Pond Boss Forums FISH & FISHING Sunfish-Including Largemouth and Smallmouth Bass Pellet training RES

I have 6 dozen RES from last year's spawn that I am pellet training out in my shop. I think that if things continue as they have I will end up with 70-80% of them eating pellets off the surface of the tank in the next month. Right now that is how many I have that are currently eating slow sinking pellets. I do have a handful of RES that never come to the surface but have become great tank cleaners sucking pellets off the bottom of the tank.

The turning point seems to have occurred last week, just by happenstance I went to check on my fish several hours after feeding them and decided to drop a small number (5-10 pellets) in the tank with my 50+ larger RES and they seemed to get mildly competitive with the small amount of food that was introduced. I would wait a minute or two and repeat with another small amout of food. They are extremely competitive with blood worms and nightcrawlers but have not been so with pellets. To me it looked like they were eating the pellets simply to keep the fish next to them from getting the pellet when only a small number of pellets were put in the tank, prior to this it was pretty common to watch them suck in a pellet and take turns spitting it out. I started doing this routine every night and now even one I thought was going to starve himself has started eating pellets.

The funny thing is now when I stand next to the tank most of they come up to the surface and stare at me me expecting to be fed.

There are probably some other factors at play as well.

Great update Shorty! That's a cool project and looks like they're taking to it very well.

That's one chunky looking RES!

There are much chunkier ones.

I did a random net sample last night and six of the seven RES I pulled out of the tank were chunky with just one average looking RES and one super chunky 2" RES.

My wife took picures last night while I put them back in the tank one by one but most of the pictures were a little blurry. The picture I posted was one of the less blurry ones.

What kind of tank setup are you using? How big and how many RES are you keeping in it?

I have 55 (estimate) RES in the 2-3"+ size range in a 300 gallon fiberglass aqualculture tank and another 16 RES in the 3/4" to 1-3/4" size range in another 75 gallon aquaculture tank.

My RES spawned for the first time last year and I suspect the larger fish I am pellet trainning are simply larger because they are less picky and more aggressive eaters than the smaller fish that I have from last years spawn. I think this is one of the reasons I have such a high percentage of them eating pellets.

Nice work Shorty. Post a timeline with what you did/fed etc . RES can be pellet trained and this is more proof of that.

It's a strange timeline of events that started at the end of May with my wife and I salvaging RES out of our pasture after heavy rains that washed them and thousands of BF tadpoles out of the pond. 28 larger RES and 40 smaller RES were initially salvaged over several days. Since then they were graded by size and put in two different tanks. I have traded the smaller ones away for a variety of small pellets to try out and have added some additional larger RES from seining on two different occasions a few weeks apart. Adding more RES to my bigger tank without increasing the amount of bloodworms they were fed kind of forced them to start eating pellets or go hungry, it also made them more food competitive.

Here is what they have been fed, I started with frozen bloodworms and mini slow sinking cichlid pellets that I picked up at the pet store. At first very few of them would eat pellets, mostly they took turns sucking them in and spitting them out until they hit the bottom of the tank. After trading the smaller RES away I started using AM300 which they like much better than the pet store pellets even though they are the same size. I am also grinding AM500 in a coffee bean grinder and sorting out the larger chunks and now mixing it in with the bloodworms they get. I have been slowly decreasing the amount of bloodworms they get daily and increasing the pellet chunks in their twice a day bloodworm treat. I started giving them sliced up night crawlers two weeks ago in part to get the super agressive eaters something in their stomach so the less agreesive eaters had more of chance to eat some of the bloodworms and pellets, it seems to have worked.

I also have 16 smaller RES from my last seining two weeks ago that are getting micro pellets and the smaller coffee bean ground stuff. They seem to eat the ground stuff better than the micro pellets even though the micro pellets are higher in protein.

Shorty -- I sure hope it works. As I recall, Theo Gallus was successful in getting his to eat pellets. I believe you were an active forum member when he was doing it. Somewhere here on the site there is probably a thread about how he did it -- but as I recall,it wasn't that different from what you've been doing.

I tried it in a cage a number of years ago. Feeding redworms, dehydrated krill, ground feed pellets, etc. It worked for several weeks, then something happened. It is long enough ago that I don't remember exactly what happened. I just remember a bunch of them died, so I let the remainder go into the pond. I believe I have a reasonable population of RES in that pond, but I'd sure like to have a lot more. I probably catch less than five a year, and they go right back in. I see them spawning each spring, so something is happening.

Good luck. Keep us posted. I'd still like to try again.

Ken

I must of missed Theo's thread on pellet training RES, I will have to see if I can find it. My wife is pretty sure she saw a 5" RES eating pellets the other night at the pond when she was feeding my fish for me .

Here are few better pictures of some of the fish that are that are taking my pellet training class.

Male?


Female?

I sent Theo a couple studies on feed training RES and away he went.

See these

http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=135916&page=1

http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=131530&page=1


http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Board=8&Number=113255&page=1

Thanks Eric! Those are good reads, especially the second one!

I am doing pretty much the exact same thing with LMB, RES and crappie.

The LMB and res started at ~2" but i was only able to find 3" hyrbid crappie.

The LMB are completely feed trained. The RES are quazi feed trained in that they eat pellets but most will only take a pellet after it starts to sink and it is better if they are already softened by soaking.

The crappie still only eat blood worms. I cannot even get them to try saturated/sinking freeze dried krill.

I have 6 crappie in a 60 gallon aquarium. I added 2 of the closer to feed trained RES and 1 completely feed trained LMB to the same tank to help with competition but hopefully not introduce too much competition.

next year i am going to work very hard to find smaller crappie to work with, after reading other threads on feed training on this forum and my own limited experience it seems like it is a lot easier to feed train under 2" sized fingerlings than full grown fish. Remember fry eat zooplankton and such that is floating around in the water until they get big enough to eat snails, insects, crustaceans or smaller fish. It seems logical they would take to pellets/crumbles easier at this stage since they are already used to eat food that doesnt move very much.


Brian

Now the third link works.

Please keep us posted with your results.

In my older/lower pond, besides the bluegill (which are the majority), I have a limited number of LMB and black crappie that come up for pellets, along with my white catfish, channel catfish, grass carp, and my buddy Koi George -- a morbidly obese orange and black koi.

But, I never see the RES. I catch a few each season, and I see monstrous RES spawning each May. I just don't know what happens to them after that, or how many may be in the pond.

LOL, I rarely see my RES either and they should be the majority of fish that I have other than GSH. I suspect that without BG or LMB present I will have some RES that start taking pellets in the pond as I have very few snails left in the pond now. I suspect that my RES are primarily eating GSH fry/fingerlings which are the most abundant type of forage in the pond. Pellets should be much easier to chase down.

My RES have just started taking pellets in the last couple weeks. I had to go to them though. They would not come to the usual feeding areas. I found 2 areas where they were located. At first, they were pretty hesitant, but now they come readily to feed. Their feeding habits are also quite different from the HBG, which attack the food w/fury. The RES casually slurp it from the surface. They also swim in an undulating, porpoise fashion, taking one pellet after another until full.

Brook, if it is something RES really like to eat they will eat stuff with fury and hit stuff on the surface hard.

I don't know how many times my fingers have gotten nipped in the last month.

I believe you. I do see some competitive feeding among them, and I've felt that jar and hard run when fishing for them. On a side note, I'm assuming they have fattened up on my snails. I had loads of small, black snails that covered my pallets this spring. Maybe they've relocated, but I haven't seen a snail now for a couple month.

I have started seeing a little bit of that type of pellet eating behavior in my pond over the last few days with AM500, I think they might be RES but can't tell for sure. It is just outside of where I have been feeding the other fish in my pond but in a shallower area.

Just an update on the training, quite a few of the RES in my larger tank are now taking pellets off the surface. I have a several RES that are approaching the 4" mark.

I am serioulsy thinking of putting them back in the pond in two weeks. One of the issues I have with the insulated tanks out in my shop are relatively low water temps, with the cooler weather here and 20% daily water changes my water temps have been consistantly in the upper 60's and low 70's. I think getting them back in the pond with higher water temps will help them grow better. My options are to either cage them or put them behind a blocking net and continue their pellet training for a few more weeks, or simply turn them loose. Right now I have huge numbers of fry and 1" GSH for them to dine on but pellets should be much easier for them to chase down.

If you have a cage available I would cage them for a 2-3 wks for additional habituation to pellets then release them. When young pellet eating fish get into an area with abundant natural foods they often go off feed until the natural foods are less abundant. The larger the pellet trained stockers are the more likely they will stay on pellets.

One more vote for the cage.

Thanks, I'll get my cage set up and move my largest RES into it.

Shorty,

Why so much of a water change and so often? You should be able to get by with 10 percent or less and not for several days if your fish load is not too high.

What are you using for mechanical filtration and biofiltration again? How large is tbe tank and what is the fish load?

Another option is to make it a ras/flow through hybrid to reduce water changes if you have a drain. Clamp a garden hose and nozzle to the fish tank and adjust the nozzle to add a light spray. This can add gallons of fresh water over time but at a low enough flow not to cause problems with D.O. or Ph.