My neighbor, Lee, filled a new 1/5 to 1/6 acre pond, 8' max depth, artesian spring fed with run off around July 2021.

Over the late summer of 2021, we put in about 12 dozen fatheads from a local bait shop, and from August to September '21, we put in (50) mature bluegill and redear sunfish from my neighborhood pond. In January of 2022, we saw fathead fry in the pond.

In Spring 2022, April time frame, we put in 20 lbs of fatheads. In May, we put in an additional (35) mature bluegill or redear.

The original plan was to stock SMB, YP, HSB, and some CC this Fall '22.

The pond is way, way loaded with fatheads of most all sizes. If you watch a patch of water, and don't think you see anything, you'll eventually see newly born fathead fry. It's crazy, and it's scared me a bit without real predators in the pond yet.

So, my question is, how much does an adult bluegill or readear eat fatheads of all sizes? I'm just trying to calm myself by thinking these (85) bluegill are helping thin the fathead population. I will often see the bluegill just suspending in a cloud of fathead frye just seeming to inhale.

Last Wednesday, we were able to stock (11) SMB in the 2" range. We started to pursue options for a summer stocking to get some predators in the pond. Probably going to get some YP, HSB, and CC in the next week to 10 days. Just moving up the schedule.

Just boiling down to the basic question...who has experience or knowledge about how much adult bluegill we eat fathead minnows?

I just have knowledge from other's experience in the form of scientific experiments. Yes, BG eat FHM and they are likely getting their fill of them. To reduce the FHM will require a predator that eliminates adult FHM preventing as much reproduction. The FHM can also become self limiting and insects (if enough of a population of predator insects establish) can also limit FHM below carrying capacity. I would think the situation of ideal for the predators stocked this fall.

I'd bet that the adult BG that the were stocked have grown substantially.

I have knowledge from actual personal experience. I had roughly 2 dozen adult BG in a 100 gallon Po'Boy Ras and added separate batches of roughly 36 each Gambusia and FHM. The Gams went in first, and it took 4 days for the BG to catch and eat all of them in a 100 gallon trough. Then I put the FHM in; they were all gone in 2 days.

So yes, BG will eat adult FHM, and can catch them easier than the faster, smaller Gambusia. I suspect BG would have no trouble catching and eating juvenile FHM as well.

Thanks everyone!

Over time the BG will exterminate the FH and stunt without additional food and predation upon them. Gams are better at avoiding extermination but will be greatly reduced in number.

Two things happen at the same time. Adult BG and RES eat all sizes of FH and the BG offspring eat all the subsequent FH fry. With a short lifespan and high natural mortality, the number of FH maturing and reproducing gets low quickly and with few fry surviving to maturity there are not enough survivors to establish/continue.

Thanks, Eric.

Tomorrow, I'm picking up (100) Yellow Perch, 3-4" and (5) Channel Cats, 3-5".

We hope to pull off a YP spawn in Spring 2023.

My trophy lepomis pond is male only sunfish species (csbg, res) and hybrids (hbg, bres) with forage species of fhm, pk shrimp, crayfish and supplemental optimal bg and lmb pellets. .25 ac pond with about 100 fish ranging from 9-12”. All forage is abundant, stocked 10 smb to try and manage the crays plus I run 20 cray traps March - November. I’ve witnessed bg slurp dozens of juvenile fhm just hovering in the shadow of the shoreline riprap. This doesn’t serve as any advice for you, Sunil - but just wanted to share my experience with the family as it’s kinda related. I have 9 ponds and this is my far my favorite to manage. I plan on adding gams and bmn just for fun this fall. Goal is for every fish caught to exceed 10” and average 120+ wr.

TJ, my original question was asked to give me some peace of mind that I'm not going to have some kind of massive overload of biomass from all the fatheads reproducing before predators get added in.

So, it's good to hear that these (85) BG/RES may be doing some population control.

We are also feeding Optimal Bluegill, and the BG/RES don't feed that aggressively...maybe because they are stuffed!!!

Leaving to get the YP and CC shortly.

Drive safe with that load!

I hope all of your new fish stay cool and happy all of the way to their new home.

This will be an interesting one to watch for over time results.

Eric, I cannot say for certain that I've had a Bluegill spawn. We had 50 adults in last late summer/fall, and 35 more in April/May. I did see a small colony of 5-6 beds, but again, no sign of YOY/Fingerling bluegill.

I put in (100) YP in the 4" range, (6) Channel Cats in the 3-5" range, and (6) HSB in the less than 2" range today.

Pure joy!

Pond is polluted with fatheads of all sizes.

Good thing you added some "pollution scrubbers"!

Essentially, yes!!

I can't wait to see exploding balls of fatheads as they get chased by SMB, HSB, YP, or even CC. I'm not sure how long I'll have to wait to see that!!!

It won't take long with hungry fish !!

So far, we've seen (15) dead Yellow Perch out of (100) stocked.

Tomorrow, I'm getting about (30) more YP and (20) SMB.

Dang it!

Dang. It takes a few days for the dead fish to generate enough decomp gasses to float the fish. Not all will float too.

I brought back 200 4"-6" HSB and a few hundred HBG and put them in the holding tanks. So far about 25% have croaked. HSB because they aren't feed trained, HSB because they had a minor ick infection when picked up and due to hauling stress - they are more fragile for me to haul than Golden Shiners (at least it seems that way to me).

The supplier thought they had the ick infection beat, I didn't see any on the fish in the haul tanks but maybe that weakened the fish just enough that the haul did the weaker ones in. I told my customers that I wouldn't be stocking the HSB right now, that they'd be stocked in the Fall when the water cools down. I'd rather have the fish die here than in the customers ponds.

Yeah, all these YP were floaters, and were very, very thin, so it doesn't look like they were eating.

They looked very healthy going in.

Of those (85) adult BG we put in, we've had about 5-6 mortalities, so I don't know if there's something hard for new fish to adapt to in this pond. The dead BG were very, very fat and healthy looking.

Earlier today, I put in (30) Yellow Perch, and (34) fingerling SMB. The SMB were 1" at best. Some of the YP were maybe 4+".

I released the SMB in various shallow rock piles and observed a few of them around the rocks about an hour after release.

If you can catch one of the 1" SMB, you might be able to break Theo's recent BG record!

The SMB were so small that I actually netted them out to look at each one. Early on, when I netted about 10+, one did look like a bluegill. On closer inspection, it was a small smallie.

We are having a big fish kill in this pond. Lost about 25 adult bluegill. No sign of distress on them. We've also found about 10 dead Yellow Perch and a few dead smallies.


Not sure what's causing this, but I'm suspecting some kind of D.O. crash, which surprises me. Part of me wonders, if it was a D.O. crash, if it was due to too many fathead minnows.

Bummer!

I hope it resolves in your favor soon.

Sunil:

What's the water temp and what's the water clarity? Is the clarity due to turbidity or phytoplankton? You have my number, give me a shout tomorrow if you have time.

Scott, water temps were 77/78 just below the surface, but the water was murky or stained.

Last Thursday, we had some heavy rains, and then the water got murky brown, and the fish kill started.

I would think maybe the heavy rains turned the pond over, but I can't see how we'd have such 'bad' water in the pond.

Often in the hottest part of summer only the top few feet of water have sufficient DO. If you get a big cold rain the pond will mix/turnover and none of the water will have enough, DO. It only takes a few minutes of very low DO to kill fish. This is exacerbated by ponds with at/near carrying capacity loads of fish as they have high DO demands.

The pond owner ended up getting a small aeration unit the first week of August '22, and since then, no more dead floaters.

We throw out Optimal Bluegill (the long cylindrical type), and we pretty much only see fatheads feeding which had been making me think we lost most all of the stocked fish. A large subset of the (85) adult bluegill we had stocked used to hit feed on the surface, but not anymore.

Yesterday, I stocked (40) more Yellow Perch 2-3" long, (40) Bluegill <2", and (6) HSB 4-5", and (6) CC 5-6".


I actually caught a healthy adult bluegill on a waxworm yesterday too. It hit the worm at about 6' below a small bobber.

This pond continues to be a mystery.

Water temps are around 60 degrees.

A few updates on this pond:

1) Around late Oct/early November 2022, I got about (30) 4-6" SMB from Fenders Fish Farm and put them in this pond. We did not see any mortality from this batch.

2) About 2 weeks ago, I stocked (10) HSB in the 8-10" range in this pond. Of those 10, they had 4 floaters.

The pond owners son is a merciless fish trapper, and he's now catching baby bluegill from less than 1" to about 3-4" in size, and Yellow Perch of various sizes with the largest one trapped being maybe 8" long.

When throwing out the Optimal Bluegill Feed (long cylindrical ones), you'll see tons of fatheads hitting it, and now bigger boils. Some of those bigger boils are from bluegill, but they are hitting it so fast that you can barely see what kind of fish it is. There are other fish hitting the feed, or hitting fatheads who are feeding, but I can't tell what kind of fish.

Water clarity is less than 8", so it's hard.

Pond is still polluted with fatheads.

Waiting to see any SMB, HSB, or CC.

Pond owners did send off for a water test, and all parameters looked within acceptable range.

May have them do a jar test to see if we can assist with water clarity.

Sorry about your HSB losses.

It will be interesting to see how the SMB react to a pond "polluted with fatheads". I assume the SMB will greatly enjoy reducing the pollution!

Yeah, the HSB losses were sad. I also bought (10) HSB for my neighborhood pond, and had one that was D.O.A. when I got them home, so 9 went into my pond. No floaters thus far, and a neighborhood kid caught one on a fly rod.

Since the day of one of the first SMB stockings, we haven't seen any SMB yet. If the largest stockers survived, they would be 7"+ by now with all the forage in the pond.

I fished Lee's pond yesterday.

Caught (2) HSB in the 8-10" range. The first one, I believe was stocked in Spring '22, and the second one was from a stocking a few weeks ago.

Also caught several Yellow Perch and a few mature bluegill.

Some mysteries getting solved.

No sign yet of SMB or Channel Cats, but I think they're in there...

Fished Lee's pond again yesterday using night crawlers cut in half under a bobber with 3' lead.

Caught numerous HSB and several smaller YP.

The amount of fathead minnows is greatly reduced now, yet the YP didn't really seem that fat. All YP caught were under 6".

No sign of any SMB yet.

YP like BG up north have a good chance of stunting if not managed. What are the YP eating if FH population is low? Not sure HSB and SMB can control YP numbers (yes if you harvest as needed). Info is for other readers as I know none of this is new to you!

Lee and his wife are feeding Optimal, so eventually this pond will turn into a sim-world type thing, and we'll have to see how the YP end up spawning.

We have not had a YP spawn as far as I can tell right now.

There has been a BG spawn, so hopefully the HSB, SMB, YP, and CC eat on BG frye and YOY.

Fished Lee's pond for a while yesterday. Caught several yellow perch and......................our first Smallie!!!!!

It hit a 1.5" bluegill on a hook and bobber!!!

The smallie was about 7" long and looked healthy, but not overly plump. I stocked SMB from (3) sources, so I can't tell which batch this smallie was from thus I really don't know the growth rate.

It's an interesting time when catching a 7" fish is exciting.

Word, Mabro, word!!!

I was on cloud 9!!!!

This pond (experiment) will be very interesting to watch develop.

Were the 3 groups of smb a combination of the northern strain and southern strain?

Ron, I'm not sure. The first batch was from Hartley's Fish Farm in KS. The second batch was from Zetts in central PA, and the third batch was from Fenders Fish Farm in eastern OH.

Lee's wife, Jackie, caught a 9-10" CC today, so as of this afternoon, all species stocked have been caught!!!

I am overjoyed to report that Lee's pond had a SMB spawn this spring!! On Saturday, I saw several YOY SMB!!

I'm actually quite surprised by this, but when another PB member posted about getting some SMB from Fenders Fish Farm last fall and then having a SMB spawn this spring '23, it made me wonder as I also got some SMB there last fall.

I've only seen the one more 'mature' SMB that Lee caught a few weeks ago.

I can confirm Hartley's fish are not pure northern strain. Not "bad" fish but growth is extremely slow compared to any that have tested (DNA) to be Dale Hollow strain. Not 1 grower has been able to confirm DNA testing other than my own, other than 9 I tested from Mr. Ron Crismon and yes, they match true northerns perfectly.

Well, there is ONE other grower...

Make that two as I have them sequestered in 2 other ponds without any SMB near them.

Many years ago, I drained and killed off the fish in a pond of about 3/4 acre. Let it fill back up a bit and stocked it with roses red fathead minnows. Before long, you could drive by on 4 wheeler and the pond seemed full of them. Then I started seeing fewer of them and before long none. Somehow, green sunfish had gotten into the pond. Within a relatively short time, they had wiped out the fathead. I added about 20 smallmouth bass. Still catch a smallmouth occasionally but none ever got very big. Still just full of green sunfish. Need to drain it again.

How did the pond get re-filled?

I think you need to determine the source of the GSF before you go to that much effort again. Perhaps there was a tiny bit of water left when you drained and you did NOT rotenone?

I would like to hear more, because reports like yours a fairly common on Pond Boss.

Refilled from rain water. No significant drainage or streams going to it. Nearest other water source is a creek which has water in puddles only through part of year and fills during rains. No green sunfish in original fathead minnows or smallmouth bass. My best guess is they swam upstream from creek during a rain; but that is about a 1/4 mile away and probably 50 feet lower elevation. Installed an overflow pipe so can't swim up overflow again if that is what happened. Also possible but unlikely a neighbor could have thrown some in to be mean. There is also the theory that they could have hitchhiked on critters. I don't know how they got there. They definitely weren't in water or pond for first year rosey reds were in there. Something similar happened to a brother's pond that he didn't want fish in (detailed on here in old thread) and was also a long ways significantly uphill from another water source.

Thanks for the update with more information!

I think(?) swimming through the overflow during times of flood is probably the most likely source of GSF.

I personally have watched fish swim upstream in surface water flows where the water level was about 1/2 as deep as the fish's dimensions from dorsal fin to ventral fins. I do not know what compels them to swim upstream, but they work hard to do so.

I have also seen the salmon working up the fish ladders in Seattle (through the awesome viewing windows) against a pretty strong flow, so I suspect GSF could also swim up an outlet pipe if it was a direct connection from creek flows up and into a pond. (At least in that case, I understood why the salmon were so strongly compelled to swim upstream!)

It sounds like you modified your outflow pipe to create an "air gap" that invasive fish can no longer breach. Maybe you should try your Rosy Reds and SMB experiment again!

In the subject pond for this thread, I was surprised at how quickly the fatheads got thinned out, but what really surprised me more was that I'm not sure I saw the reciprocal growth in the predator fish.

Lee and his wife do feed probably 3-4 times a week, but I would not say that I saw any fish over 100RW except for perhaps some bluegill that were already feed hogs transferred from my neighborhood pond.

Was there ever a time period in the pond where the predator fish had a low available food supply? Perhaps, the window where they had eliminated the FHMs but before the other parts of the food chain were established or the owners started substantial feedings?

There are many threads on Pond Boss (typically from our more expert fishery people) that if you ever significantly stunt a population in a pond, then those fish never get on the right growth path.

(Just speculating, mostly because I know you track that pond fairly closely and wanted to hear your thoughts.)

Rod, that's a tough question because this pond does not have super clear water, hence I didn't know of any species (BG, YP, SMB) having successful spawns.

I have now seen that BG did pull off a spawn, and SMB did also, but I can't say how that would have helped create forages fish for all the other mouths.

Sunil, what are your thoughts on the water clarity? Is it green water or muddy? You mentioned 8" of clarity earlier this summer and there was a fish kill last year and so was just curious about the water quality. If the clarity is from bloom, I would try to dig down to the source of the nutrients.

FHM are good forage and the consumption of their energy should have been split between maintenance and growth. The standing weight of fish consuming them must have been great enough that most of the energy was used for maintenance where that converted to growth was small enough that you didn't notice the gain.

Hmmmm, it would probably be tough for me to keep my RW above 100 if I wasn't able to see where my wife put my dinner!

Is this the pond that has bullheads? Agree with jpsdad, what is the source of the water murkiness? Don't you help with one pond in a suburban neighborhood? I do NOT have an immaculate lawn, but I have some neighbors that put ungodly amounts of fertilizer and water onto their lawns that look like the rough at the US Open. If that run-off is going into the pond, you might have to be able to walk across the pond on the backs of the tilapia to clear that level of nutrient-induced plant growth.

jpsdad, this pond absolutely had/has some kind of nutrient load that, earlier in the spring/summer manifested itself as a green film covering much of the water surface. However, that all went away from mid-summer into the fall.

Interesting thought about fatheads supporting maintenance or growth. In the case of this pond, the stocking of all species of fish (SMB, YP, BG, CC, HSB) were of all different sizes at the times of stocking. So, I can't really get growth info. as we did not tag or fin-clip any fish. My comment about not seeing the growth is more anecdotal in that the fish don't seem overly plump like we see in other ponds.

Rod, no bullheads in this pond. In my neighborhood retention pond, that I manage, it really takes the run-off from the roads more so than any of the yards. So, I have not had problems with nutrient loading in the neighborhood pond.

I know that none of these answers are definitive.

OK.

I would think that the fatheads supported both maintenance and growth at least during the period(s) when the standing weight of consumers were consuming above their maintenance requirement. The maintenance requirement is what limits growth and when the pond plus feeding provides exactly what the standing weight needs for metabolism the fish will stop growing and limit will have been reached. Mortality, eg harvest and/or natural mortality, will reduce the standing weight and thus allow individuals to continue growing. If a fish doesn't consume its needs for metabolism it will resort to mobilizing its own nutrients (IOWs it will eat itself and lose weight). Such a condition where consumption is insufficient for metabolism leads to weight decline would definitely cause low relative weight where it occurs over extended periods. On the other hand, when a fish consumes above its needs for metabolism it will grow and has the opportunity exceed standard weights if it is gaining rapidly enough. So the difference between Lee's fish and the plumper fish you noted must be sourced solely with how much energy they are eating individually.

That's why I was asking whether the source of low clarity was phytoplankton (green water) or turbidity. Individually the fish need to eat more. Perhaps Lee could feed them more if the nutrients aren't already excessive. Or do a combination of additional feeding and harvest to ensure individual fish are getting enough food to continue growing. If the clarity issue is green water then I don't think I would increase the feed rate for sure. Feeding by hand, I don't imagine he is feeding an excessive amount of feed which troubles me given earlier comments. If the feed is moderate and the low clarity caused by intense bloom then there must be a lot nutrients flowing into the pond or possibly in the native soil.

One potential 'mistake' I may have made with Lee's pond is perhaps stocking too many fish (non-fatheads) over the course of a year.

This was because we had a fish-kill of adult Bluegill and some SMB from Hartleys, and the fact that I wasn't seeing any fish visually, or hitting feed like they used to.

So, the massive population of fatheads consumed may have been spread across too many predator fish.

Still a ton of speculation....

Your adult bluegill and redear will chow down on fatheads, especially the fry. It's a good way to balance things out. Adding those predators should help too.

Sunil, if you ever figure out how to know how many fish died in a fish kill please let me know. I think you made the best judgment you could so no mistake. The one thing you don't have to speculate about is the condition you would like to see and so you have a good data point there and something to work with.

All good, I'm not in any despair about it. I think the amount of dead floaters are in this thread somewhere, but going off memory, maybe 30 adult Bluegill and 4 SMB from a stocking of 11 or so SMB (in that specific stocking of SMB; there are more stocked at other times). Earlier this year we also had about 4 dead HSB a few days after stocking; these fish were 8-9" and I think they were just too stressed. Of course, the floaters are a subset of the morts, probably.

On a better note, Lee and his wife are getting their son one of those underwater green lights for Christmas. I'm probably more excited about that then any of them!