Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Feeding Feeding question

Not sure if I'm doing something right. I recieved my Texas hunter fish feeder about a month and a half ago. The fish I purchased were pellet trained at the fish farm. There was a month lag time between the fish stocked in the pond and my feeder installation. I started feeding in an area that was 8 to 16 feet deep. Only mild interest in the feed by the fish for over a month. Moved feeder to an area about 4 to 8 feet deep one week ago. Seems they now have no interest in the food
sprayed out?? Pond is a little over one acre with CC, BG, LMB, and 30 gallons of fathead minnows put in early summer. Could it be the dropping fall temperatures in Iowa now? Are they eating the FHMs? The food is very high quality. Some floats, some suspends and some sinks to the bottom. Why the lack of intrest? Population is 400 BG, 200 CC, and 100 LMB. Depth tapers from 0 to 16 feet. No aeration this year, will put in next year. When do I stop feeding?

Sounds like you're doing everything right.

Your new pond likely has a lot of FHM and invertebrates, and in a month without pellets, the fish will learn to utilize these pretty effectively. Also, I'm sure temp has something to do with it; I'm a good ways south of you, and noticed that the vigor with which fish are taking pellets has noticably fallen off just in the last few days.
I usually stop feeding floating pellets a few days after I stop seeing any surface activity.

Thanks for the info yolk. Maybe i'm just overthinking the issue.

Getting new fish that have been pellet trained to resume eating pellets in a new pond can be challenging for various reasons.

1. The new pond may have lots of natural foods thus the fish are finding adequate amounts of live foods. Sometimes the carrying capacity has to increase and natural foods in short supply before the fish resort to or resume eating pellets.

2.If you buy fish as pellet trained fingerlings, these fish have been eating pellets for a very short time thus the habituation to pellets is "weak". the smaller the fish the weaker the pellet eating tendency. "Weak" pellet eating fish easily or often 'go off feed' if natural foods are abundant in the new habitat / pond. Pellet eating does not resume with any fervor until the natural foods are depleted.


3. Hatchery fish eating pellets are fed in shallow sometimes small ponds often 3-5 ft deep. Providing pellets over water that is deeper results in fish not even knowing pellets are present if fish are in deep water 6-16ft deep.

4. New fish released into a fairly large pond have to locate the source of pellets. This can take time while the fish become accustomed to the new water body and if appropriate natural food is abundant in the pond why look for pellets?

5. It is important to feed pellets to fish at the same time they were fed pellets at the hatchery. Fish have a strong tendency to eat at certain times of day based on times of day they were trained and received pellets.

6. When putting new pellet trained smaller or fingerling fish into a new pond with no fish, I like to add either larger strongly habituated pellet eaters such as older BG or older pellet raised minnows/shiners to serve as teacher fish to lead the newly added shy fish to the pellet feeding area. Using teacher fish often has good results.

Sometimes it takes months for the new fish to resume eating pellets. Once the water temperature drops to 55F, I would stop feeding pellets to the fish if feeding response is only minimal.

If i were aerating would I need to feed all year long?

Re-read Bills post right above your last one, paying particular attention to what he said about water temperature.

I can personally vouch for numbers 3,4, and 5 in Mr. Cody's list.

1. The fish I got were being fed in a 5 foot pond. I also setup my feeder in 4 to 5 feet of water and it might sling food into 6 feet or so. They been liking that!!!

2. As Bill says it took a while for my BG to come around about a good month feeding at the same spot same time every day. I also have my timer set to feeding when they fed at the fish farm or real close to it. My HSB seemed to catch on quicker but I already had BG feeding so like Bill said I had teacher fish showing off where the food was! (I love that term by the way) "Teacher Fish" nice!

I am sure his other points are just as valid they just don't pertain to my situation.

Bill those are MONEY tips right there my man!! Very nice!!

RC

Thanks all for the great information. Love this site. Finding out trying to create mother nature is not easy buisness.

z, try walking around the pond an tossing pellets at various sites. You may be feeding in an area where the fish just don't want to be. I've seen that more than once.

I agree with Dave. I feed the entire perimeter, in order to try and get the feed into the fish....not just floating on the surface.

I am familiar with Z's issue since it is the same pond!
This fish Z and I put in were 3-5 inch BG and LMB. Some of the CC were same size and some were up to 8 in. We have walked the perimeter and thrown pellets out in several locations with no response. I will check water temp tomorrow. Before we got the feeder we would hand throw the feed out and had lots of action so we put the dock and feeder there and got a little response which has dropped off to almost nil. We also set the feeder for half the original time due to lack of interest by fish. time is set for 2 seconds.
We have put in several artificial habitat and now we had a tree top fall into the pond, we hand tossed pellets by tree and had some action bt not alot.
As Z says this site is great! Thanks for everyone's input/

Just to put this out there, my fish took up pellet feed a full year after being stocked and not fed the whole time. They did not forget. I know their forage is dwindling though, so they are hungry. I will be hitting the 55 mark very soon, and will stop feeding then, but it sure is fun to see them eat!