Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Creating habitat New build

I'm adding a bunch of busted concrete and some more rock as well. .then sprinkling in some pallet structures. . The stumps are just what I required the excavators for. They're BIG stumps too, from 24" wide oak trees.

What do yall think of adding crayfish to a pond line mine? i know they can dig holes in dams, but my pond is 15' in the deeper corner with only 2-3' of that being from the actual dam. I plan on sprinkling in some small mouth once I get everything squared away. Not expecting any real reproduction, just wanted to get more variety.

I am a big thumbs up on adding crayfish. Especially with the areas of busted concrete. That should give them a refuge where they can have ongoing reproduction in the pond.

Make sure to read the some of the crayfish threads and get the right ones for your area. The preferred species burrow to a much lesser degree.

I need to find out what we have in the local river. They don't burrow as much i don't think. They just hide under rocks. Never seen their little tunnels there.

Yep, local is always good. Maybe catch a few and post them on the forum for identification. Fortunately, we do have some crayfish experts on PB.

Just found out all my local places that I can find wont sell fish until after summer. So I guess I wont be putting any BG in until then. I'd love to catch some locally and dump them in, but i just know i'd get some GSF in and mess it all up haha.

While I love crayfish in a pond, I'd wait to put them in until you have the underwater plants established. Adding the crayfish first will make adding plants later difficult.

Sounds good, i'll hold off then. Had a decent rain the last few days. Added a few inches to the couple feet that was in it. I'm going to get a rain gauge out there so I can start tracking it some.

We've got 4-6' of water in the pond depending on where you are standing. Yes, I walked out with a stick checking the depth haha. I'm going to dump a few (50 of each)RES and SBS in the pond next week along with a few pounds of FHM. My thinking is it'll give me and the boys something to feed this summer, but with the decreased surface of water in the pond I won't have to worry about huge spawns of fish taking up room.Then once the pond has more surface area I can dump in my Copper Nose and let them do their thing.

Since I'm FINALLY getting ready to stock I was thinking about how I wanted the pond to end up. I really want as much diversity in the pond as possible with a few fish frys a year. . My thinking is what if i did a SMB/YP/RES pond with some SBS and a few HSB and added some crawfish as additional forage forage. The SMB would eat off the crayfish, and some of the panfish fry, and then the HSB would take care of some of the larger panfish. With YP,SBS and RES I wouldn't have any huge spawns of panfish to control. Then every year once I get things settle I could just ladder stock a set amount of YP and SBS to keep the population up. Thoughts? I figured if it failed I could always dump in some LMB and Coppernose. I'd be fine stocking a couple hundred bucks worth of fish in the pond yearly.

IMO try your plan and please keep us updated in this thread as the progress of the fishery.

So it doesn't sound like a complete waste of time haha?

Your theories sound great, keep in mind tho, transporting and stocking fish in the heat of summer is tough, there will be some attrition.

Yea, i was hoping to have my initial stocking a good month ago at least. . but It is what it is at this point.

Got my first load of fish going in today. 75 RES, 75 specklebelly and 5 pounds of fat heads. So my understanding is I just need to set the bags in the pond water for 15-30 minutes to let the temps equalize and then just dump them in? I gotta put a couple pallet structures in for the FHM asap so they can start spawning. Thanks to our wet last couple weeks I have some grass going on the dam. So hopefully my water will start clearing up as I wash in less mud. It's nice to see everything finally get close to completion. How often would you plan to feed these fish? I'm assuming there is little to no food in my "mudhole" as of now, so I'd think the pellets will be almost there only source of food.

After tempering it wouldn’t hurt to mix pond water in bag after opening to kinda get the ph close to the same so not to ph shock them if ph is different

Got my fish in the pond yesterday. It was ungodly hot so I was expecting some casualties. Honestly i think quite a few died in the bag as they were tempering. Woke up to about 20 dead panfish. I didn't have high expectations for a perfect survival rate given the time of year. BUT, the majority of everything survived. Hopefully get some spawning FHM soon to replace what died.

Do you have an inventory of all the deaths?
What were the sizes of those fish that were added?.
What is the water clarity of the "mud hole"???.

Sometimes it is better to let the pond develop some water clarity and develop natural fish foods before stocking sport fish. Muddy turbid water suppresses plankton growth that is the basis of the food chain. Feeding some pellets could benefit those fish used to eating fish food otherwise the food goes uneaten and bulids unnecessary nutrients. FHM would be the 1st fish to find the pellets in a new muddy water pond. Start real slow until you see fish eating pellets; then gradually increase as more and more fish eat the food. Brand new small fish will not eat very many pellets each day. Many will eat no pellets and lose weight in a muddy water pond.

I ended up only getting RES and FHM. The RES were 2-3" with most being closer to 3". They didn't have any speckle on the truck. So about 20 dead RES out of 150, and 30-40 FHM out of the 5#. Visibility is about 1'. I'm going to let the pond just keep filling and clear up before doing anything else this fall. Hopefully a couple months will help it clear up. I've started to get good grass coverage on a good portion of the dirt around it. Should cut down on the mud some.

Depending on pond conditions and type of clay bottom and amount of exposed shoreline to wind action, it may take 1 to a few years for the clarity to achieve 4 to 5 ft of water visibility. Almost always the pond is clearest in late winter or early spring. Ice melt is usually the clearest water for us in NW Ohio.

Well, The pond is 100% finished. Now I just gotta wait on the rain. We've only had about 1.5" in the last few weeks. So we are still sitting around 5' deep. We have gotten some better clarity though and at least some of my FHM are still alive. Going to add a draining pipe under my driveway to divert another acre or so of runoff into the pond. Gotta add some gravel/rock prior to water coming up but I should have plenty of time. Gonna basically let her sit until this fall and then throw in some Specklebelly and YP.

What's everyone's thoughts on running well water into a pond this small for a few days here and there. Basically it's ungodly hot outside, and whenever we get a good storm it'll jump up a foot or two. Then when it doesn't rain for 2 weeks it'll lose half of what it gained. I think part of the problem is it's getting to the point of spilling over a shelf in the pond and doubling in surface size. But when i get 4-6" of water up on that shelf it's getting really hot and evaporating off extra soon. But I need to run a hose out to the pond anyways to water grass that i'm trying to get going to help combat the mud. So it's little to no effort to drop it in the pond and run it a few nights. Thoughts?

How many gpm are you getting out of the hose where it runs into the pond? (how long to fill a 5 gal bucket?)

Honestly not sure. I can check tonight. I wanna say we have 50-60 psi on our system. I'm not thinking it'll just fill the pond up over a week or anything like that. I'd be happy if running it every other night would keep up with evaporation haha. I've gotta run the hoses all the way down to water the grass. Not much more work to drop it in the pond and walk away.

Maybe also dumping in clean water would help clear it up a little?

No way to tell without knowing how much water is going in, but my guess is it'd be like whizzing in the ocean. 0 change or rather the cost of the electricity and wear/tear on the pump shutting on and off wouldn't be worth it.

For instance. my well pumps 25 gpm if I direct it all to the pond (I rigged up a 3" dia pipe going from the well to the pond). My pond, at 3' below full pool leaks 18 gpm. Is it worth it to keep pumping water into the pond AND have 0 water pressure in the house? The answer is no.