Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Corrective stocking Golden shiners

Shipping fish by carrier is very risky business. The more fish per bag the greater the chance of some dead ones on arrival. Shiners are not hardy fish. Often results are similar to yours. Shipping is always best during cold air temps. The smaller the fish the easier they ship with success. You would be much further ahead driving to some fish farm to get your fish.

No fish farm even close to me. The first bag was great, and they are replacing this one.

I'm a big fan of golden shiners. About once a month I go to the bait shop and buy a pound of medium size for $20. Throw them into my frabill aerated cooler and dump them in...most trips I don't have a single minnow go belly up.

That's awesome. Wish I had somewhere local to do that

If you want Golden Shiners, I recommend Anderson Fish Farm's shipping of Golden Shiner frye in units of 250,000/bag.

It will get GS established in your pond.

That's where I ordered from. Got the 1.5 inch. Heard those were more likely to be fertile. Put them in now, hoping fewer would get eaten before they spawn.

If you don't have a strong plankton community esp zooplankton species diversity,,,, GSH will not thrive. Also if you don't have adequate weed habitat and woody cover habitat at 20%-25% of the pond shoreline area then GSH will struggle to maintain good numbers with a strong LMB population. Also if the pond does not have lots of small 3"-5" BG the shiners will struggle to survive long enough to get to 5"-6" long.

Maybe better than buying GSH as forage reduce the number of foxes in your chicken coop. LMB are usually over crowded in ponds creating the perceived notion there is too little forge fish present when in reality there are too many predators, over eating the pond productivity resulting in not enough food.

Understood. I realize that harvest and fertilizing are much more important. I wanted to do this anyway. Will do the others as well.

In my relatively low alkalinity, infertile pond, I've found that threadfin shad survive far better than golden shiners. TFS only get wiped out in severe cold winters, but shiners completely disappear within six months.

Doesn't a pond have to be relatively large to support those? Also, I think our winters are too harsh.

Pond size is not as important as it having a good proper plankton community that helps TFS thrive.

However, the smaller the pond (assuming fertile) the bigger the chance the TFS will overpopulate and over graze the plankton. In my experience TFS do much better in 5 acre plus ponds. I have seen them do ok in 2–3-acre ponds that are well managed and fertile.

Probably because GS are prey for a much larger range of LMB. In ponds large LMB don't make a living on TFS. The main benefit to TFS is they are targeted by 1-3 lb LMB whereas GS are larger and are utilized by all sizes of LMB over 2 lbs. +-. Also due to the difference in reproduction and habitat choices.