Pond Boss Forums Thread Like Summary - PK Shrimp?

Ok, another source question. Looking for you'alls favorite supplier of PK shrimp. I would like to buy some for stocking in SC KS.

Kenny [Snipe] is your man...last I checked they were $.75 - $1 ea. Well worth it - I stock them in all my and my client fisheries.

My experience with PK shrimp is that they need certain water conditions (I can't spell out the exact parameters but they tend to survive or not survive in degree based on water chemistry) In addition certain weeds they really gravitate towards. They DO need plenty of weeds for cover so you would want them on the shallow side to try to get them a place to hide.

If you can time the purchase to when they are ready to have their babies your purchase price goes a long long ways as you get the adults and hopefully many many more little ones.

You won't be able to stock all 19 acres with sufficient PK shrimp but if they thrive in the shallow weedy areas they might get their own foothold and do some reproduction.

I know other midwest state pondowners have had good establishment and reproduction of PK shrimp even with a very small stocking quantity up front. Maybe they will see this and tell you about their water chemistry (I think more dissolved calcium in the water is helpful) and about what weed types they found the PK shrimp took a liking to.

I'm not aware of a need to acclimate but it never hurts to do so. I do know the water they ship in often has unwanted nasties that you don't want in your pond so you may want to do a water exchange using your pond water a few times to be sure they are clean of plant debris and the water they shipped in doesn't end up in your pond. A collander might work well for the wash/transfer process.

If they may have had young in the shipping bag then you would need to transfer the water as well.

I wish there was a way to put radio tags on these beautiful creatures to see if they survive and where they travel.

(oh, and be sure they are PK shrimp or they will not tolerate winter in Kansas. Many sell shrimp that are not cold water hardy and are not PK shrimp. Pro (Bill Cody) tip - take a a few from the shipment, put them in a bowl of water that they shipped in and put in your refrigerator. IF they survive they are cold tolerant and likely PK shrimp.)

A 19 acre pond? You have LOTS of shoreline.

I suspect your PK shrimp order may be fairly large.

Would it be useful to stock shrimp in multiple locations? I think that would increase your odds of at least some of the shrimp finding their "optimum" habitat and establishing a breeding population. (But I know zero about PK shrimp!)

This will not help with a supplier as I'm sure they went out of business. But the thread may have some other information on PK shrimp that might be useful.

https://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=371764

To acclimate them, I'd do a gradual water change to get the temperature and pH as close to the pond water as possible. Best to have the water temp within 3°F and pH within 1 unit of the pond water before releasing them. Don't change the water temp too rapidly, no more than 10°F in 20 minutes, and wait 15 minutes between water change cycles.

I always recommended 500/ac in new ponds lacking predation, or 1,000/ac in established fisheries. Abundant macrophytes help populations become established. Stock in multiple areas of pond. I’ve established them in dozens of fisheries successfully using these guidelines, but I’ve related all this to Kenny already. Hope this is helpful.

The good news is that for your 19 acre pond 500 per acre will only cost $7,125 - $10,000. Only double that at 1000/acre. It takes ~1250 PK shrimp to make 1 lb or about $937 per pound at 75 cents.

Swingle experimented with them for growing BG. He stocked ~19.31 lbs to the acre ($17800 - $23750 per acre) along with around 47 lbs of BG (1500/acre). Under fertilization both the shrimp proliferated and the BG grew well. He was able to grow 209 lbs/acre of BG and 94 lbs/acre of PK shrimp in 6 months with this recipe.

Now this is where it gets interesting. He tried this under many scenarios but the highest production of BG he achieved with PK shrimp was ~234 lbs/acre. He achieved this without fertilization and chara and he achieved it with fertilization and brush. Although there was no difference between BG production, the fertilization/brush treatment increased production of PK Shrimp over 6 fold yielding a harvest of 1043 lbs of PK Shrimp per acre. When you think of in terms dollar value that is nearly 1 million dollars per acre.

All kidding aside on how much PK shrimp cost, I saw a much deeper lesson in Swingle's findings. I had always heard they make very good forage. And indeed they grew BG for sure but no better Gambusia. Under a similar treatment (fertilization, no weeds, no brush) using only 1 lb of Gambusia per acre Swingle produced 310 lbs per acre of BG or almost 50% more weight of BG. Swingle also grew BG under fertilization alone. The results were less than with PK shrimp (165 lbs/acre) and so we can say PK shrimp (with fertilization, without plants or brush) can add 26% to the production of BG in 6 months. Gams under the same treatment of fertilization increased production by 88%.

I wonder from time to time why the PK shrimp underperformed the Gams so significantly in Swingle's treatments. It seemed clear that the BG were getting all the PK shrimp they cared to eat. Producing more PK shrimp didn't seemed to help the BG to grow faster. So perhaps, the density of the nutrition is inferior in PK shrimp giving the BG more water to process slowing the rates they could consume prey on a dry matter basis. To be sure, I would focus particularly on cover and habitat for minnow species and focus your investment in species that have better abilities to persist in your pond than fathead minnow. I think these will ultimately go further to invigorate your food chain. This is what I would do in lieu of so many PK shrimp if I were making this choice. If the habitat is good, smaller quantities of PK shrimp will eventually expand to fill the pond so this is in no way meant to discourage trying to establish them.

Cat I missed your bow at 19 AC. - wow, that's an ocean! We used this stocking formula for smaller bows (.25 - 3 ac) - I’m not recommending you stock 19,000 shrimp. If you would like to chat about my experience raising and stocking PK the past 15 years feel free to reach out. We can also discuss additional forage species, but important to understand the characteristics of your fishery [species present, density, supplemental feeding, etc.], your fishery goals, and how forage species interact with each other before I spout off with recommendations. Bottom line - establishing multiple forage species that overlap in their seasonal availability is a strategy I encourage provided it's not cost prohibitive. Too much to type here - we can cover a lot more ground on a call. Feel free to reach out anytime - happy to help share my experiences. Tj@hudlandmgmt.com.