Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose High Quality Bass Forage, the Lake Chubsucker

Nice!!

with the LCS eating small clams do you think they would also eat small snails as well? Because BG like snails so it would be a win win situation and snails help clean the pond floor, but is there a chance of them overpopulating a pond?

Not if you have LMB!

It would not surprise me if LCS ate snails as well. Probably anything found on the bottom that is living could be consider fair game... And yes, if you have any kind of predator in your pond, LCS are not going to over populate.

At long last, I have LCS in hand!

Here they are in their shipping container:


For an overnight trip from Texas to Virginia in this insane heat, of the 50 or so ship shipped, only 3 definite morts and perhaps 1 other that isn't looking too hot at the moment.


Close up of the better looking dead one:


Two will go in my 125 gallon aquarium for future observation. The rest will be split in half, one half going to my forage fish only pond and the other going into another experimental pond.

Thanks Todd, the fish seem to be in great health. I'll be placing them in their new homes tomorrow.

CJ, good luck with your chubs, are you still having problems with an otter in one of the ponds?

I haven't seen the bugger in a while. So I am hoping he moved on to greener pastures. Should he return, I will do battle and it will not be in a fair way. Fortunately, the forage only pond has no real inflow or outflow so the odds of the otter finding it is highly reduced compared to the larger pond. The LCS are quite active in the aquarium I am holding them in. I treated the water with Tetra Aquasafe and aquarium salt to help them recover from the long trip. Tomorrow I will slip them into their new homes.

CJ -- do you have good overhanging tree canopy? Any beaver ponds or similar features (lowhead dams) that open the canopy and slow (warm) the water? Anything to shade, speed up, and deepen water might make a couple of degrees difference for you and could be helpful? Just brainstorming. You probably thought of this stuff already?

Dave, was this post intended for the other thread about DO and water temp? I'll copy it and move it over there as I think it is and answer it there...

Oops. Wonder how that happened. That took special skill on my part, I'm sure. Thank you.

HAHA, you are a man of many skills! I have done it in the past as well, hard to say how though!

I was able to catch a few pictures of my LCS in my aquarium. So far they are doing well... Absolutely no sign of them in either pond I stocked them in. I am hoping they are gorging themselves on all the tasty stuff growing on there bottoms though. As you can see from the pics, the two LCS have taken on very distinct coloration. One has the typical striping while the other is almost always a darker gray color, almost turning black at times.

Any lake chub sucker updates? I'm interested in stocking these as a supplemental forage fish in virginia. The last post in this thread was from 2009. For anyone who has stocked the lcs, what kind of results have you observed?

Too early to know... we have determined they're very sensitive to handling and difficult to raise in hatcheries.

Yep. Tried to get some from Overtons this Spring, but couldn't.

Did anyone try using salt to alleviate the stress? (Osmotic balance). Wild fish really stress out in artificial settings.

Salt works wonders for me. I don't get morts, morbidity, parasites, or any other problems (knock on wood) when I move fish with 0.5 percent saliinity, dip in 3.0 % salinity (as soon as they lose equilibrium take them out), and keep the fish at 0.2 percent salinity indefinitely in my tank systems.

What's the final word

I am interested in trying to stock these in my new pond to maximize forage base

Anyone?

They will get fairly large (12"+) in the southern waters. If you can keep the weed populations reduce so bass can find the LCS then if they are reproducing and providing year classes each year they should be good forage for all sizes of bass smaller and large.

Good sources?

Didn't see any on overtons website

For sure non available around me

The only commercial source I know of is actually in FL. They ain't cheap though! http://www.aquaculturestore.com/Fresh-Water-Vertebrates/?page=4

If you have a predator free pond, just 10-12 will do. If you give them the chance to spawn a time or two before predators are introduced. Even if you just give them a chance to get big enough to not get eaten, you can then allow them to spawn and hope some of the YOY survive. Or you can buy some of the larger adults they offer.

My LCS have done very well in a .34 acre pond. They spawn in northern VA where I am in late March, early April in the shallows. It is about the only time I ever see the adults. They come into the shallows, the males fan out areas to clear away the silt and then groups spawn in the clean areas.

The YOY are now about 1.5" long this year and rove in schools of a few dozen fish working the bottom for food. 1 year old fish are 3-4", 2 year old fish are 5-6", 3 year old fish are 6-8" and my original stockers from back in 2009 are now 7-10" in size.

Does anyone know where to buy these Chubsuckers in Georgia?

Talk to Greg Grimes at http://lakework.com/site/ He regularly shocks them up when doing electroshock surveys for his clients and may be able to wrangle a few up for you... Otherwise, the only place to get them is in the previous post I made.

CJ, didn't Greg shock up a bunch a while ago and had them slowly die while waiting to ship/transport them?

Yes, the larger adults apparently didn't do well in a holding tank.

Sweet fancy Moses

Is that really the only place to get them

For all the rave reviews about how awesome these are for forage you would think that someone would have figured these guys out by now

Cjbs. I have looked at other species from that site. He is very proud of his inventory