Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Creating habitat Pallets

At what depth do you place pallets around a pond? I put a few out and it seems the ones in the shallowest of water seemed to attract more fry although none are in more then say 3'FOW if even that. I did notice though they seemed to hang around the cinder blocks or rocks I used to submerge them more then the pallet it self. Should the pallet be laying flat on the ground or do you raise it off the bottom with something? I am also thinking about piling blocks and rocks to the surface on all of them so fish can relate to it and any depth. Any ideas or hot spots I should place them or other structure at would be great.

Shallow habitat that is fine and dense is imparitive to grow fry and forage. Fish will use areas they feel most protected in. continue line of habitat from shallow water out to deep water breaks to create a "roadway" for fish to navigate through and hid in. Keep doing what you have been. A combination of wood,rock,weeds and artificial habitat products give fish choices and most balanced. Lots of information in the archives about habitat. Welcome aboard!

Depends what your using the pallets for, fish structure or spawning sites...

I would say fish structure and a place for little fish to hide also.

From 8 to 1 foot. Not sure pallets are your best option though...

Well I get the pallets for free.

I would not use pallets. You do not know where they came from and what chemicals they used to treat them, or what has been saturated, to be released, in and from the wood, to your pond.

Ewest chewed me out a couple years ago, so I deleted my knowledge on pallets from this site.

Proceed as you wish!

I have plastic ones. I wash them before I put them in.

Could actually be worse than a wood pallet!

Just curious, why would plastic pallets in general be worse. I've already had a FHM spawn off the ones I put in this Spring.

I only said that it could be worse!

What type of plastic is it?
Plastic pallets for general merchandise shipping are usually made from reground scrap and trash. Everything is mixed in, and they don't clean it first. A local plastic recycle co. was put out of business by the Fire Marshall due to too many fires. I've seen the process, and no way in hell I would want a product from them. The owner was a lawyer and probably spent more time in court than making product. Some day's our vehicle's were totally covered in plastic dust. I filed three complaints with the EPA and others also did the same. They are out! The Fire Marshall was the the main instrument in getting them shut down. Thumbs up to that guy for sure!

I also work on Elvis from time to time at another recycle Co. Very clean operation and well managed, but they are extremely selective on the materials and do not use trash. They name their systems. Johnny Cash, Hank Williams and Elvis. Elvis has two control systems, so he cant really die! Just has a few hiccups from time to time in either control.
They do come in quite a few different flavors tho. If you see this symbol: on your pallet, it is made from Polypropylene. A very safe material which is chemically inert. Just wash it off and go. FDA compliant and used in the Food and Drug industries. HDPE and UHMWPE are a couple more good plastics. Fiberglass is also good, but expensive. Polyvinyl Acetate is quite inexpensive. A 4x8 sheet 1/16" thick is only about 18 bucks or so. I think I have about 20 or so sheets that are planned for an aquatic device.

It really depends which industry you get your pallets from. New wooden pallets are pretty cheap. The US has recently banned the practice of chemical treatments of wood pallets, along with a number of other countries. The process used today is heat treatment. Basically heating a wood pallet to sterilize it, kill the bug's... The Guv regulates pallet manufacture/processing for anything in or out of the USA.

A number of independent and professional studies have been done on used wood pallets. Mostly at pallet yards/manufactures/refurbishers. The vast majority were contaminated with all kinds of vile stuff. The vile stuff is hard to get rid of.

You have to realize that FHM are the number one environmental assay species used globally in waters. They probably exist at Chernobyl! Kinda tuff little dudes, and if your pallet has chemicals in it that they can survive, why not a spawn. May not be good for the rest of the species in your pond, but could very well be diluted out of the concentration area. Except your FHM are contaminated, and it goes on up thru the food chain. Probably not a major issue, but stuff happens!

Why do some people get cancer? Usually exposure to something their system is not capable of fighting off.

Just need to look at it further, is all I am saying.

JKB, thats some interesting info on pallets. What do you use? I have a couple of old pallets in my pond but I've been using old Christmas trees (no tinsel) and some trees we had to cut down in our yard.

Which reminds me that I have to start a new thread on types of trees for structure.

I am pondless at the moment. When I bought the property a few years ago you could poke a stick in the ground and hit water. I thought cool! My dad lives next door and has always had several sump pumps running in the basement. Two years ago, the ground water seems to have dried up. I am resigned to having to use a liner. The extra cost has pushed a pond on the back burner. What I have planned is to eventually have 3 ponds that are 30ft x 80ft x 8ft deep. One at a time of course.

I would just fabricate structure. An easy and inexpensive material to use is corrugated plastic:

Coroplast, Home Depot

This material is easy to work with. If you use a pizza cutter, you can score it without cutting thru to easily bend it. 10 sheets for 110 bucks, which is pretty cheap. Coroplast is made from Polypropylene, and being corrugated, it is pretty strong for what it is. You can get it cheaper elsewhere, but you have to look out for shipping costs.

It should also work real good for building an RBC similar to Cecil's. Just cut little spacers from the left over material to space the sheets apart. It certainly will be quite a bit lighter than fiberglass.

You can get FDA approved glue's that are waterproof, so it is a very reasonable material to work with.

Will tinsel hurt the pond or fish?

JKB, just saw your edited answer and that all makes sense. I'll check for the symbol.

It was just more confusion to the whole artificial structure culture itself. I've seen pallets, both wood and plastic, old tires, reclaimed concrete, various plastic pipe, etc. used by people here, and always wondered if we were slowly putting poison in our lakes.

I also fully understand the need for the EPA, but my experience with them has not always been good. In some cases they have done an outstanding job here in TX, but I've seen horror stories also, and I've seen them first hand. Like a lot of government agencies, it seems like their results are determined by the guy on the street.

We've had a few instances where problem businesses, like the one you mentioned, were handled very firmly, as they should have been. I've also seen hundreds of gallons of diesel washed down a street drain because overtime for cleanup couldn't be authorized.

I'll check my pallets, and thanks for the info.

Hang on to that thought!

I like the custom pallets,should hold fish in various places and sizes. Sweet!

What method have you guys found to be the best to hold the pallets down? I have used conc. block but sometimes the block is too big and breaking it apart sometimes results in floating pallets. Eventually the wood gets waterlogged but not at first.