Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose Brand New 1/8 acre pond

Hi guys! I have a brand new 1/8 acre pont on my property that is about 1/2 full so it is time to start looking at fish. I would like to put in Bream of some sort and LMB plus a couple catfish to keep it clean. I am in Eastern Tennessee so mild winters. How many of each fingerlings and what kind of bream and cats would you suggest? I saw the part on introducing the bream before the LMB so it will be a two step process.

Welcome Pinball,
You selected a very good place to get the best information about pond management from experts with lots of experience.
Firstly we want to determine what are your MAIN goals for the pond? There can be lots of different goals for a small pond. Fishing? Lots of table food? Just occasional kids fishing? Swimming? Clear water to watch nature? Aesthetics? Once you decide the main goal we can help you manage in that direction.

1. What will be the maximum pond depth? Size is around 70'x75' 5400sqft. Can we assume it is a dug pond and mostly not a dammed watershed in a valley?

2. Will you be able to provide some sort of bottom aeration to the pond? Aeration provides better water quality and allows the pond to grow more fish pounds. It helps improve decay of bottom muck and leaves especially in the deeper water.

3. Channel catfish(CC) do not clean the bottom and keep it clean. This is an 'old wives tale'. They feed near the bottom and stuff associated with the bottom but they do not eat muck, leaves, and bottom junky stuff. Young CC eat bugs and live critters associated with the bottom areas. As CC grow to be 16"+ the eat more and more fish and they eat them mostly at night when the fish are resting close to the bottom. They will also eat meat as animal guts pieces of meat etc. CC are a night time predators and LMB are daytime predators. Each CC will eat close to the same amount of fish as a LMB. IMO leave out CC unless you like cleaning and eating them and you would rather that that CC than a bass.

4. If you regularly feed the fish the more of them you will have and faster they will grow. If managed properly they will also be bigger than if not fed pellets.

5. One very good new hybrid panfish now pretty commonly available is the brand name specklebelly sunfish (SBS) aka southern specklebelly sunfish. They are best for using in small ponds such as your new pond. This is a bluegill crossed with a redear sunfish. They will reproduce making limited and reduced numbers of young specklebellys because SBS are mostly 90%-95% male fish. SBS are raised to eat pellets so they will grow fast and big. SBS when managed properly in correct numbers with LOTS of food are said to fairly easily grow to 3lb and record is 6lbs.. Now that is a BIG sunfish.

6. SBS do not make a lot of offspring so they do not have lots of young to grow big bass. Bass with all hybrid BG( HBG) grow to mostly 10"-13" pond. If you want bigger bass in the pond with SBS or HBG then buy pellet trained LMbass who with pellet feeding can grow to 3-4lbs maybe 20".

7. You can also use standard BG, coppernose BG(CNBG) , Redear sunfish(RES), and HBG. However IMO the biggest potential sunfish will be the SBS.

8. 4. One very good thing about a small or tiny pond is they can easily be drained and start over if needed due to things not working well.

9. Numbers of fish to stock will depend on what species of fish you choose AND it you aerate the pond AND if you feed the fish. Feeding the fish produces more fish, bigger fish, but also increases pond nutrients that can grow more plants/algae you will have to manage. You have to decide the goals.

Hi Bill, thanks for helping answering my questions. To give you a better idea of what I am trying to accomplish..
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1. What will be the maximum pond depth? Size is around 70'x75' 5400sqft. Can we assume it is a dug pond and mostly not a dammed watershed in a valley? The pond is 7 feet deep at one side and 3 feet at the other. Size is 90x70 and is a dug pond, yes.

2. Will you be able to provide some sort of bottom aeration to the pond? Aeration provides better water quality and allows the pond to grow more fish pounds. It helps improve decay of bottom muck and leaves especially in the deeper water. Yes, I will have two aerators in the pond which I already have purchased

3. Channel catfish(CC) do not clean the bottom and keep it clean. This is an 'old wives tale'. They feed near the bottom and stuff associated with the bottom but they do not eat muck, leaves, and bottom junky stuff. Young CC eat bugs and live critters associated with the bottom areas. As CC grow to be 16"+ the eat more and more fish and they eat them mostly at night when the fish are resting close to the bottom. They will also eat meat as animal guts pieces of meat etc. CC are a night time predators and LMB are daytime predators. Each CC will eat close to the same amount of fish as a LMB. IMO leave out CC unless you like cleaning and eating them and you would rather that that CC than a bass. That answers that question. No cats. I'd rather eat bass and bream

4. If you regularly feed the fish the more of them you will have and faster they will grow. If managed properly they will also be bigger than if not fed pellets. Oh the fish will certainly get fed. If you know my wife...she feeds the squirrels, the birds, even the crows! The goal is to have enough larger fish to catch and eat. I'm not concerned with trophies, this is for sustinence

5. One very good new hybrid panfish now pretty commonly available is the brand name specklebelly sunfish (SBS) aka southern specklebelly sunfish. They are best for using in small ponds such as your new pond. This is a bluegill crossed with a redear sunfish. They will reproduce making limited and reduced numbers of young specklebellys because SBS are mostly 90%-95% male fish. SBS are raised to eat pellets so they will grow fast and big. SBS when managed properly in correct numbers with LOTS of food are said to fairly easily grow to 3lb and record is 6lbs.. Now that is a BIG sunfish. - OK, is that just one type to get though? If they produce mainly male offspring, I dont want to "fish out" my pond.

6. SBS do not make a lot of offspring so they do not have lots of young to grow big bass. Bass with all hybrid BG( HBG) grow to mostly 10"-13" pond. If you want bigger bass in the pond with SBS or HBG then buy pellet trained LMbass who with pellet feeding can grow to 3-4lbs maybe 20". That leads me to the same question, should I have multiple kinds of bream then?

7. You can also use standard BG, coppernose BG(CNBG) , Redear sunfish(RES), and HBG. However IMO the biggest potential sunfish will be the SBS. I'm assuming then that crossbreeding wont be a problem, even with the SBS in there

9. Numbers of fish to stock will depend on what species of fish you choose AND it you aerate the pond AND if you feed the fish. Feeding the fish produces more fish, bigger fish, but also increases pond nutrients that can grow more plants/algae you will have to manage. You have to decide the goals. Which is ultimately my question. How many SBS, other Bream and LMB should I stock for this pond. The goal is to make a food pond, not a trophy pond. Cleaning and aerating is no problem. I just dont want to over or underpopulate the pond.

SBS Reproduction – Simple questions require lengthy and varied answers.

“OK, is that SBS just one type to get though? If they produce mainly male offspring, I don’t want to "fish out" my pond.”

Basis - In a pond esp smaller ponds with intensive harvest it is easy to fish down or harvest too many fish OR remove the wrong sizes of fish. Having prolific fish and the system not well managed, the pond can have too many small fish “runts” that are not desired by anglers. Again the goals are important. Manage all things within reason and common sense. You will only be realistically able harvest a set amount of fish and this is based primarily on productivity of the pond. Push the productivity to beyond reasonable levels then water quality suffers, some sort of plant over produces and then the fishery suffers. Accumulated nutrients within the pond stay there and continue to accumulate. Excess buildup causes problems. There is no drain or flusher. Be very aware and knowledgeable about continued over production – pushing the limit.

SBS - Without decent predation of youngster SBS there will be some recruitment of SBS although those later generations and potential crosses with other sunfish could produce youngsters with mixed genetics. Pros & Cons to this. Theo a moderator here, has HBG (BGxRES) in a 3X larger pond than yours, and he manages and catches large panfish. He also manages cattle so he has animal management experience. See more on this later.
https://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showgallery&Number=553355

The ‘trick’ to always growing quality reproducing fish is to not let them become overabundant and not growing well due to lack of food by using predation, angling and manual thinning of traps and seining. Controlling all versions of animal crops always takes some expense, time and management. Compare all this fishery stuff to growing chickens, or any animals that reproduce. Feed and harvest --- or nature does it and you will not like how she does it.
Question then is: “That leads me to the same question, should I have multiple kinds of bream then?”
Well as usual that depends on your goals. Determining your goals is not always easy because often you do not know all the options, possible first time stockings, and the later repercussions of the choice. I always encourage new first time pond owners to first stock fish that will be easiest to remove or change the course of the fishery if you are not satisfied with the results. Adding reproducing fish or fish that reproduce prolifically both make removal and changing the direction of the fishery much, more difficult. However in your case with a small pond, the fishery can relatively easily be completely eliminated (renovated) and restocked. It is fairly low cost to drain the small pond with a siphon or pump. This is not nearly as easy nor as quick with a large pond. However IMO this does not preclude you from not carefully considering what fish to initially stock to minimize future regrets or errors.
Multiple Bream. See more Options Later. I now favor SBS as hybrid sunfish compared to regular common HBG. I think this because as HBG and SBS reproduce and back cross among generations,, the SBS does not revert toward the dominant green sunfish(GSF) genetics as do the regular HBG. GSF tend to be slow growing and have big predatory behavior of fish fry, and do not have desirable traits compared to other sunfish. Although, GFS do have benefits that I won’t discuss here -- to not be lengthy.

1. If you stock normal BG, CNBG, RES, pumpkinseed sunfish, yellow perch, each is a prolific spawner. Each of these females can easily produce 20,000 to 40,000 eggs and nearly as many hatched fry. Consider the total potential NUMBERS. These prolific sunfish means maintaining correct predator density and numbers to optimize the panfish population. I think especially in tiny ponds always the main concern is getting too many small fish due to reproduction and then crowding that cause too many fish to NOT grow fast toward big sizes for usefulness. Overcrowding also tends to cause water quality and fish health concerns.
Balancing predator and prey to optimize your goals. Remember you are growing an animal crop. Stocking any type of hybrid sunfish means fewer offspring to deal with or having to harvest. Lower density of sport fish generally tend to grow faster. Using hybrid sunfish and to get the best benefits, does mean to periodically restock more hybrids. You can use the offspring of hybrids as recruitment for more new fish,,,,,, although over time, as in 5-10 yrs, some of the hybrid growth vigor is likely to be diminished. Hybrids will produce some offspring that can grow well with adequate amounts of food. Although there will not be nearly as many offspring as if using regular panfish species. This is where the manager needs to regularly assess the numbers in his heard or flock (monitoring) to determine when removal, harvest, or when restocking is needed or beneficial. This is where regularly feeding the fish allows the manager to see his crop and assess the relative numbers present.

You can have pretty good control of the number of surviving hybrids by limiting and or controlling the number of predators of your animal crop in the pen or pond. When using hybrid sunfish instead of regular sunfish, you do not need as many predators because there are fewer that are produced and you have fewer potential excesses. I think you can rely on each predator to eat approximately 300-400 small fish PER YEAR. This amounts to each one eating about an average of 1 fish/predator/day. They eat more during warm compared to cool water temps. Thus the more of the panfish crop that need to be removed the more predators a pond needs or you need to manually help using some sort of removal.

In a tiny pond with hybrids you would likely need just 1, 2, or 3 predators. 3 predators eating a total of about 1000-1200 fish should I think be a majority of SBS or HBG annual recruitment of the 2”-3” sizes. A big majority of the fish fry normally naturally die (starvation- mortality) or get eaten. One option in your small pond would be one bass, one hybrid striped bass(HSB), one CC; none would reproduce with just these 3 predators present. You could also use any number of HSB to fill your needs. HSB could also be grown for food. But I don’t think your tiny pond fishery with HBG would need 3 predators. IMO - ALWAYS START SMALL OR LOW NUMBERS BECAUSE it is much,, much easier and simpler to add fish compared to time spent trying to remove fish.

Also,,, as always, the size of restocked fish is very important so the EXISTING predators do not eat a lot of the newly stocked fish because they are too small and very easy to swallow. The more predators present the greater the chance of the newly added small fish being eaten. Generally stocking hybrids requires fewer predators for a good predator-prey balance whereas regular reproducing sunfishes who produce very high numbers requires more predators to control high numbers of new fish recruitment. If just for fish balance and ease of management,,,, I see hybrids as a good starter sunfish in small or tiny pond. Periodically replacing or restocking most of the harvested hybrids in a tiny pond is pretty low cost and IMO a big benefit for $$ value spent. Actually time getting the fish will be more of an expense than the actual $$ for the few fish that you will need for a tiny 0.1ac pond. I would make this a regular nice day trip with the kids to get more SBS or any needed fish. $$ cost will be low compared to adding fish to a 1 ac pond.

ANOTHER OPTION. You can do like our PB Moderator Member Theo did and stock just RES in about a 0.5ac pond. Then he added a few to several only MALE bluegill who found the female RES quite attractive and reproduced with them. Theo made his own version of SBS hybrids. You would have to contact him for more specifics about his pond, pros and cons and evaluations. The forum has several posts that show the features of male vs female BG to recognize the differences for choosing your own just male BG for stocking.

Just about every pond owner would with your polite asking and your reasons allow you to catch one to several just male BG esp if you offered to buy those male BG. Most pond owners will actually offer several of the males for free!

ANOTHER benefit of using SBS and their offspring compared to just RES is the SBS will very readily from day one eat fish pellets for fast growth. Not true for just RES or some of the fish farm sunfishes. RES are difficult and have a poor percentage of success that train to eat fish pellets.

If after several years the hybrid sunfish and single predator fishery is not acceptable, you can stock another fish species and their reproduction will eventually outnumber the hybrid offspring. In my experienced opinion -- always start with fish species where later ,,,, you can EASILY and simply add the other new species to change the direction and balance of the fishery. You cannot do with with initial stocked BG-LMB. It is always not good to be saying “I wish I would not have done that or not added that species of fish”. “I can’t get them all out because each year they make way too many new ones that need to be removed. “

ANOTHER OPTION. I help a fellow with a 0.2 ac pond. The only fish besides one koi, one grass carp and some minnows in the pond are yellow perch(YP). This pond owner taught me something. You can raise just YP in a small pond without ‘regular’ predators, although YP can be considered a “marginal” predator but not an aggressive predator like a bass. YP as adults will definitely eat small fish. How much of their adult, pond diet is small fish? I do not have stomach analysis data for that topic. The way this fellow successfully grows just YP as a very good size distribution balance in his small pond is for several main reasons.
1. He regularly feeds them high quality protein pellets. Continually feeding them keeps them always growing well with no or minimal stunting. He is basically growing a crop or herd.
2. He with my encouragement and advice regularly harvests a good crop each year to keep numbers reduced and so he does not have to feed excessive amounts of pellets. I monitor this because I sell him his fish food. Remember growing fish is a crop to be managed.
3. Yellow perch are “somewhat” of a PREDATOR. I THINK the adults are helping remove a significant number of YP fry and small 1”-3” YP each year. This amount of predation evidently helps to reduce the recruitment of small perch. Thus with YP predation, continual pellet feeding, and harvest the fishery maintains a decent or good balance of small, medium, and large YP for a good harvest each year. I suggest to not use regular sunfish because I think that none of the adult sunfish species will eat nearly as many small fish each year compared to an adult YP. Thus “bream” will not work nearly as well with this unique stocking method compared to YP.
4. He has one koi and one grass carp to eat plants/algae and also they make the water turbid (10”-14”) from searching sediments for food plus he adds some pond dye. Together they do not allow lots of sunlight penetration and all 3 help minimize plant and algae growth from lots of added nutrients due to adding lots of fish food that a percentage of eaten food does definitely end in manure - a plant fertilizer. There could be eventual water problems in this pond but after 30 years it is still working well.

Decide on what species you want to stock and work with and we can suggest how many to initially stock. I would not use paired LMB in a tiny pond because the they are too prolific and too predatory IMO to result in a good food fish goal pond. However it is your pond to manage and learn from so choose the species you decide are best for your needs. At least now you know some of the benefits of Hybrid sunfish.

IMO the more you underpopulate the pond the larger the average size of fish will be. It deals with carrying capacity, amount of food supply and affect of less competition and less crowding all collectively allowing fish to grow larger.

Bill:

Could Pinball expect YP to make it through Middle Tennessee Summers? (His elevation might make a difference.)

Thanks Bill. I think I'm more confused now - LOL! I certainly want some LMB in there for fishing and of course the Bream for forage. However, I love to eat Bream too so I want something that will reproduce somewhat and I'd like the Bass to reproduce.

I wont be fishing the pond everyday or maybe not every week even so I get your point on overpopulation. Would some sort of mix of hybrd (like the SBS) and BG or RES be a better answer or will they cross over time?

I keep seeing the comment of a 10:1 ration on LMB:Bream so I get some decent size Bass (I would like to get at least 3 pounders occassionally) but now I am at a loss as to what Bream to get.

10-1, if it's an easy catch. 12-15lbs of live foods to convert to 1lb of growth if they have to work harder for it.
BG and RES will cross before long..

Well yes, there are a lot of fish combinations that you could use in this small 70'x75' 5400sqft pond. To confuse the stocking issue even more there are those here that say to not put normal BG and bass in a pond this small because it is too hard to make it a successful quality fishery. Some think in this small of pond to use only catfish. A few think HBG and CC are needed to produce a decent fishery. Again, adding way too many of your choices!

Using LMB successfully with a few up to 2lb - 3 lb bass in a tiny pond like this will be a BIG, BIG challenge. Carrying capacity wise this pond is only able to naturally support around a total of 6 lbs of bass in optimal conditions. That is just 6 one pound bass with no younger ones. Young offspring bass from annual reproduction contribute to this poundage.

Having these fish reproducing will make the challenge even BIGGER. I just talked to Cecil an older member here who grows big fish in a small pond (88’x59’ 5100sqft). The said the secret to growing big fish in a small pond is to use ones that do not reproduce or have minimal reproduction and I strongly agree. In one pond where he had reproducing BG with YP, he had too many fish in a tiny pond that produced to many nitrite (NO2) problems that caused stressed and dying fish. Ammonia and low dissolved oxygen (DO) could also at times be problems with too many fish pounds.

If some big fish in a small pond was my goal,,, I think I would first try using specklebelly sunfish (SBS) or just male only BG with hybrid striped bass(HSB). Minimal or no reproduction. Feed them all high protein quality pellets so you always have good efficient growth from the food offered and providing a very good food conversion rate that results in minimal food waste via manure.

Yes with SBS there will be very limited or maybe no recruitment, but this has numerous pond ecology and fishery benefits compared to smaller abundant fish in a reproducing tiny fish pond with a BG-LMB fishery. Yes with HSB-SBS or just male BG you will have to restock whenever you remove some fish but these SBSxHSB will be bigger and healthier with fewer problems and more fun to manage. Yes it will cost a small amount every year or two as you harvest and restock but the price is real small compared to the few number that need to be restocked and the high quality of fishery that could or will be produced. Remember this is a pond basically too small to be doing what you are proposing to do without using special adaptations.

Plus if the SBS-HSB does not work to meet your needs, it can easily be switched to a LMB-BG pond by just adding BG and or LMB. Not true doing BG-LMB first - then trying to go to SBS-HSB without a complete restart. LMB & BG will ALWAYS be reproducing and wanting to eat &/or compete with all your new stockers who will perform poorly with all that existing competition.

You have to remember this is a tiny pond where it would not be able to have the same big fish in it, if it was a BG or RES, or HBG & LMB pond. Annual reproduction will detract from overall growth and fish biomass of the larger fish. Cecil said that to do this with BG-LMB your best success would be to use single sex LMB probably females for growing larger size bass. I agree, especially if you want to have a couple bigger bass 2+lb. It is real difficult to find and positively stock just female LMB without error. One small bass nest can easily produce several hundred fingerlings/year. All annual reproduction contributes to the standing crop and carrying capacity that skews the fishery toward smaller and slower growing individuals.

You are only going to have around maybe 6 to maybe, just maybe 10 predators in mixed sizes as 1-2lbs with some sort of panfish. To get the best growth of them you will have to feed them high quality protein pellets. Grow and think of them as an animal production crop as farmers do. Remember the fewer fish you have in the tiny pond, the bigger and healthier the fish and pond ecosystem will be.

I think whatever you do in this small pond it will not be very difficult to restart the whole pond IF after 6-10 years it does not meet your expectations. You can do a complete restart with a different fishery from what you learned the first time. Rent a 3" trash pump(15000g/hr), drain it in just one day,,,,, kill what little water remains in the bottom, and restock toward a different fishery. Your 5400sqft pond with about 3.5 ave depth will have close to 139,000 gal when it stays full and could be drained in around 9 hrs. If you have a creek or drainage ditch nearby it could be refilled in 1-2 days. Filter the discharge water through a sock made of pet proof fiberglass based window screen to eliminate most trash fish fry IF the creek water pumping is not done during spawning season.
In that case the filter sock needs to have smaller than 1mm mesh size.
Whatever you decide to do, please return regularly and keep us informed about your pond progress so we can learn and help other members for having small pond fisheries. We like learning and helping with pond fishery management. Bob Lusk Pond Boss magazine editor even writes articles about Tiny Ponds and yours could be a good story. Keep good written records and data and pictures.

Here is some reference information about bluegill spawning and potential of producing fry. In BG behavior a territorial male sometimes spawns with more than one female in succession. Eggs in the nest could represent a maximum effort of one female or if the egg total was from several females as this is still unclear. One 6 inch female BG in Mississippi contained 12,000 eggs. Female BG from a study in Minnesota contained 15,000 to 58,000 eggs. Another study showed the average BG nest contained 15,000 eggs. An Indiana study of BG nesting colonies showed the counted eggs in each of four nests to have 11.2K, 30,3K, 80K and 224,000eggs!. The higher egg counts in nests of this study unlikely came from one female. Are you sure you want mixed sex BG in this tiny pond? LMB with males and females will have the same reproductive potential. Small fish numbers could become crowded quickly and often more commonly in a tiny pond.

Bill I am copying the above info and adding to Sunfish archive.