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Originally Posted By: DrLuke
NEDOC, this is so awesome! Thank you for sharing. I have high hopes they will continue to progress in their feeding. Might get to the point I fella would be nervous about putting his hand too close to the cage! :-)


Oh when I wash my hands off after handling those worms and such, you better believe I do it outside of the cage. LOL.


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Repetition and patience in training is a key part of the process. Very interesting and educational posts. Many thanks from all. One suggestion. When you clip the meat,,, only clip a very thin sliver of the meat so a very light tug from the fish releases the meat. It appears from the video the clip is grabbing too much of a portion of the meat.

Questions -
How often do you feed the meat pieces?
and how much meat each time?
To how many musky in the cage?
Are you thinking all musky are getting pieces of meat?


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Originally Posted By: Bill Cody
Repetition and patience in training is a key part of the process. Very interesting and educational posts. Many thanks from all. One suggestion. When you clip the meat,,, only clip a very thin sliver of the meat so a very light tug from the fish releases the meat. It appears from the video the clip is grabbing too much of a portion of the meat.

Questions -
How often do you feed the meat pieces?
and how much meat each time?
To how many musky in the cage?
Are you thinking all musky are getting pieces of meat?


Those are great questions that I largely don't have answers to at this time. Much of this all began taking place just yesterday. I'll do the best I can at answering them now and will come back and update it as I progress.

I try to feed the muskie toward dark, largely because they feed higher in the water column toward dusk so I get better observation. But some days I feed mid day, some days I don't feed at all, and some days I feed multiple times. This is largely due to my erratic schedule. I'm sure I could do better if I was more consistent, but that isn't happening until my boys are old enough to do this themselves, in the mornings. I had been feeding about 10-18 worms each day. As far as sizes of meat, I was varying sizes last night, with no noticeable difference in their interest. Obviously, I'd like them to progress to larger chunks to make the process more efficient for me. But it's a work in progress.

I have 2 cages. 8 TM per cage. The one cage of fish I have put my time and effort toward and chronicled above, the other one has largely gone ignored. Only occasionally putting worms on floats, which they'll eat after I leave the scene. Not sure if I should mix the fish next and hope those learn from the trained ones, or begin the training process on them. Maybe get advice here for the best way to proceed.

I really don't know how many are trained to eat yet. In one of the videos above, you can see 4 separate fish around the meat. So I'm assuming there are at minimum 4 trained. I'm assuming some won't train and will be cannibalized, but will find out as time goes on. I do hope to get 2 more cages from Dr. Condello and go to 4 TM per cage at some point.

Thanks for the dialogue fellas. Always glad to have people pitch in with ideas. And I'm certainly counting on Mr. Cody to share his expertise. Soon, Dr. Condello and I would like to acquire TM fingerlings, and begin this process in his tank at a much earlier stage in life. If these train as well as I'm hoping I'll build a grow out pond for them so we can get a season or two in the grow out pond before releasing.


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Just typing this in for future reference in case anyone attempts this in the future, and in response to Bill Cody above... tonight I cut up one tilapia fillet into 30 small, thin, worm shaped pieces. Out of the 30 pieces that I threw in and let free fall through the water column, I observed 27 of them eaten. The other 3 pieces may have been eaten but they had gotten deep enough that I couldn’t observe them getting eaten. Now onto training them to eat the trout waste I have access to.


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First try using some of the stringy guts very, very lightly held to the clip so it takes very little effort to get it off the clip. You may first need to clip the trout parts and shake them to imitate something live to get the TM accustomed to eating the parts.


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That’s a good idea Bill. I may file down the small teeth on the alligator clips also.

I have had them hit a few belly strips falling through the water column. So I think with repetition I won’t even need to clip them. I could just throw pieces in one or two at a time.

Truth be told, I’m so damn excited that I’ve been dreaming Muskie for 3 nights now. It’s disrupting my parenting. Lol.

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Update: They're taking larger strips of tilapia now, and noticeably more aggressive. Soon I'll be shifting to a diet heavier in chunks of trout that I get from nearby commercial fish farm and strips of catfish fillets that I've culled from my larger pond. I really wish video showed it as well as what I can see it through polarized lenses. You can really learn a lot about muskie by going through this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2BG1IMGCZI

Last edited by NEDOC; 08/20/20 11:11 AM.
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NEDOC, many have found that if you put the camera lens on the backside of the polarized glasses lens you can get pictures that match what you see when your sunglasses are on!

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CC, seems like common sense. Not sure why I hadn't done that!! I'll try it for the next video update.


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So it appears like they've continued to progress in their willingness to take offered feed, eh? Any cannibalization so far? Have you been checking body condition or relative weights yet? Just curious.

And....really awesome stuff! :-)


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Definitely progressing in their willingness to take feed. In fact there’s generally a noticeable increase with each feeding. There has been no cannibalizism at all. I have done absolutely no studies on relative weights or body condition as I’ve tried to minimize any contact with them. I’m a bit fearful of stressing them any further. This looks to be an annual project so I may look into relative weights and such in future years.


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Good point on the stressing, and avoiding it. Wonder if a guy could tare the weight of the cage, and then just lift and weigh the cage with the fish in it for a few seconds. Wouldn't give the individual weights, but could document wt trend overall. But not sure if that would be helpful enough information to bother with.

Love the videos! Might be cool to try the polarized lens trick like Canyon suggested..

Last edited by DrLuke; 05/25/18 01:43 PM.

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Super cool Corey...I'm a tad worried about our extended forecast and rising water temps stressing the TM - I'm not sure on TM tolerance for water temps. If they stop feeding I'd take this as a sign to release in one of your new cells. Just a thought.


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TJ I’ve got that covered. As you know we’ve got good access to the aquifer down here. And as you also know my grow out ponds spill into my large pond. So instead of spending money on a traditional aeration system, I went the cheap route and fabricated a horizontal aeration system for my grow out pond that I turn on during warm days. Essentially I use the pressure from my well to ‘push’ the water around my grow out pond creating a lazy river effect. A few advantages to doing so.... 1) less money spent in the short term 2) flush nutrients 3) ability to lower water temps and 4) overflow helps keep my big pond from dropping as much.

PS. They are in one of my ‘new cells’ in cages. And it appears that our BGxRES experiment may fail. (Sorry snrub). So the TM may end up being released into that pond. Which is 600 sq ft.

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Great progress with training the muskie.

Last edited by Bill Cody; 05/25/18 08:34 PM.

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Progressing quickly now to larger chunks and more frequent feedings. And cage #2 is beginning to feed well now also. Went through nearly 3/4 lb of trout chunks today. Seems growth is inevitable if that keeps up. So I�m planning to add 2 more cages in a couple days and have 4 fish per cage rather than 8. Feeding on larger chunks is a huge advantage to me as I spend a good portion of my time cutting up strips of trout or tilapia. So these recent developments are nice. Can�t wait til their gape allows an entire trout head to be consumed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1qVxjF-jwE&feature=youtu.be

Will embed video tomorrow when on computer. Grrr...

Last edited by NEDOC; 08/20/20 11:10 AM.

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Check this out. This was just the first one I pulled up, but they have them for all types of phones these days. May be a little easier, but more expensive, than filming through your sunglasses. It would be really cool to be able to see the fish hitting the chunks!


Polarized lens for iphone


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That’s cool as heck!! I’ll be able to do it thru my sunglasses. I just had my son filming today. And it’s risky enough having a 7 year old filming over water. Asking him to do it over sunglasses would definitely lead to disaster. And I’ve got a bloom going on right now. So I’m not sure how well it’d work anyway.

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Just a couple updated videos of us playing around. The first one is a tadpole on an alligator clip. You can see they are getting super aggressive. And the second one is feeding tilapia strips. For some odd reason the TM don't feed very well unless the lid of the cage is open. Strange.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NH_U8eUc6I8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TzwC47difo

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Looking really good! How well do they seem to be growing? Coping with the cage and the water temps/summer heat ok?

Thanks for the updates!


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Awesome project and videos!


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Thanks for the tadpole experiment...cool project too!


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Luke, it’s kinda hard for me to tell how much they’re growing as I didn’t weigh or measure. The last I picked up the cage they did appear noticeable thicker but not noticeably longer that I could tell. But they hadn’t started to feed as aggressively at that time. Now I’m going thru 1/4-1/2 lb of meat per day (16 Muskie total). So I’ve gotta think they’ll be bulking up.

Water temps are fine as when it warms up I add well water thru a horizontal aeration system I’ve designed. It seems to be working well.


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Originally Posted By: NEDOC
Luke, it’s kinda hard for me to tell how much they’re growing as I didn’t weigh or measure. The last I picked up the cage they did appear noticeable thicker but not noticeably longer that I could tell. But they hadn’t started to feed as aggressively at that time. Now I’m going thru 1/4-1/2 lb of meat per day (16 Muskie total). So I’ve gotta think they’ll be bulking up.

Water temps are fine as when it warms up I add well water thru a horizontal aeration system I’ve designed. It seems to be working well.


they sure look more aggressive via videos. Do you have a specific end point/release time in mind? When they come out of the cages, I wonder how they'll do regarding localizing to the feeding station. I always seem to find the fridge without too much difficulty..


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I’m considering releasing them from cages into my smallest (600 sq ft) grow out pond in late September. It’s about 6 ft deep so I think I could over winter them. If I run a small aquarium air stone off the dock I think I could keep a very small area of water open and continue feeding them thru the winter. Either that or just release them into my 15 acre pond and say good bye. To be honest I’m not sure what my end game is as this project has probably been a bit more successful than anticipated.


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