Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations DO crash? Pesticides? I give up...

Seen pictures, heard about it, never seen it in 44 years...my pond crashed over the weekend.

Came home from Des Moines on Sunday and went out to spray trees while the wife mowed. I had hundreds of dead fish...probably isn't one left over a pound. CC, BC, walleye, GC, LMB...all dead, bloated floating.

About 90F, and at least 2 buddies were kind enough to bring dip nets and help me gather up the majority. I wish I'd let people eat the damn things...what a waste.



Don't even want to fish anymore. It's like my dog died...

WOW! and yes, very sad. Any ideal what main factors were?
condolences
al

I know what you mean we had a DO Crash about 12 years ago. I was 12 at the time and saw the fish piping at the top of the water at that time I was not aware that piping means that they are basically dying. by the time we saw a few dead fish it was basically too late to do anything about it. We tried to stirr up the water but with little success.

I will say that after the fish kill the LMB came back stronger than ever. I think some times a fish kill is natures way of thining the population. At age 12 I knew verry little about carrying capacity, harvest, etc. That pond was so full of LMB they would hit anything that touched the water. It was still a shame to loose all the larger fish.

It's been relatively hot lately...upper 80's & low 90's. Not incredibly hot, but pretty humid and still. Fished Friday evening ahead of a storm coming in and caught NADA...thought that was a bit strange. Should have nailed the BG...I figure it was starting then, as they were awfully rotten by noon Sunday. But fish spoil quick in 80F water.

Big wind storm and 0.7" rain Saturday night. Thought maybe the rain turned it over, but more likely HEAVY winds did it, on top of the low O2, from cloudy, still days.

Buddy suggested pesticides because they've been spraying for spider mites all over on the beans. I don't really believe that...but it would be nice to blame it on someone other than myself.

I think I just had too damn many big fish in there. Probably 300, all told. CC up to 12 lbs, bass to 5 lbs...

Matt, don't despair - same thing happened to me a couple of weeks ago. "Don't even want to fish anymore"
I spent a couple of days with self pity and then realized - what the heck - this has been the best five years of my life - I'm gonna do it again....

You likely have more fish survival than you think - we turned the feeders back on to see if any feeding fish at all, and are seeing more fish activity everyday.

I know exactly how you feel, but now geting excided about fall re-stocking adult feed trained fish and moving on.
My sincere condolences - it IS like losing your favorite pets.

Thanks George. I immediately thought about you when I saw what had happened. Unfortunately, I don't have a ready source of adult sized fish, (except for the OTHER pond!)

I've told the wife the pond will probably do just as well over the next couple years as the remaining fish spread out to take over the vacant niches. ALMOST managed to convince myself that's true.

I've seen small fish, and even ran the feeder last night myself. Lots of BG eating, but nothing of any real size. Worst thing is that I've no real idea of what is left, so how do I go about restocking? I don't know what to add...I'll get some new GC this fall...but then what?

One bright note is that I can now add SMB, as there aren't enough LMB of any size to eat them. I did want to add some, anyway.

Sorry to hear about your run of bad luck Matt. I agree with the others, you are allowed a couple days to mourn, then get off your butt and start evaluating and planning for some Phoenix stuff out of the ashes. Remember they say you aren't a real pondmeister until you have killed a bunch of fish, or something like that. I was always told experience is a name people give to their mistakes. You will enjoy many more fish fry's in your life after this, to be sure.

Do me a little favor, tell me all about the life of your walleyes, how many did you start with, how old, how big, etc. I am exploring the idea of having them with YP in my pond, I would greatly like to hear your input.

Hey Joe...yeah I know, spilt milk and all that. I'll get it back in shape, it's just that it was nearly PERFECT! I could go out any morning or evening and catch a couple of dandy bass and a big ol cat every time I put big BG under a bobber. Now...we wait for a couple more years to get back to where we already were...and I ain't getting younger.

On the subject of walleyes (and that includes sauger) these were just fish I'd caught over the past couple years or so in local rivers or lakes. The lakes have no length limits, so what I caught, I kept. I got some evil looks, but people probably thought I was fryin' 'em.

From the mighty Mississippi, I kept saugers (no lenght limit) and eyes over 15", spring and fall (some even in winter). Smallest overall was probably 10 inches or so, and the biggest was maybe 2.5 lbs. I'd lost one to spring thaw last year, and she was over 4 lbs.

Probably lost all of them, but I'll restock as I get time. Weird thing was one of the dead ones was only maybe 5"...and I don't remember ever throwing in one that small...hmm?

I wouldn't hesitate to do that again. Just the POSSIBILITY of grabbing an eye out of my pond (even from under the ice) makes it worth my time.

Matt, speaking from expiernece, I would not be suprised if you still had a bunch of fish left.

I know there's fish in there, Shorty. It's just that I don't believe there's any fish of any SIZE in there. There can't hardly be, with the number of keepers that died. I've spied some small ones and the BG eat...but it's all the big ones and predators that I'm really sorry about.

You might be suprised Matt, some of your bigger might have survived especially if the DO sag was localized to one area of your pond.

Sorry to hear about your situation Matt. Did you have any problems in Pond #2 ?

Matt here is a link to Bill Cody's FISHKILL topic in the Q & A section. In his post, he provides a link to a paper on freshwater fishkills in Florida. Might give you some answers to what happened.

http://www.pondboss.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=92486#Post92486

Russ

Sorry to hear about this Matt. I'm raising a toast in mourning.

Sounds like Mother Nature did her biomass conversion on you.

I agree that you probably have a lot of fish left and some big ones too.

What was the size of the pond that crashed?

Matt sorry about the loss. Mother nature is hard on ponds at high density. No margin for error. You now have the chance to make it the way you want it. My guess is all the weather things you noted plus the high usage were the culprit.

Sorry Matt. I've been there several times and the frustration is that we can't just go and fix it.

Yep, start over. The remaining fish will come back strongly. In my case, the cats were all gone. However, to be on the safe side, I restocked with 10 to 12 inchers.

Cats and eyes I can restock from local rivers...it's the bass I'll have trouble with. The other pond is just fine, far as I can tell, although I've not had any luck catching anything in it to restock the east pond with, just yet.

High pressure, cooler days now. The smell's gone...turned off the feeder but the BG won't bite in either pond. Might try whole nightcrawlers tonight to catch some bass and CC. Need to get some kind of predator base in there just to keep up with the BG. They're still in there, as I didn't note many keepers among the dead.

Still pretty depressing, but the deer were back last night, drinking at sundown like nothing happened...

EDIT: BTW, the pond was 1.75 acres. Other is 1 acre. Not sure why it suffered no losses, other than the stockings were just as IDNR recommended, except I added about 100 RES. Also, the Dead Sea was where I installed the little feeder. Feed for about 5 sec's, twice in morning and twice in evening...it's turned off right now.

Just wanted to revisit this again as I looked at my pond today after another overnight deluge here in NY.

Even with the numbers of fish Matt had in this pond, if, in advance of the coming storm front, this pond had active aeration do you feel the fishkill could of been prevented.?

Matt did this pond have aeration?

Russ

I have bottom aeration running 24/7 in my .75 acre pond and 2 years ago had a plankton bloom dieoff and a DO crash. I had just a partial kill about 90 CNBG (all 7-10") and about 15 LMB (12-20"). IMO, if you have a major PB dieoff your aeration system cannot replace the DO from a "living" plankton environment. Some fish will perish but not all.

Oh man I feel your pain! Been there done that but with help from here we are back better than ever. Good luck

Matt,

I fell for you. Haven't experienced a big fish kill yet, but I'm close to the edge in my perch production pond. Not the same as a full blow pond but I've got a lot of money and time invested in their production. Got a surface aerator ordered. Hope it gets here tomorrow. The thought of waking up to piping or dead fish has me worried every day.

Cecil,dont forget to start slow so you dont create a problem

Tom,

Thanks for the concern but the surface aerator shouldn't be a problem vs. a bottom diffuser(s) where anoxic bottom water comes up all at once. I've already been thoroughly and vigorously been running the diffusers 24/7 for quite some time.

Hey guys...

No aeration currently, but am considering it. The way I understand it though, aeration can be a double-edged sword, as well. That keeps ALL water in the pond livable...if we have a major power outage, say mid-July and I've been aerating, I've now got a day or so to get a generator going to keep the aeration or I risk losing even more fish. Is that correct?

I've convinced myself that I just had too dang many big fish in there. Should have been eating more of the things, all along. Major algae bloom is still ongoing, and with only a few tenths of an inch of rain at a time, it'll be fall before we get it flushed enough for my satisfaction.

I believe all the heavy rains we'd had up through June played a part. It's tile-fed from grain fields, but with heavy enough rain, even tile-fed water carries plenty of organic matter, as it comes down through stand pipes, and not just as filtered groundwater seepage.

Add that to this being the 4th growing season, post-stocking, automatic feeding and I ended up with the perfect storm, I guess...

DITTO...

No necessarily. If you're talking about aeration (mixing of the water column) via diffusers you don't suddenly go into a tailspin when they are not running. Many ponds you don't even have to run them 24/7. My biggest pond I am only running it at night with no problems. I've had power outages and no problems there either. But it's rare to have a power outage over a few hours here anyway.

Depends on the fertility and age of your pond on how fast anoxic conditions redevelop in deeper water. Even then it's nothing like a pond that has been stratified all summer and suddenly turns over.

With really small ponds as in my perch production pond which I initially fertilized it's really touchy to keep the algae bloom stable. I was warned and now I'm dealing with it.



And don't forget all the fertilizer you got from the fields that fed your algae bloom.