Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose Pacu Experiment

On the subject of Pacus,

I discussed them with Dr. Masser of Texas A&M and he did not know of anyone in Texas who has tried them in the manner I suggested. By that I mean, using Pacus just like Tilapia. He did express interest in following any such "experiment".

I think I will try a little "experiment" with them. I'm interested to see if they perform better than grass carp and with a winter die-off, they will be completely controllable in my ponds.

Don & Rad...I would sure appreciate hearing from you guys on any more info you can provide on Pacus....or snyone else that has knowledge of them

I am setting up an "arrangement" with a local fish store to provide a good home to all those Pacus that have outgrown their home aquariums. Let's see what the Pacu does to bushypond weed in East Texas....

p.s. TP&W has okayed this "experiemnt"

If you decide to fish for them, just remember not to "lip" them. They gots teeth!

Meadowlark,
Don will have more info than I, I have only had them for three months. He calls them aggresive eaters and I think more along the lines of eager eaters. They don't chase other fish away they just go for the food. I have seen them have head on collisions. I am going to guess that they will have the same impact on tilapia as tilapia have on bluegill. I have yet to see them eat anything that was not solid plant material. When I had a sudden outbreak of algae the tilapia were the fish that cleaned it up. I think the two working together would have an impact where you had both excessive plant growth and algae. Every green leafy plant in my pond, save one type of lily, gets eaten by the pacu, usually the day it touches the water.

Meadowlark, I originally got my first Pacu out of an Aquarium shop, 7 of them which were about a half pound at the time. When I purchased the land that my pond is on it had a half acre pond on it that had many of the local fish and some Tilapia in it. I was looking for a predator/sporting fish to stock and found these Pacu in the pet shop so decided to buy and release them. Later on I found peacock bass and the Pacu lost some of their appeal.

The Pacu are an extremely hardy fish, my wife and I caught each of these Pacu at least 3 or 4 times within the first couple of months they were released, many times they had swallowed the hooks which I had cut the line and released them. None ever died. The Pacu, 5 of the original 7 are still left and they are about 12 pounds now after 3 years, I have since bought 20 more last year and not totally sure, but believe they may have spawned as I have caught a few that are in between the two releases. My water stays turbid so it is difficult to see smaller fish in the water except for what you catch and at feeding time when they are near the surface. The Pacu stay in a school most of the time and seem to call each other with tail splashing (may also use this to ward off competing feeders). The large Pacu are easy to spot on the pond as they are usually close to the surface and create a large wake when they move around.

The Pacu will follow me around the lake like a pack of puppies looking for a food handout, since they stay close to the surface sure that they can spot people on the banks. Since the original ones started out in an aquarium I am not sure if their following is a native or trained instinct. Pacu seem to be somewhat smart in their schools, when I do catch one they often will not come near for several days, when they are spooked they all disappear together. They are very wise and can ID a bobber and or fishing line. When young they were a lot easier to catch! I often work outside Thailand (now in Afghanistan), upon returning to my pond I can usually get a hook up for a day or two...then they wisen up and stay that way. I feed floating pellets at times and will float a couple of pellets on a hook in the middle, when they are wise, will eat every other pellet and leave those on my hook floating.

They have become somewhat of a pain because of their teeth. Often I'll use light line (4-8 lbs) to try and catch the local fish or Tilapia and hook the Pacu, it usually ends in a good fight but broken off line! They are a powerful fish and will often jump as their dragging off line once or twice on the way out, never had them jump on the way in. Sometimes will use Spiderwire when fishing for them and have landed Pacu with that, but they will only bite when using that line when their guard is down. Up to about two pounds you should be able to land the Pacu with regular monofilaments. Have caught them on minnows and earthworms also, however that is at times when not feeding pellets.

My pond has not had any weed problems yet so really don't know what their preferences are on grasses. Probably with a year round stock of Pacu and Tilapia will never have a weed problem. As stated earlier cannot get Lotus plants to survive, have transplanted the Lotus twice, about 200 plants each time and they just disappear.

On eating quality, they are delicious however they do have a hairline bone. If they have an unlimited supply of food they will become fatty. On their eating habits have never seen them become full when feeding pellets, they will come to the surface and swim around with their mouths open like a bucket loader!

Hope that this helps you get a jump start on your experiment, not nearly as much information on Pacu as there is on Tilapia on the net, so most of what I've stated has been my own observations. Keep us all posted on your trails, interested to see if the Pacu die off before or after the Tilapia in the winter and how much damage they do to the grasses.

Don & Rad,

Thanks for the info...and you are right in that not much is available on the net about these fish. My interest in them is as an alternative to grass carp for weed control. Tilapia in my ponds keep the algae in check but don't have a lot of effect on the pond weed which exploded with the touted fertilization a couple of years ago (that's another story entirely). Even though I no longer fertilize, I've had difficulty getting the pondweed back under control.

Grass carp have their pros and cons...one of the biggest cons is I can't keep them in the pond. In fall and winter here we sometimes get tremendous rains of many inches at a time which causes a significant outflow of water over the spillways. In spite of make-shift barriers, most of the grass carp have found a way to escape (to their death) at these times. Also, the carp that have not escaped have become Jabba-the-hut impersonators and don't seem to do much at all. The young ones really get after the weeds for a time.

I'm not interested in chemicals...it was chemicals, i.e. fertilizer that caused this mess to start with. Hence my interest in Pacus. It seems there may be a ready supply of them in the same manner that you got your first ones...i.e. they quickly outgrow all aquariums and their owners, with a guilty conscious, feel an obligation to find them new homes.

I'm continuing to research, but if I don't find anything more negative on Pacus than I've seen so far, there will be a new vegetarian (s) in my ponds.
Thanks for your inputs and interest.

Well, if there is any negatives on pacu, just wait them out a few months and they will die. Someone mentioned that 72F was the lowest temperature they could live in, so I guess below 60F and they're goners.

Meadowlark reports:

Maybe that's one disadvantage of natural spillways. I think it is easier to fence/strain the input to a drainpipe than an aboveground spillway.

Or maybe, Meadowlark, you just get some hellaciously big Frog-Strangler rains.

TG,

We really do get some frog stranglers...how does 48 inches in 24 hours sound? Happened a few years ago down the road from us...in the past we've had several consecutive weeks of 5 to 8 inches per week...that generates a big overflow, and grass carp love the thought of freedom...but it always ends in disaster for them.

No wonder you use natural spillways - who could afford a pipe big enough to handle runoff like that.

That's the no kidding truth....a couple of years ago we got a tropical storm that dropped about 36 inches over a three day period. It hit the downtown medical center particularly hard...some folks actually drowned getting off the elevators at the ground floor parking lot...imagine that..now, of course, most folks know to not open elevators on ground floors during tropical storms. Rain is great for us pond meisters, except when it all comes at once.

Meadowlark,

I had to laugh when I saw that you wanted to put these fish in your pond. That was my first thought as well. Too bad their time is so limited by the temperature range. But if they eat cattails, it may still be worth it for me to put them in. With those strong teeth, it looks promising. I hope your experiment gets published on PB again.