Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Creating the food chain Hyalella azteca

Thanks for clearing that up for me Bill, I was just typing away not realizing I was being more confusing than helpful. That video pretty much summed it up, although we had bare bottom tanks to make siphoning out the poop easier. We had sponge filters in each tank for filtration.

Thanks Bill and Great Music! and...Thanks Kartracer for the inputs!

So any issues with fungus on the eggs as it sounds like both you guys have experience with removing the eggs early on from the care of the male?

Another question, when you move the pipe/tile/cave to another tank for hatching, what orientation do you place it in? Back like a cave?

Orientation does not make much difference just so it gets good water circulation. If you are having egg fungus problems try using a egg antiseptic dip similar to what is used for trout eggs. Try web search for correct concentration and options of chemicals.

Thanks Bill. Back in the 70s when I had a lot of aquariums I used Methylene Blue. I am sure that is way old school now! I will check the net for latest and greatest if the need arises. Current thought is to leave the eggs under the care of the male for 3 or 4 days before moving.

Probably leaving the FHM eggs until they are 'eyed' in the care of the male FHM then moving them to a separate tank with good circulated water quality will be a good way to start and then evaluate the results and modify the method if needed.

Would it be safe or advisable to have any invertebrates in the tank with the eggs or fry?

What do you plan the fry will eat after they absorb their food supply of yolk?

Bill C.

For mine, I was thinking live brine shrimp at first and then pulverized flake. Having to raise the brine shrimp is something I would like to avoid. Will frozen work? If you've got suggestions I would love to hear them!

Same question about raising brine shrimp: is it practical, or do you just keep buying more? Would newly hatched Daphnia or scuds do? How much would green tinted pond water help? It seemed to help my half grown FHM a lot. FHM don't get a lot of brine shrimp in the wild.

I saw a Youtube of a guy making a "paste" out of flake food and feeding that to new hatch. Any thoughts on that?

IMO the biggest disadvantage of mashed or powdered foods are they tend to reduce the water quality faster than natural foods. So if you use artificial foods pay attention to maintain good water quality.

Typically first foods are very tiny for many fish fry. Correct Size is important to these newly hatched, swim up fish fry learning to eat. These first foods usually consist of incidental phytoplankton, rotifers, and likely various protozoans. The fry start eating smallest particles first. Protozoans are not usually listed as first foods IMO due to their delicate nature and quick digestibility and becoming unrecognizable in gut contents. Protozoans are usually more abundant in the water than other larger species of zooplankton. These food organisms range in size from common algae 20-200um, protozoans 30-300, rotifers 60-800um. Reference: 1 milliliter(mm) is 1000um (micrometers) and 25.4 mm or 25400um per inch.

Newly hatched brine shrimp are around 400-520um. 'Baby' nauplii of common cyclopoid pond/lake zooplankton size range is 150-500um depending on age.

Many places that specialize in growing smaller varieties of fish such as minnows use rotifers as first food to feed the fry mainly those of the rotifer genus Branchionus which range in size from 120 to 300um.

Thanks Bill. Any thoughts on Infusoria? Seems like it would be easy to propagate.

Infusoria in generally the early stages is mostly bacteria and small protozoans (15-35um) that may not be large enough foods for new fry. As the culture ages later stages of infusoria community are larger forms and could contain large protozoa and some rotifers, and maybe small crustaceans over the coarse of a few weeks?. I wouldn't be afraid to try the flake food paste with frequent water changes to keep water quality higher. Another option is investigate rotifer cultures added to infusoria or cultured by themselves. I checked on the web and there is a lot of good new information on infusoria as food for newly hatched fish fry since I worked with infusoria cultures back in 1972.

Try a couple different methods so you don't "have all eggs in one basket". All this is a lot of extra work for a few inexpensive FHM unless it is a learning curve thing.

Thanks for all the advice Bill!

For me, a learning curve is exactly the plan. Raise some cheap RRs to prove out the setup and then move on to the first target species, BNM. I'm thinking the BNM breeding technique should be close to the FHM(RR) technique. My initial practice setup is to use a 10 gal for breeding, use a 5.5 gal for hatching and a 20 gal for growout. Any comments on the setup? Those are the 3 tanks I currently have.

It could work. Why not start out with some outdoor kiddie pools this spring and grow infusoria or rotifer food in 5 gallon buckets? On the other hand you might want to start real small to just 'learn the ropes'. Although be prepared to get a few thousand fry to move into a larger system from a few good spawns from the BNM. BNM post-fry (8-10mm) will quickly adapt to eating powdered fish food.

What are the container requirements for raising plankton indoors? Seems like they should be pretty rudimentary. Pond water in a plastic jug with the top cut off might be a start. I think I may try that if I can find some open water I can reach in my pond.

Plankton? Do you mean phytoplankton, zooplankton or both? Phytoplankton cultures are routinely grown in 1/2 liter flasks for various purposes. Normally these cultures are grown in special growth chambers with controlled light cycle and custom wavelength lighting that simulates sunlight. Sometimes the cultures are constantly lightly agitated. Note the nutrient balance needs to be correct to keep the culture constantly growing and stay green.

I read something recently that was put out by MN, I think, http://fmel.ifas.ufl.edu/research/culture.shtml
about raising copepods to control mosquitos. Just about everything required is quite simple, starting with the copepods, which you would gather from some local BOW. I wonder if something similar couldn't be done with critters better suited to our needs.

This is a website on raising Daphnia with links to related articles:
http://www.aquaticcommunity.com/fishfood/raisingdaphnia.php

Bill,

I mean both. Until recently I've given plankton very little thought in terms of my ponds or fish tanks. I've thought of them mostly as marine organisms and of little interest or importance to me. But after I got to looking at freshwater shrimp I kept looking for more info on freshwater crustaceans and that led to plankton, among other things. When it comes to building the food pyramid in ponds, plankton and pond plants are good places to start. Last summer I filled a 95 gal stock tank with well water and a few days later added a pound of FHM. I was losing a few minnows every day until I added some pond water. As the water began to turn green, the number of dead minnows declined to almost none.

I'm fascinated by the tiny critters in ponds and the role they play in the health of the pond. I think it's too big to be overlooked by pond managers. It also looks like some aspects of pond plankton and larger crustaceans such as shrimp and crawfish can be manipulated rather easily compared to plants and fish populations. But I'm just getting into this, and I'd like to hear from people who actually know something about it. I'm especially interested in the easy steps someone might take to improve the bottom of the food chain.

I like that idea as step 2. In an old thread, CJ talks about how he built small forage ponds out of cinder blocks with a PVC liner. This has me thinking of building some 4 x 8 or 4 x 16 enclosures out of landscape timbers (I think timbers will look better than blocks). I know a web site where I can get remnants of liner pretty cheap. Thinking set it up near the pond with a small pump for continuous flow from the pond and back to the pond over a small spillway and little stream.

I'm thinking some small setups like that would work great for other things too, like pellet training YP recruits.

A flow through set up with fry could be risky for loosing fry out the overflow unless you don't start flow through till the post fry(3/4") are feed trained. Feed them at one end and remove water at the other end.

Even if doing that, and using ground up floating food, I would use a feed ring and anchor the feeding ring to the side of the pond away from the overflow. To try and eliminate small fish from following floating food out of the pond.

The scud, P. gammarus, came today. It was more like a bucket full than a cup of scud. All alive and kicking. They were delivered by the Post Office, overnight from MN, and the P.O. made a special trip out this afternoon to deliver them to me. Both bonds are thawed today, so it worked out well. I'm very pleased.

Awesome! Where did you order from?