I have two new ponds that I will be utilizing to attempt to grow out large bluegills and large yellow perch for my niche market. (See web page) One pond will have only male bluegills and the other will only have female yellow perch. All fish will be feed trained so natural food production will not be necessary and of course there will be no reproduction.

Although the ponds are very steep sided -- at least 1:1 -- to preclude too much aquatic vegetation, and are quite deep for their size for overwintering, I would like to use Aquashade to keep weed problems to a minimum as there will be lots of nutrients from the fish feed etc.

Any downsides to this or would I be better off fertilizing from the get go to allow an algae bloom to keep macrophytes down? How difficult will it be to manage an algae bloom in small ponds? We are talking only 90 feet by 45 feet due to property size constraints. Water is quite hard with high alkalinity.

One of my other ponds that is a flow through pond I raise trout in has excessive chara in the summer that I am constantly raking out. I realize some vegetaion is a plus but I want to preclude too much. The chara is benefical and actually removes ammonia but it takes up a lot of space in the water column (growns up to 3 or 4 feet deep) and may warm the water more than I would like for that reason.


If pigs could fly bacon would be harder to come by and there would be a lot of damaged trees.