Tried my hand at cage rearing redear again. I started with approximately 200 three inch redear on April 1 and turned them loose in the pond on October 8. There were 52 that were completely emaciated but still alive and 155 that had shown some growth with the biggest being around seven inches long.



Steve

Steve, did your water temps have an impact on growth and did you feed mostly at dawn or dusk? Hydrated pellets? Optimal?

I started a similar project on May 8th feed training 104 fingerling RES in a tank out in my shop, I am getting ready to release mine here shortly. I have approximately 25 RES that haven't grown all summer that are still 1-1/2" to 2" in size, the rest have grown quite a bit with one 8" shooter in the group. I have lost 3 very emaciated RES in the last couple of weeks.

Tell us what you learned.

I fed mostly in the evening. Started off with hydrated Am 300,Am 400 and Optimal Jr mixed with thawed frozen blood worms, brine shrimp and chopped red worms. I fed this mixture for about two months when I switched over to unhydrated OPtimal Jr. There were six Bluegill added to the cage when they were put in the pond to help with feed training that did very well. Did not notice any shooters like last year but I think there might have been a larger average size than before.

I think you had very good success growing those RES in a cage. Congrats. Nice project with good results considering RES are difficult to pellet train. The pellet eaters should grow very well for you in the pond.

Here are a few pictures of the RES I feed trained in my shop this summer. I'm very surprised at how blanched they are in color, they have been eating optimal all summer and there is very little red or yellow coloration on these RES. Something missing in their diet? Coloration is very different than your cage raised RES.

Click on thumbnails for larger view.






One that didn't pellet train, the average size when I started this project was 2".

Poor color: Lack of sunlight? Incomplete spectrum if artificial lighting? I've seen them like that coming out of continuously muddy water.

I had a 75 watt 5K grow light for plants hanging 12" above the tank all summer and my shop has lot of windows on the south side to let the daylight in but the tank never sat in direct sunlight.

One other thing, my pond is frequently muddy but the RES still have quite a bit of red and yellow coloration. Even the two inch RES that I seined yesterday had yellow bellies and tinted fins. We had 6"+ of rain the first week of October, visibility is currently 7", I am thinking this is diet related due to the lack of crustaceans.

Shorty is the tank light colored or an aquarium? Put them in a black bucket for a while and they might color up

It's a gray fiberglass insulated aquaculture tank. I did have the overhead light on while netting them.

http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=359690&page=14

That is why a varied (complete) diet is important IMO.

From the PB Conv on Fish Nutrition

Although vitamins and minerals are required in minute amounts compared with protein, lipid, and so forth, they are critically important, … Every micronutrient has a deficiency disease associated with it, the effects of which are sometimes irreversible or fatal. For a few vitamins and most minerals, excess can be equally detrimental, resulting in toxicity.

I may need to rethink my pellet training program to include some cage rearing once water temps warm up in June. I do think these RES will be fine now that they are in the pond and have access to a more varied diet. I did give them small amounts of bloodworms and nightcrawler pieces to vary their diet but apparently this didn't help with what they need for coloration in their diet. Based on Jim's comments in the other thread I believe carotenoids are most needed for sexual maturity and successful reproduction.

Raise a bunch of craws and put the babies in with the RES. Could use brine shrimp as well.

The pet store carries frozen brine shrimp and plankton right next to the frozen bloodworms, that would be an easy solution. Cultivating daphnia might be another option, I did add daphnia to the tank a few times in late June and the RES really liked them, they did not last long.

The pigment in brine shrimp is what makes the difference between white and pink flamingos. Same bird and diet change will transfer into the feathers.

So maybe it would help your RES???

I don't have anything to add, but just wanted to say this is a great thread. Threads like this are why I continue to come back to PB.

I got two of my tank raised RES with the seine net tonight, they are still very blanched in color.

Shorty mine that come out of my forage pond often look that pale. That tiny pond nearly always has a very heavy algae bloom. 18" visibility is a clear time for it. Often it is around a foot.

I think that is the reason for their lack of color.

If they are on pellets still, then there is a way to promote coloration by modifying the diet a little. I do same to promote hatch of eggs coming from fish fed only a lower end trout feed.

They won't be eating pellets much longer as water temps will be too cold. They do have plenty of natural food in the pond though.

Sinking semi-moist feed they will consume if water warm enough to consume live prey. They will not venture far for it and will have a longer handling / processing time.

Have you ever played with having a light source near where you feed?

No electric at the pond, I do hand feed during the last hour of daylight in a shallow shaded area. RES seem to prefer feeding at the surface during low light levels, they are not fond of bright, intense light. Part of my tank pellet training this summer was to get this group of RES used to feeding at the surface under bright lights, it kind of worked.

For me, in an indoor / low light setting the RES compare favorably to BG with respect to feed intake and growth. Advantage is lost in pond setting when using floating feeds. That is even with fish that did well indoors for several months before moving outside.

I have had pretty good results with RES feeding on the surface at my pond but I have always thrown floating feed in an area shaded by trees in the evening that is not in direct sunlight.

I had a very significant RES winterkill event at my pond at ice out this year and my growout project was to both feed train some small RES and get them large enough so that my SMB couldn't eat them. This was a part of my restocking effort this year.

In my first attempt at feed training RES a few years ago I may have inadvertently dark adapted them by not exposing them to relatively bright light on a regular basis as they matured out in my shop. This time I decided to hang a 75 watt grow light 12" above the water and had it on a timer to run 9 hours a day. When it was on they would spend most of their time in the bottom third of the tank as soon as the went off they would move up to all parts of the tank.

I did get them to feed off the surface while the light was on but their feeding behavior was very different than when the light was off. When the light was on they would dart to surface from the bottom of the tank one at time, hit a pellet very hard, then turn around and head straight back to the bottom of the tank. They would frequntly splash water 5 or 6 feet and I occasionally got spashed in the face standing away from the tank. In contrast, when the bright light was off most of them would be near the surface taking turns sipping pellets off the surface.

Solar lights with built in panels are pretty cheap. That would be an easy way to get light at a pond.

Are you thinking I should try pellet feeding under a light after the sun goes down? I know artificial light loses intensity rather quickly as a function of distance so a solar light shouldn't bother the RES. I had a pair of 60 waft bulbs on fhe ceiling out in the shop that sat 10 feet away from the tank, those lights didn't bother them at all when feeding but the light near the surface did.

I am thinking a low intensity light near surface that will promote feeding even after sun goes down. It would allow you to see a little and keep fish in feeding mode. The light could even be turned on a few minutes before you approach to provide signal eats will be coming shortly so fish can stack up and be ready.

I am doing some tinkering in the lab with some really small sunfish where they spend most of the time foraging in a large tank with some actual insect forage. First I walk tank to they can see me, then I come back 5 minutes later and put feed in at a particular spot. They are already there jockeying for position to get most food when it is applied. They eat all applied then promptly disperse to forage again until process repeated. Setup is like when mother rings dinner bell so even kids back in woods come running to table in kitchen and grab a seat.

Even the 1" fish are a lot more capable of learning than I originally thought possible.

I noticed a similar response with my redear also, both the ones in the cage and the ones that were in the pond. They would pop up to the surface, grab a pellet and dive back down. The bluegill I had in the cage next to the redear would line up at the surface waiting to be fed. They would follow me back and forth on the pier as I was feeding the rest of the fish in the other cages and the pond with their backs out of the water.

I have a working hypothesis that RES are much more light sensitve and dark adapted than other sunfish, so far it seems to have worked well with pellet training them. Prior to my winterkill I had good numbers of RES eating floating pellets off the surface in my pond in the evening in the shaded area of the pond.

One of the things I did this summer was to have an automatic feeder dump small amounts of non-hydrated floating feed in the tank evey hour during the day while the bright light was on while I was away at work. I also would feed hydrated pellets after cleaning the tank when I got home while the bright light was still on, they would eat everything but my best feeding responses always came when the bright light was off.

I had never heard/thought about RES just not being light tolerant. fascinating.

Ditto.

Shorty, very cool observation.

I have been brim fishing Caddo Lake(Cypress tree forest lake) for years each May for big blue gill and for Goggle eye and for res. And have been lucky every once in awhile catching some nice res. But after reading this post I think I am going to change my tactics when it comes to res fishing. I'm going to look for deeper darker places to fish. And in my fishing I have learned to use red wiggler worms over crickets and such for the res. They prefer the worms. And I will do the same at the pond. So thanks for your posted up inforamtion here guys.

Here is Shorty's recomendations on catching RES from a past thread.

Low and slow - catching RES, by Shorty

And if you have lots of time on your hands on a cold nasty day this thread has some really interesting links. I know you have seen it before, but I like to remind everyone who is interested in RES that it still exists once in a while. The above link came from there.

RES information and lots of links to other threads on RES

Shorty I thought of your blanched out RES tonight when I caught this one. Caught it out of my main pond after sunset tonight when it was almost getting too dark to see.

Kind of had to do a double take to make sure it was a RES.