Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations PUTTING OUT AN AUTOMATIC FEEDER

It all depends onyour goals. Maybe it should be stated as don't feed more than what your fish can consume in 15 minuts, if they eat it faster, it's O.K. There's supplemental feeding and feeding so they get all their calories from pellets. If you have a pond that has forage fish in it, and your goal is for the fish to also eat the forage fish, then they shouldn't be fed to satiation on pellets.

It may be hard to tell what you will find in your TSC store. Last time I was there bought Cargill 36% game fish (multiple pellet size some sinking and some floating) and 32% floating catfish. I would have bought all game fish, but they only had a few bags and I bought it all.

Went back yesterday and looked for the 36% game fish feed. Was not in its usual location but eventually found game fish feed in a different location. Looked on the tag and it was 32% protein. "What's going on here???" Then I noticed it was a Purina bag and it was Purina Game Fish Chow.

So at this point I have no idea what will be in the TSC store in the way of fish feed next time I visit.

I may have to start ordering feed ahead of time like a lot of people do here on PBF to get what I want.

Also wondering when to shut down the feeder for winter. They are still hitting it now , is it just a wait and see thing or is there a water temp thing

Pat W

Let the fish tell you. If they decrease feeding, cut back on the pellets.

I have found that this is folklore.

What happens if you overfeed is , the smaller fish who are scared away by the larger fish, come in and knock off the leftovers after the larger fish have finished swarming the food and gotten their bellies full.

The other thing that happens is the minnows will consume more than you think. Crawfish will eat on it too. If you have any smaller hatchlings, and/or .5 -2.0 inch fingerlings, guess what?
They get theirs too.

It's very doubtful in my opinion that over feeding by a cup or 2..........or even 5 cups, is going to cause a FA problem.
It is much more likely that it gets consumed. Maybe not right away and it may float around for a while, but they will not let it go to waste.

You'd almost have to throw 10 pounds in there in one feeding, twice a day ( at least in my pond) to begin to start a problem.

If you don't believe me, feed your fish until the larger fish can't eat anymore. Then walk around the pond throwing as much as a pound or 2 on the edges of the banks and see how long it lasts with minnows and smaller fish feeding on it and pecking away at it.

I feed my forage base too, and you'd be surprised at what they can consume in a short time.

Which again, leads me to this.
Why feed your game fish, while letting your forage base starve?

This is the approach I have taken. May not be for everybody, but the result speaks for itself.
My bream were stocked at 1- 1.5 - 2.0 inches on May 17, 2014. Two inches being the larger of them and there were very few that were 2 inches.
Here we are going on 5 months later, and this is what some of them look like now.

Keyword there is "unused". Every pond is different, mileage may vary. We all have to keep an eye on that underwater world, and adjust accordingly.

I've not found that it is possible to over feed and have unused pellets. Once the fish get used to easy living, they will eat more than I can afford.

While I may agree with this in theory, fact is every pond is different. In my opinion there are few blanket statements applicable to every situation. Case in point: not every pond management strategy utilizes a traditional balanced fishery, nor do they require, or desire a continuously recruiting forage base. There's no sense in feeding those minnows to try and speed up their growth if their presence is deemed detrimental to one's goals in the first place.

Also, don't forget that the more you put into a fish, the more fertilizer comes out the other end. There's a big difference between feeding to satiation vs. supplemental feeding.

It would seem to me that the above, in bold, is a much more likely situation for FA growth.
There is nothing you can do about that. It's going to happen anyway. Those fish are going to eat until they can't eat anymore whether it's pellets or other small fish, or bugs.
To compound this, as the fish grow larger so does this particular problem.

That's why I decided to treat my pond like a really large aquarium, which I do have plenty of experience with.
This in turn is one of the reasons I went with a aeration system that is much more than suggested for a 1-2 acre pond.

I really don't know how big my pond is since I couldn't find a way to measure it. All I know is that it's 1305 linear feet around it. 435 yards.

I will be very curious how your pond does once it matures a little. Not quite the same as an aquarium, lots of variables in play. Certainly off to a great start!

Tony, I think the pond is exactly like an aquarium, just a few more variables in play, and on a much larger scale!! Same with backyard koi ponds.

Your aeration system and any plants/algae in the pond act as the filter. Fish in/fish out. Food in - waste has to be filtered out. Too many fish per gallon of water = dead fish.

Too much algae growing on things = reduce the amount of sunlight or the amount of nutrients in the "tank".

Yes, that's simplified, but the principle is the same.

Scott, the principle may be the same, generally speaking, but I might be tempted to assign a little more value to the role played by scale in this equation?

You're familiar with that old saying "It will all come out in the roof"? It has often been my experience that theory and concept make a fine and accurate foundation, but once you get on top of the thing there may still be a certain amount of creativity needed to make sure the roof doesn't leak.

That's the same way I see a pond....variable, always changing, ever influenced by external forces. I believe a pond is at the mercy of nature. I can plan, prepare, and implement for the future, but unlike an aquarium, the sheer scale of my efforts may be impractical from a time available, effort involved, and/or financial standpoint. Not that big of an issue with an aquarium, or maybe even a small Koi pond in the backyard.

I can't help but think of dlowrance's current issue with his pond...a fishkill, apparently induced by a massive influx of rainwater. Would aeration have prevented this unfortunate event? Maybe? Probably even? Either way it's a moot point, as he stated aeration, (understandably) just wasn't in the budget right now. What would it cost to aerate that aquarium, or backyard koi pond? A whole lot less, I'll bet.

In my opinion, it's the economics of scale that sometimes plays a pivotal role in pond management efforts.

Sprkplug what you said and also I've never had a flock of geese land in my aquarium.

Same concepts but you can control light and temp inside but not well outside. Those are the 2 big factors.

Precipitation is a lot easier to control indoors also.

Rain washing in pesticides or herbicides.

Hailstorms cooling down water temps. (Was it Bob Lusk who experienced this firsthand, on a client's pond?).

100 year rain events mixing the water column, with catastrophic results.

500 year rain events breaching the dam.

Tony and everyone, I agree, (sort of). Yes, it all matters according to scale, and yes, there are natural events that can happen in a pond that won't happen in an aquarium.

Breaching a dam - breaking the glass on an aquarium.
Rapid water temp change - see my aquarium temp fiasco below.
Pesticides/herbacides - yeah, not much can be done there.

Light can be controlled in a pond (to a degree) by using pond dye. Aeration, yes, that's a big one pocketbook wise. But, I'm 1/3 the way thru a 3 year plan to install bottom and surface agitation aeration systems in a 19 ac pond. Anything is possible.

Temp can be controlled (to an extent) with a well. Look at what Cecil is doing for his trout. I had a 55 gal aquarium, and came home to dead fish one weekend. The heater stuck "on" and cooked 'em all. The only survivor was a baby softshell turtle that was in the tank.

I think that aeration would have helped with the fish kill. If it was aerated, there would have been a huge "bank" of oxygenated water, and the influx, even tho it was large, wouldn't have had as much of an influence on the pond. That's my take from this armchair, and I could be 100% completely wrong. If it was aerated, no hydrogen sulfide to affect the fish either.

I still think the basic principles are the same between ponds and aquariums (bio load, filtration, etc., etc.) but the scale of the "tank" changes tremendously.

Sprkplug

Pond is coming along ok but would be much better if we would get a lot more rain this winter. Right now the pond is still about 6' low..... Hopefully it will fill up this winter


Pat W

Would the Purina game chow or the aquamax 500 be good and which of these two would you chose?

Pat W

Pat, it depends on the species of fish that you are feeding, and why you're feeding. If you are just feeding forage fish (bluegills, catfish, CNBG) and you are targeting multiple sizes of fish, then the GFC will work. If you are targeting more of the top of the pyramid type fish, (LMB, HSB, etc.) or trying to grow BG/CNBG/CC as fast as you can, then go with the AquaMax. Try and taylor the size of the food to the size of the fish eating it. General rule of thumb is don't feed pellets larger than the target fish eyeball. That doesn't apply to LMB and HSB. They can eat larger pellets.

I wish my LMB would learn, 4#-5# LMB still prefer AM600 vs. AM Largemouth.

Esshup

Right now all I have is BG, CNBG black crappie and an unknown number of LMB that I didn't stock. No catfish or HSB yet. The 50 lbs of fat heads didn't last long

Pat W

Pat I'm going to make the effort to get some better feed next year, having learned what I have here on PBF.

I started out not going to feed at all. My fish fingerling supplier told me a little supplemental feeding would sure boost the BG and FHM spawn. So bought a bag of feed store feed and started a light supplemental feeding. It became habit forming. I now find it stressful if I don't get out to feed my fish. Not for the fish, me.

But I've fed several different brands because one store is out this time or I'm near this feed store this time. Not a good thing. Animals and fish like consistency. But I can tell you that even with hand feeding and less than optimal feed, my fish have performed pretty well. I' m satisfied my fish are larger and in better shape than if they had not been fed at all.

That being said, starting feeding next spring, I'm going to find a supplier that can order in some higher quality feed for me and order enough ahead so I can feed a consistent feed.

I started out with baby steps with recreational feeding and am ready to get more serious about it.

But in my non expert opinion, even suboptimal feed will make your fish better than no supplemental feed at all. The better quality feed should be just that much better. I'm ready to move up.

Edit: man I can sure tell when I enter posts on my TAB without a spell checker. Edited to correct my lousy spelling.

Snrub

I would rather pick yalls brains and NOT have to learn the hard way I would rather start out with a good feed and make things progress as fast as possible. Those pesky bass that someone added to the mix before we were ready just complicated things a little. I just hope the gills got off a couple of spawns to help feed the new hungry mouths

Thanks

Pat W

Yeah, the LMB throw a monkey wrench into the mix. Do you know if the BG and CNBG that were stocked were pellet trained? How big and how many LMB were stocked? (if you know that is)

Esshup
Both the stocker CNBG and the huge ones that I put in from a neighbors pond were pellet trained. Course the crappie aren't. I have no idea how many LMB were introduced- caught one about a lb, three or four about 6" long and see multitudes of three inch fingerlings that were born this spring.. Now I don't see any minnows ( I put in 50#s FHM) and a slew of gambusias. I'm guessing that there were at least one pair of LMB that spawned this spring

Pat W

These CNBG that I have don't seen to be picky about what type of floating pellets that I give them. My biggest problem seems to be finding the higher protein feed . They always seem to be out . I don't like to buy a lot at a time due to storage problems ( weevil)
They do seem to go for the Purina


Pat W