Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Ok, how about a FH/RES pond?

ewest, the only thing I would adjust is the weight of the FH yoy compared to the RES fingerling. I wouldn't be surprised if it took 20 of the FH to equal the weight of the RES that ate it. The good news is that the pond is loaded with similar yoy.

I stocked 110 RES into my new pond on March 21. The fish averaged about 1.25 inches at that time. On April 22 I began adding adult RES that ranged from 5 - 8 inches.

I'm pretty sure that the RES have spawned over the past few weeks. I started seeing schools of fry after the FH were finished spawning and I think I only have the 2 species. I know the RES spawned (I trapped some) in my neighbor's pond and we added fish from the same source at the same time.

Yesterday I noticed some beds in very shallow water and on closer inspection I saw that they were RES. Most of them were 3 - 4 inches long and they must be from the 110 small fish I stocked in March. Should I be surprised that these very young fish are showing spawning behavior?

I was also surprised at how shallow the water is where they're bedding. Some of them are in water that is no deeper than 8 inches. One of the larger RES that I transferred from Mr H's pond is bedding near the smaller fish, also in very shallow water.

Here's a link to the video I took of them. The fish are smaller than they look in the video. The fish in the lower left hand corner is no more than 4 inches long.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7X5B8YaSTB4

Dang GW, great video, really clear. Looks like you are raising some studly RES.

I though that you caught a UFO on tape for a second there but after watching it a second time I think it was a dragonfly.

This truly is a great video of RES on a spawing bed.

Thanks JHAP, I'm going to try and record them spawning.

I just got back from the pond and I offered several black soldier fly larvae to the bedding RES. I believe they don't eat much when they're guarding a bed but what the heck. One fish that is an adult stocked this spring ate one larvae. I imagine this could have been a protective behavior, but it took the food the way I've seen fish normally feeding. This particular RES isn't on a bed continuously at this point so maybe it's still actively feeding. Next time I try this I'll have my camera.

I was using the final stage coffee colored larvae today and I don't think they are as attractive to fish as the grub colored stages. I hope that fish will get acclimated to dark BSFL because they are the cleanest to handle and they're self harvesting.

I was definitely wrong about bedding RES not eating much. I shot a video a few days ago and one of them must have eaten 3 dozen small BSF larvae. I guess they were wary of a new type of food initially, but now they're fighting to get to them. I'll post a video of a feeding session soon.

It seems like my RES have been spawning for several weeks now. I'm really surprised by how shallow the beds are. The pond is at full pool now and if I lost a foot of water almost all of the beds would be dry.



Another thing that surprised me is that out of the initial 24 adult RES stocked this year they all seem to be in the same area. I counted 11 (males?) on these beds. Safety in numbers? When I feed them the BSF larvae I see other RES (females?) in the deeper water close to the beds. It's great because I'm able to see the condition of most of the adults that I stocked. I'm happy to say they all look fat and sassy.

Some of the 1.25 inch RES I stocked in mid March are also making beds. They range in size from 3 - 4 inches and some of them are right in the middle of the larger fish. I'm assuming they aren't much more than a year old. Is it possible they could spawn or are they just "playin house"?

Here's one with a quarter for reference:



I'm throwing these RES fish pellets along with the black soldier fly larvae. Sometimes I'll see one take a pellet by reflex, but from what I've seen they've been spitting them out. I guess I wouldn't want dry toast if there were cheeseburgers everywhere.

GW, thanks for the great documentary. I haven't been keeping up with this one enough. Interesting about them spitting out the pellets. I was hoping they would eat them. I found a few of my larger small male BG bedding 2 wks. ago. Them hammer the pellets thrown over them. Seems like a good way from to keep them from loosing so much body wt. Keep it coming. This will be very important for future pondmeistering.

Tropical storm Fay ended this experiment by introducing BG, WM, and Shiners to my pond, at least that's what I've found so far.

The WM came from my neighbor's upstream pond where I stocked them in spring 08. They apparently spawned very well because my pond is now loaded with WM from 1.5" to 6", but mostly in the 2-3" range.

The BG and Shiners came up from the creek. I sampled my pond for the first time yesterday and out of 6 or 7 dozen fish (mostly WM) I caught 3 BG and 3 Golden Shiners. The biggest shiner was 6".

Now that I have the BG and Shiners I need to get some large predators. I would love to add a small number of grass and chain pickerel as well as Florida or spotted gar.

I think I need to watch the WM because they will hit any yoy hard. I know LMB will control the WM, but I don't want a pond full of small bass.

I think the WM might do a good job of controlling the RES population under 2-3" for now and larger as the WM grow. I think the small WM should be fairly easy to control by angling and I pulled out several dozen yesterday.

I don't trust my scale very much, but here's a few photos from my first day fishing this pond:

LOOKS GREAT GW!!!!

Man, with all the teeth in your pond, I would LOVE to be one of you BSF on the wall to watch anyone trying to swim in there!!!!!

Thanks RM, the life expectancy of a BSF larvae in my pond is about 5 seconds.

Here are a few more from yesterday.

I've got to admit, I really like the thumbnail format. You can blow those things up huge and see all sorts of detail.

Great pictures.

those are great GW. especially that last one blown up, really beautiful fish. the first pics....thats a nice sized WM.

you must be a proud papa.

Thanks Dave.

I think the last photo you're talking about is my new sig photo. It's a cropped version of one of the pics in my post from today.

The WM have only been in my pond for about 7 weeks, since TS Fay dropped 15" of rain on us. I still am the papa to some degree because I stocked Mr. H's pond upstream. Both of our ponds have had a lot of FH so the WM have been stuffing themselves. IIRC I stocked 40-50 WM fingerlings last April/May and about a dozen adults. Now I'm trying to guess if individual fish are the fingerlings or YOY.

All you BSF fans out there notice how GW hooked his bait. With the BSFL you don't have to "thread" the hook through the bait. Just hook it anywhere - the fish don't nibble it, they hammer it.

Nice pics GW. Lots of iridescence in those fish. Do you have any FH left ? That one BGish looking fish may have some other (RES) genes in there also.

rm, it sounds like you've been putting your BSF to good use.

ewest, I almost mentioned the idea of some mixed genes when I noticed the orange on the tab and pattern of spots on the side. I looked up some WM images and I did find a few with a bit of orange on the tab so I forgot about it. If you remember these fish come from a very small pond with only FH, WM and RES. The pond is bowl shaped with no plants or structure and the water tends to be murky. When I stocked the fingerlings and adults there were plenty of FH, but they seem to be much more scarce now. Round bellied WM are not uncommon though...

edit: I just remembered another thing that I noticed while culling some fish. (I'm already removing small WM) Sometimes when I collected a small fish (1.5-2") I've thought they were a RES, and then I see WM traits and call it a WM. I'll try to get a pic of some of these.

Interesting GW, a WM/RES hybrid?

A few people at the NANFA forum are calling it straight WM. One of them has experience crossing WM and RES. Here's his comment:

HYBRIDIZATION OF FISHES IN NORTH AMERICA
(FAMILY CENTRARCHIDAE)
by

W.F. CHILDERS


R × RW, W × RW, B × RW, G × RW, R × GB, and RB × W young were killed after they developed into free-swimming fry because of the lack of ponds in which they could be stocked. All six kinds of fry appeared to be normal and probably would have developed into adults. Free-swimming fry of the remaining six crosses in the laboratory were stocked in ponds and did develop into adult fishes. BW × B, G × GW, and B × RG populations produced large numbers of young.



Both WR and WB F1 hybrids exhibited high mortality between the hatching and swim-up fry stages. At the time the experiments were terminated, only two percent of the WR hybrids and one percent of the WB hybrids appeared to be morphologically normal. All of these morphologically normal-appearing WR and WB F1 hybrid fry were very sluggish. When petri dishes containing these hybrid fry were tapped with a pencil, the fry responded with weak swimming movements or not at all, and it is very doubtful that any of these fry would have become free swimming. Fifty-five percent of the WG hybrids and 75 percent of the pure green sunfish zygotes developed into normal-appearing swim-up fry (difference significant to 0.05 level). The WG hybrid swim-up fry appeared to be behaving normally. The remaining nine kinds of hybrids were not significantly different from their maternal parent species in the percentages that developed into normal swim-up fry.

Table III

Successful backcrosses, outcrosses, four-way cross, and another cross involving F1 hybrid sunfishes.1

Backcross -Outcrosses -Three-Species Cross -Four-Species cross
♂ × ♀

R × RW ---R × GB ------RB × GW ----------------BW × GW
G × GW ---R × BW
W × RW ---R × GW
BW × B ---B × RG
-----------R × RW
-----------G × RW
-----------RW × W


1 R = red-ear sunfish, B = bluegill, G = green sunfish, W = warmouth.