Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Raising Forage and Bait Fish Inside

Gracious Theo, at 8.75" (1/2 lb?) that biggie RES could whoop a crappie! Now what would they do if you placed 'em in a pond primed with forage habitat, snails, FH's, crawdads, and no other real predators? My daddy would say, "Two niches for 1 fish is good." Got my fingers, as well as my toes, crossed for your RES project. Don't forget your 'black-eyed peas' today or you won't have too much luck in '07.

Nice redears, Theo! What have you been feeding? Krill, pellets? Tell us more.

BM:

A short version of my feeding roster
1) New in tank: Daily-krill, weekly-earthworms.

2) After krill being eaten on surface by most RES: Daily-krill + 40% protein cichlid pellets (slowly adjusting ratio to all pellets), weekly-earthworms/mealworms.

3) Final pellet diet: Daily pellets (slowly switching from cichlid pellets to larger/cheaper 40% protein Aquamax carnivore), weekly-earthworms/mealworms/krill. I am currently feeding about 75% Aquamax and 25% cichlid pellets.

The weekly natural food supplement is based on info ewest has provided suggesting it helps nutritionally. More than once a week may be advisable, but I am seeing if a weekly supplement will work.

I also toss in a single krill each day when the RES have finished eating pellets, to reward agressive surface feeders. It often causes a couple of uneaten pellets to be eaten by the krill race losers.

SoSauty:

I don't have any Black-Eyed Peas music, would listening to The Raspberries or Meatloaf instead also be lucky?

quote by Theo: I don't have any Black-Eyed Peas music, would listening to The Raspberries or Meatloaf instead also be lucky?

Wasn't Meatloaf on New Year's Eve pathetic?
No, I didnt watch it; just caught the touching duo of Meatloaf and that young chick.

burgermeister,

Meatloaf wasn't on the New Year's Day menu around here! (yuk!)

Also on the Rocking Eve, was Fergy, OF The Black Eyed Peas. Talk about Hot, as in Hottest on the Planet. For sure, the end of The Black Eyed Peas!

Anyone forget the Collard Greens for Wealth? Seems this Pond hobby would demand a double or triple helping of the Greens.

Fish tanks with flow thru vs no water flowing thru are very different. Never having owned an aquarium, I had to educate myself to the "new tank cycle." Apparently, ammonia has to build up, then convert to fertilizer, then bacteria and phytoplankton get started which eventually lowers the ammonia. Correct me if this wrong. Anyway, I started with a couple of gallons of river water and a sploch of Java moss. A few days in I added some 'alfalfa tea' to provide plant material to decay. A 25% weekly water change was made. PH swung around and now holds steady around 7.1. There's 8 T. salt in the 135 or so gallons of water. The ammonia crept up to 0.06 stressful level after the 1st week and stayed there for 10 days. This worried me as my new 4" & 4.5" RES had to go into this mildly toxic water. Great news though, no fish died and the ammonia has dropped to a 0.01 safer level these last 4 days. I thought this worth mentioning as I had no notion of the 'new fish tank cycle' before setting up the tank. Bluegrass helps me be a societal drop out.

im gonna use a 100 gallon tank used to water horses. it will be in our storage room and im gonna use an aquarium filter and airator. it will be used to breed FH year round as a constant snack for the LMB in my new pond. along with this set up iv got another one. during the summer i will use a kid pool 100-200 gallons to raise BG and other sunfish that are small then i'll take the ones that meet my standards and put them in the pond. the ones that dont will get to go into the 100 gallon tank for the winter if the FH population isn't to dense. i raised some common minnows from a nearby steam in a friends aquarium we went from 20 to more then we could count in the matter of a month or 2. we introduced them into a small stream that spring and they established a population as they are still there 5 years later. there was no minnows in there before

Hi just wanted to see if you had some follow up information on this and if you could supply some pictures of your setup.

I am new to this and wanting to get something setup at my house.

I think it would be fun to see if I could even get something to work, if I grow some minnows then I will have plenty of bait to use throughout the year, my kids would love to watch them, and I can move some to our ponds for nice snack.

Thanks in advance.

MRHELLO, I think all you'd need would be a simple aquarium setup to grow minnows for fishing if that's your goal. Get a bigger tank - at least 75 gallons, I'd think - so you have room to add the sort of structure preferred by the fish you would choose to raise. Aquariums are a lot of fun, especially for kids, and can give a good idea of fish behavior to some extent. There is a lot of info here on aquariums or as they are also referred to when they are little more purpose oriented than an aquarium tends to be (in my opinion), an RAS (I think that stands for recirculating aquaculture system, but it's just a bigger word for an aquarium!). Do a search on both here on the forum and you'll find a ton of info.

Todd, I searched for RAS and I don't think the search function works with so few letters. I revised the search by not using the acronym and it worked.

I ran the search through Google - waaaaaaay better than the search function here within the site (Note - TJ, the search function here in the forum SUCKS! I'm sure it's a function of the UBB software, though, because there's no way you'd put your stamp of approval on something that bad!) - and it came up with a lot of results. I have switched to searching for threads here exclusively through Google.

Just go to Google and type in this search and take a look at how it comes up - ras site:pondboss.com - it's the best and easiest way to search for info here in my opinion.

The current search function is bad? Todd, it's 100 times better than it was. I find it quite easy to find things now, though I haven't used the Google option to compare.

I haven't tried the internal search function here in awhile because it never really helped me find what I was after. If it's been updated, then my apologies to Mr. Hudson!

I take no credit or blame for anything software related - frankly, I've always experienced well documented challenges using the forum search function. What I do welcome is a list of concerns and ideas and I can forward them to UBB as they are currently working on their upgrades and may in fact listen and implement your suggestions/ideas/concerns.

My biggest beef with the search function has always been that it just isn't intuitive and I have rarely been able to make it do what I thought it would do. I'm used to fairly complex search databases from some subscription legal research services that I use regularly, but none of that experience has ever helped me get this search engine to work. The Google approach, though, has worked flawlessly for me since someone posted on how to use it for site searches.

TJ, I trust you know I wasn't in any way taking a shot at you - I know that the search engine here is driven by the software and that you have absolutely no control over that, bro. Just having a little fun messing with you over it, but this is sometimes a poor medium of communication for conveying the pure good natured jesting that is intended with a message.

Naw, I took no offense - did not interpret that as a barb at all! I've got thick hide and am just ignorant enough to not notice when someone IS messing with me.

TJ, you know that nobody's dissatisfied with anything you've done - you're responsible for
many good things that have happened to this site lately. Don't take any of this personally,
and please continue to help us get better. Got to go, I'm starting to tear up...

I tried a very simple search yesterday using (2) very common terms with and without linking them with a +. It was no help at all.
The search function always has been, and it seems it will remain worthless...This since WAY before any changes and upgrades which have made the forum a much friendlier place for we that are cyber challenged....TJ, thanks a bunch for taking the bull by the horns and
helping get much needed changes incorporated.

Thanks guys - the forum members deserved the improvements. We're working on lots of new stuff, too. Hopefully we'll be rolling these changes out soon as my schedule permits. Appreciate the support, boys!