Pond Boss Forums FISH & FISHING Show off your catch HBG gape.

The last thing a 1.5" LMB minnow ever sees...

That one could probably eat a much bigger LMB minnow.

The 7" RES I have in my aquarium are eating FHM's a little over 2" long, they do have a preference FHM's under 1-3/4" in size.

Wow! Nice one spark.

Nice fish!

I would have a very hard time not eating it, though.

That HBG could eat a 6 inch LMB.

Tony, you just keep pulling brutes out. Strong work.

love them marble eyes... toad!!!!

I think my HBG have reached a size that they're now preying on the FH's. I'm seeing a lot of panic reactions from them, many going airborn in flight. Right now, I have no predators, and the population of FH's is simply mind blowing. That will change in 3 weeks when I get my WE and SMB.

Yes it will! How big are your stocker WE and SMB going to be?

CJ is right and you may need to source some FH soon.

If you haven't stocked GSH, depending on goals now would be a good time to stock them as well. If you can find larger "brooder" GSH, you don't need many. Just 50-100 per acre will do.

I am really curious as to how much the predators will clean house on the FH's. I'm only adding a total of 50 in the one acre pond, so there should be enough food for awhile unless the HBG eat more than anticipated. I also feed them. The only other fish in the pond are RES, so there's very little reproduction going on--altho' I did have some. The WE are 6-8", and the SMB 2-3".

CJ, I would love some GSH but haven't sourced any yet. I may have to mail order some. Later, I also intend to add a few HSB, so I know I'll need a better forage base than what I've got.

By the way, do RES eat FHM?? My HBG are just around 8", but the RES are very respectable already. I had a huge snail population that disappeared in no time.

Yes they do! They are FHM eating machines in low light level conditions.

I have five 7"+ RES in an aquarium at the moment that will eat almost two dozen small FHM's once the lights go out.

Shorty, how often will they eat the FHM? i.e. how many FHM would they eat in a week?

They would eat FHM's every single night if I let them. Two dozen every other night is what I have tested.

In the last 2-1/2 weeks I'm guessing my five RES have eaten somehwere in the nieghborhood of 220 small FHM's. 95% of the FHM's are getting eaten after the lights go out. When I put 2 dozen FHM's in the tank there might be 4 or 5 left in the morning when I turn lights on. When the aquarium light is on my RES tend to hang out near the bottom in the darkest part of the tank and just watch the the FHMs swim around, as soon as the light turns off it's "game on" chasing FHMs around the tank.

Based on what I have seen I suspect that RES have extremely light sensitive eyes. I believe it is the primary reason they do not pellet train easily and why they tend to hang out in deep water during the day.

If true then there are some real world implications for pellet training RES....

Shorty, night time fish feeding with pellets for RES?

Possibly, at the very least pellet feeding at the crack of dawn and last light of the day, using shaded cages, basically feed training under very subdued lighting conditions. RES do see well enough in the dark to catch small fish but they don't seem to see all that well during the daylight. My guess is that they have a hard time just seeing and targeting pellets on the surface under normal daylight conditions, it's simply too bright. I know that they catch very few minnows during the day when the tank light is on.

The used aquarium I picked up on Craig's list came with high dollar lighting system. I am only running one of the four compact flourecent bulbs and only on one end of the tank. My five RES stay as far away from it as a possible most of the time, they also tend to hang out on the bottom half of the tank when it's on. As soon as the light is turned off they start chasing FHMs around the tank and move up into the top half of the tank.

This last week I have been testing what size of FHM my RES will eat and what they won't due to their gape. FHM minnows over 2-1/4" seem to be too large for my RES to capture and eat.

Now I know where they got the 'look' for Admiral Ackbar from Star Wars.