Pond Boss Forums FISH & FISHING Sunfish-Including Largemouth and Smallmouth Bass Smallmouth fingerling harvest pictures

The crappie preferred the sticklebacks?

Yep...I couldn't believe it the first time we did the test! We have repeated the test enough times now, with the same results, that we almost use exclusivley sticklebacks and BG's when using live bait for BCP.

My ponds were loaded with them before stocking fish so maybe its just what they are use to chasing. I don't know. I know they eat young fish but I haven't had any issuses on fish recruitment.

I hate hooking those sticklebacks but they are one tough minnow.

I had a few smally fingerlings die from choking on a fish a little smaller. I'm starting to wonder if the fish they were choking on were sticklebacks. (the raised spine).

Shorty,

I would bet once they got hungry enough they would all feed on the dry pellets especially with some of them already doing so.

Perhaps initially not pinch the hydrated pellets to allow them to stay a float and then go to dry pellets?

I'll force the issue when the new bag of feed arrives. I do know there is an interesting dynamic between food deprivation and choosiness that will need to play itself out, it might take a few days.

Every couple of days one of my larger SMB grabs a finger tip when when I'm dropping pellets in the tank.

One thing I have noticed is that with big water change outs also comes significant drops in the tank temperature, it seems like an 6-8 degree drop in tank temp really seems to put them off eating for several days, so I avoid doing it.

Shorty once your filter gets established you shouldn't have to do more than a 10 percent water change per day which shouldn't drop your temp too much.

OTOH, have you considered letting make up water stand for a while in a separate container to get the temperature up?

I will soon have two makeshift iron filters which also warm up the water at the same time. The one I am using now is two barrels side by side with one stuffed with bunched up deer fence netting and filter pads.

The water is pulled up through the filter material via a pump that rests on top of the material in one tank which takes the water to the adjacent tank that lacks filter material. It then gets pulled back up a u tube siphon tube back to the bottom of the filter material in the other tank. Once you get enough iron build up in the filter material the filter works even better. At it's peak I can produce 50 gallons of crystal clear make water in 24 hrs.

The last time I ignored the iron it built up and caked terribly on my RBC.

On another note I have noticed I have a indeterminant number of smallmouth fingerlings in my big pond that were produced with no effort on my part. They seem to be perfect size for feed training at about 1 1/4 inches.

I'm going to do some seining of the shoreline and see if i can pick up enough to come up with 1000 smallmouth.

[quote=Cecil Baird1]I got up at the crack of dawn to check for the Kingfischer and run him off. (While pond is low and fish are vulnerable). No Kingfischer the first three checks. Took a short snooze, went out and there he was. LOL


I had one take an albino cat 10 minutes after I stocked it

Very cool! Let us know how it goes.

Cecil right now I am doing 10-20% water change outs daily and the water temp only drops 2-3 degrees. I was doing bigger change outs (20-33%) daily before the bio-filter went in in early May. I have only done big water change outs (60-70%) when the tank walls need some scrubbing. One thing I should mention is that my tank is insulated so large drops in the water temp take while to rebound. So far this year I haven't seen waters temps get above 78 degrees in my tank. My SMB do seem to take pellets best when the water temps are above 72-74 degrees. The AM500 I ordered came in yesterday, I just need to pick it up.

As a novice I am really interested in hearing how your pellet training goes, keep us up to date.

I'll keep you posted.

I use a couple of aquarium heaters for my system. One is 1000 watts that goes into the big tank and I'm not sure what the smaller on is off hand but it goes into the biofilter
smaller tank.

What I'm dealing with is at the feeding rate the fingerlings need, dirties up the water quickly. I am doing two water changes a day right now. Can't wait until they are a little larger and on floating pellets.

Edit:
Ammonia and nitrites dropped to a trace today. Apparently the biofilter is adapting.

I'm interested!!!!!

This morning ammonia was zip as were nitrites. Now I should be able to go back to a 10 percent water change per day.

I've got a homemade iron filter on line to keep iron out of the system and will have a second one on line soon, which will make one for each tank.

The iron doesn't hurt the fish at the concentration I'm adding but it builds up on the RBC which reduces space for the beneficial bacteria. It also looks disgusting.

The fish seem to be eating the artificial feed but not as aggressively as I'd like yet.

No morts after just one and no moribund fish.

Feeding better on dry feed today;both size groups. Some of larger ones even snapped the sinking feed off the surface before it sank. They must have been extra hungry after a night of no feeding.

Ammonia was 0.25 and nitrites zip this morning. Considering how much waste I dumped out of the filter that's pretty good.

That is what you want. Eat , grow and go. Kind of like a hog farm.

Thanks for the reports. Pics are helpful.

Eric,

I will take pics ASAP. The water seems to stay cloudy though and I'm not sure how much one would see. It may be the well water I've been adding that is only partially filtered of iron due to only recently only one homemade iron filter on line. I've got two iron filters on line now and once there is enough iron build up in the filter material I should be adding crystal clear water for every water change in BOTH tanks -- if iron is the issue. It could be the fine feed that is clouding the water too.

One issue with pics is a flash is needed due to the low light conditions and the flash spooks the fish.

Cecil, Mike found out last winter that cloudy water in the RAS led to a ammonia and Nitrite spike a few days later. Once the filter caught up the cloudiness went away and the readings dropped considerably.

Scott,

I don't believe that is it in my case as I've been monitoring ammonia and nitrites and they are very good. Ammonia may get as high as .25 ppm and nitrites stay at 0 but sometimes go to 0.25 ppm.

It's probably a combination of the fine feed and the iron. I should have bought a separate filter to polish the water. I'm hoping I don't have bacterial gill issues as typically one uses flow through due to the high feeding rate and fine feed that is fed to fish of this size. I can't wait until I get them on floating and there won't be as much waste and mess!

Here are a couple pics of the smaller ones in the larger tank. They stay low until I start throwing in the feed and they they come up for it. Here some have come up and are feeding.

That water IS cloudy!!

It also looks green from the flash but it's brown.

Cecil, are you feeding AM400?

It looks a bit funky Cecil. Any idea what the TDS are in the pictures?

No or low natural light will change the way the color appears. Could be iron as it responds to light as brown in water. Does look a little turbid. Thanks for the pics. Those guys have grown a bunch.

Thanks for the clarification Eric. I did ask a legitimate question tho.

No but I have some on order. I'm still feeding 200 to the smaller ones and 300 to the bigger ones.

No don't have any way to measure it. However I am doing at least one partial water change per day and the filter is catching a lot of waste.

Once the homemade iron filters can produce gin clear water in 24 hours the water should clear up. Also once I get them on floating feed that will reduce a lot of the waste.