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#161083 04/28/09 10:15 PM
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Hello All,

I have purchased 2 boxes of the GSH Fry from Anderson and should be getting them in the next couple of weeks. I'm going to turn most of them free in my 8+ acre pond, but I would like to keep a good number to grow bigger before being released.

I'm thinking of building a holding cage wrapped with normal screen like you put on a screened porch and floating the cage in the pond.

Would the screen be small enough to keep the fry from escaping? If so, what should I feed them while they're growing larger? Should I aerate inside the cage or would that be a waste of time?

I've never seen GSH Fry before and want to get a few answers before I try something that might not work.

Thanks.


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Want to see what they look like? they look like this: ,

And here is two of them: , ,

Seriously.

I got them last year and my YOY bluegill really hammered them. I'm going to grow them out in a stock tank to .5" to 1" this year before they go in.

I think it would be hard to have a cage to hold them when they're fry. You can feed them all types of fry powder.

In an 8 acre pond you can just release them in the deeper areas of the pond. There won't be any fish out there that are a size to eat them. That was Lusk's idea and of course it's brilliant. Anderson's told me to release in cover, and I honestly think that was a bad idea as I watched .5-1" BG inhaling them.

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Aaron/TwoLakes:

What about a 500 or 1000G plastic stock tank - [cheap] and keeping water moving through at 1 GPM and feeding them Aquamax fry powder until they get rolling? Could grow the , into a / pretty quickly?


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There is a lot of good info on raising fish on the NANFA website and forum. I have bred a lot of different native fish in aquariums over the years and can say GSH grow super fast. Something in the neighborhood of a stock tank like you said with a reasonable sized filter to clean and aerate the water should work well. Make sure the inflow into the filter isn't too strong or you'll suck the fry up into it. Make sure you keep the stock tank in a shady area and put a cover on it, like the mesh you mentioned for a screen room. Within a month if you feed them well, those little GSH fry will be .5 to 1 inch... When breeding most of the Cyprinid species, I usually just used finely ground goldfish flakes and that seemed to work fine for them. The difference between fry and .5 inch GSH is night and day in their ability to avoid predation...

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CJ said " The difference between fry and .5 inch GSH is night and day in their ability to avoid predation... "

The same is true as to what they can eat. I have not studied this wrt GSH but as to many other fry if you don't have the right size food available at the right time they will starve to death in a very short time (a couple of days or less). With the tank route I would want plankton infused water from a productive pond in the tank until I was absolutely sure they could eat the fry powder.



Last edited by ewest; 04/29/09 08:39 AM.















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So, Aaron, You're saying that the fry are small. \:D

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, would be a schold of GSH Fry.

At this time, I don't have a 1000 gallon tank with filters and pumps ready to utilize. But, I do have some wire mesh that came off a paper mill paper machine that has TINY holes in it. They utilize this stuff to put the wet paper mulch on, flatten it out, and let it dry. Holes basically big enough for water to drain through.

I may try to build a cage with that and see how it works. I'll put it in a shady area of the pond and feed them powdered food from the local pet store.

It sure would be nice to get them larger before being released into the pond. Out of 500,000 ordered, it won't be a big loss if I put a couple thousand into the cage and hope for the best....

Thanks for all the replies. It helps to have folks with experience on this board to discuss ideas.


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I don't think you need a 1000g.. I think you could do a 50g or even 10g if you had it. Ewest is right, the key thing is going to have food for the little guys - and I think that's easier said than done.

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I use a 6 bushel or about 55 gallon feed tub. You don't want to go too small as you can have water quality issues. 250,000 fry can produce a lot of waste! You can purchase, culture your own or wild collect infusoria to feed the new fry. However in my experience, GSH are not overly altricial and are capable of feeding on powdered flakes shortly after they absorb their yolk sac. Infusoria certainly cannot hurt though...

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Altricial.

al⋅tri⋅cial

–adjective Zoology. (of an animal species)

helpless at birth or hatching and requiring parental care for a period of time (opposed to precocial.)

Altricial.


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CJB,

Thanks much for your information. I think you should be known as the "Minnow Master" hereafter....

Here is my new plan. Please let me know what you think.

I have plenty of heavy equipment on the property, so I'm going to dig a good sized hole, say 6'wide x 6'deep x 12'long next to my existing pond. I'll cut a small trench to the pond and let it fill with pond water. Once filled, I'll cover the trench so there is no access to/from the pond.

I have another pond that has a healthy stand of pond vegetation. I'm thinking I should get a couple of 5 gallon buckets full of algae and pond plants and put into the new hole to hopefully add some small infusoria (had to google this one).

Once I receive my two boxes of fry, I'll add about 1/4 of the fry from one box into my "fry hole" and start sprinkling some crushed flake food for supplemental feeding and then move up to some type of fry powder.

How successful do you think this plan would be? If it's a complete failure, I'm out a bit of time and ~ $65.00.


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TwoLakes, great idea. Probably don't need to go that deep - if you can go wider/longer that would be better than deeper. Take pictures and document the process as well, we'd love to see it work.

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That will work. Its called a hatchery pond. Several PB articles on them and blocking nets which can be used also.
















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I use a pond that is about 4 foot deep as a max and only averages about 2 feet. Its about 30 feet long and 15 feet wide. I am using it to spawn out wild caught forage fish to then stock other ponds. Keep an eye out for a series of articles Bill Cody and I are working on in the future. It will detail the methods of doing this correctly. As others have said a pond like this can also be used to grow out hatchery bought fish as well...

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CJ,

Do you recommend that I fertilize my new Fry Pond or do you think the pond water and some vegetation/algae would have enough of the small organisms to get them to the fry powder stage?

I'm actually getting excited about trying this because I was worried all the golden shiner fry would get eaten before they got very large.

Thanks.


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If it is a brand new pond, you may need to kick start it with fertilization. In my experience, if you are dealing with a new forage fish grow out pond and you add some muck from an old pond and let it sit for a couple weeks during warmer weather, your pond will be teeming with infusoria.

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I have also ordered 500,000 ,,,,s and want to grow them a bit before releasing them. I don't havemuch experienece so i wnate to vet my ideas here before putting it together this weekend.
300 Gallon Rubermaid Tank placed in my pond with waterline 6' to a foot below top. Subemersible pump would pump fresh pondwater w/ nutrient/foodstuff into tank continuously. Bottom feeding overflow drian buried in large gravel, so fry are not sucked out of tank.

screen over top to prevent jumpers and interlopers. Hopefully the pond water would keep fresh food coming in but I would supplement with some sort of pellet. Release after 4-6 weeks

What do you think?

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Redfish,

Are you going to put the entire 500,000 in the 300 gallon tank? It sounds like a good plan to me with the pump pulling in pond water and the bottome drain through gravel. If you go that route, we can compare notes.

My fry are scheduled to be delivered on May, 19th. I haven't had a chance to dig my fry pond yet, but I'm planning to get that accomplished by Tuesday which will give the water a week to settle down before I introduce the fry. I'm planning to release 1 box into the main pond and 1 box into my grow out environment. If I can get several thousand of the fry grown to 2-3 inches, I will consider it a success.


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Sounds interesting. I would not put all 500,000 in that tank because if something happens they are all gone. I am not at all sure that you will get enough plankton through the pump to feed 500,000 fry in that small of an area. Plus if they double or triple in size they will be very crowded. If you got a 40 ft 1/4 inch blocking net and seined out from the bank to create a half circle from the bank you could keep most all the predators off the fry. Put the tank in there and put 25% of the fry in the tank and 75% inside the net next to the tank.
















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Twolakes,
What are the demensions of the fry pond you are planning?

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Coach,

I can make is as big as needed, but I was thinking something like 9 Wide x 16 Long x 5 Deep. My pond is about 1.5 feet below normal level at the moment because I need to do a little more work on the levee. I'll fix this pond so it fills up in the fall after I finish the levee this summer. If the experiment works out, I'll probably build a permanent fry pond for future grow out.


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My fry arrived this morning and I distributed them in three different places.

About a week ago, I dug a good sized hole next to the lake and filled it up with lake water. It's been setting for a week, but the water hasn't cleared very well. I released about 20% from one box into this muddy water. Call it 50,000 fry.

Since my fry pond water wasn't clearing as well as I had hoped, I decided to make a cage in the lake out of cheap sheets I purchased at Wal-Mart. I glued and stitched 5 twin size flat sheets end to end to give me about 40 ft of sheet around 5 ft tall. I went to Tractor Supply and purchased 40 ft of heavy chain and glued/stitched the chain along the bottom. I figured this chain would hold the sheet to the uneven contours on the bottom of the lake. I grabbed 5 old 2 x 4s and drove them into the lake bottom to hold my sheet city up. I released one full box and 60% of another box inside the sheets. Call it 400,000 fry.

Finally, I released probably 20% of the second box into the lake without any protection. Call it 50,000 fry.

This weekend, I'm going to make a wooden cage and wrap it in window screen. As soon as the fry get large enough, I'll transfer a bunch into this cage.

My goal is to grow as many as possible around 2 inches and then turn them loose.

Does anyone know how long it take for these tiny fry to reach 2 inches? A 10% success ratio would give me 50,000 2 inch golden shiners and should allow them to establish a niche in the food chain.

I'll try to get some pics to post tomorrow.


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Growth rates are highly dependent on the food... 2 months if food is good, or 6 months if it is poor IME.


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