can eat some of them in the future.