Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations Yellow-perch spawn 2022.

Hello.

You can put a Spotlight above the water , you will attract Zooplankton and you just have to pick it up with a bucket just be careful that there are no predatory insects but in my pond with the fish I have never seen a predatory insects.

I put a picture as an axample, on the picture you can see small Daphnia attracted by light.
Depending on the season you will attract different critters.
There are so many that for my needs I put a small pump under the spot.

https://ibb.co/VwW7FMh
But Daphnia is for the fry, for your larvae it takes very small Zooplankton like Mr Cody said.

Or you can make infusoria, take a one liter jar with pond water, for the bacteria you can use bread, hay or milk if not pasteurized, in Europe they use milk to raise different Zooplankton, because it is not pasteurized.
In canada all the milk is pasteurized, I don't know in the U.S.A
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April 4th 2022 and no yellow perch ribbons yet. Last year it was April 3rd.
This year our ice was out almost 3 weeks later than last year.
London Ontario Canada eh.

Cheers, Don.

I found my first ribbon of the year today, but I haven't had much time to look this year.

Found mass ribbons on last Thursday. laid on structures built from Tumbleweeds in 4' water. Filled a 5gal bucket with ribbons which are now in containment in hatch tank. Water temp early am Thurs was 48 degs.
First 2 days and prior to placing in cage structure, eggs were treated with H2O2 at 1 rate, since cut in half per day until eye-up.

Were those tumbleweed structures deliberately placed in the pond by you, or placed in the pond courtesy of strong western Kansas winds?

Either way, do you leave them in the pond after the ribbon deposition period to shelter fry, or do you pull the tumbleweeds from the pond before they degrade?

Just back from a 10 day road trip. I see the egg ribbons are now floating, looking like they are decomposing somewhat. We had colder than usual temps and the neon algae has dropped to the bottom and the water has cleared quite a bit. Not much fungus on them but I'm seeing a big proportion of the eggs are brilliant white. It seems most of the top surface of the strands are all individual white eggs. I think Dr. Perca (Bill) told us once that these were not fertilized. I'm wondering where my male YP have gone to or why such a big proportion did not get fertilized this year.

The recruitment of YP has been very poor which I felt was related to predation of the fry by the large population of SFS and a few large GSH, but perhaps there is a male factor to blame here?

Come on Ontario!! Dono, any ribbons yet???

Both.. The ones I choose are sunken by the trunk with a brick tied to it. Many blow in on their own, but I take everything out when perch are done. Just additional organic load to cause problems.

Thanks, Kenny.

Good to know that tumbleweeds can be substituted for cedars. They are certainly free and in abundant supply for the people that live in tumbleweed alley!

Tumbleweeds having provided some serious insight into my perch numbers. I'm trying to extract ribbons in a fashion they can be counted as "one".. Today I ran the structures again and several are about 3' diameter and 4' tall. 2 of those structures today looked like they had been completely wrapped with toilet paper. I have filled 3 4'X4' ribbon cages in hatch tank now. That's half of the area available. Tonight my wife was out looking around while I was doing some fertilizing in 2 of my growouts.. she comes out and says "better come look at this"... I went inside and looked into tank, Millions of perch larva.
I have my H2O2 tank on a scale and I've put in the range of 30-32lbs of ribbons in hatch tank.
Ribbons appear to be about 70-75% fertilized based on white mass left unfertilized. Obviously this is by far the most ribbons I have ever seen by the hundreds. I'm torn between leaving some or pulling them all.. On one side, they feed other species, on the other, not sure it's good to have that many mouths to feed later. Some of those ribbons are 6-8" wide and 5-6' long. If I use our WAE formula to estimate egg numbers, one of those ribbons is well over 350,000 eggs???
If my numbers are even close that's 28 million eggs I've removed so far...?!?!?

WOW! you are doing something right to encourage those YP to grow and reproduce!! Fantastic that you have conditions right for larva in the egg tanks. I would think keeping enough of the right kind of plankton and little critters around for the tiny fish to become fry might be tricky too.

The best part is that you can provide YP for other pond meisters or improve the fish variety in your local pond or in a HOA water body.

I agree with canyoncreek, you have a GOOD dilemma to resolve!

The standing weight of tiny fry is so small, that 28 million+ is not a problem - if you have sufficient fry-eating predators in the pond.

Please keep posting your adventures at Snipe Ponds! I think a lot of people enjoy following your progress.

Good luck with your 28 million babies! I hope they all send you a Mother's Day card this year.

Hello.

As usual I have a lot of eggs, they even lay in the Roll of mesh that I had left in the pond.

Currently I install a production tank of Daphnias, Aselles and Azteca.

When the fry will be big enough I will install traps to attract flies for their larvae.(My excuses)

I found another study on chicken eggs.

https://aquaculture.ugent.be/Services/newsl/1997/nl039/a21.htm
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azteca good information about chicken egg emulsion. Thanks.
What do your traps for perch fry look like? Do you place traps under the night light?

Hello.

I will try Paddy rice rafts.

I want to produce organic fry, without fishmeal and compare.
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I am not sure what inorganic fry are?

Snipe - How long ago did those larval perch hatch??. They appear to be about 3/4" long?

That pic is 1 day-old. about 3/16".

Hello.

Maybe that's not the right term in English.

Google said Bio = Organic.

Here there are more and more Bio food.

People are ready to pay 2 to 3 times the prices for Bio food, it's crazy.
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People bought pet rocks too,

We have now found our first ribbons April 13th 2022. We had 5 ribbons in two days then another 4 ribbons in 2 days. Then we had a cold snap with snow today on Easter. Only one ribbon since the cold spell.

No spring peepers yet as the frost has just left the ground. We expect to see high temps mid next week in the 15C temp and expect to see more ribbons.

Cheers Don.

I've yet to observe a perch ribbon in my pond this spring. The first couple springs after stocking it made me nervous not seeing
what I thought I should be seeing, but it has become obvious that they're using offshore cover to do their thing.

Snipe - are you feeding the newly hatched YP or moving them into a pond with zooplankton as food items?

Hello.

Rice Paddy, If it works I will make bigger raft for my small pond.

https://ibb.co/tz276cm
https://ibb.co/T0HFVLP
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I moved them into fertilized ponds Bill. Had a 3wk head start fertilizing so adding 10lbs per week alfalfa pellets. Hope to pull them in 30-35 days and move into feed tank. Will be about 3 weeks ahead of SMB, hope the timing works out.