Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Feeding Fish food

I've pellet trained Hybrid Crappie to take pellets too.

Nice!

In my limited experience, the main cohort of Crappie in a BOW always seem to be very efficient at eating up the food supply for their size range. Even when they are thriving in the short term, I fear that stunting is always peeking over the horizon.


Pellet feeding them would certainly remove or mitigate that fear. (At least when the pond population was still below the carrying capacity.)

How did the crappie respond in that situation with pellet feeding, esshup? I would think there would be a chance to have fantastic results?

The stockers grew really fast, I'm not sure that any offspring are eating pellets. Because the stockers grew fast, and were in great body condition, it was even more important to keep harvesting the smaller crappie (8"-10" size)

For pellet eating fish, I have found that if the pellet eaters do not have a long history of many generations eating pellets thus their offspring tend to not quickly learn to be good pellet eating fish food unless the new generations are each trained or conditioned to eat pellets. Instinct tells the new generation to focus on eating historically what was eaten in the past - usually natural foods. One very good example is with trout. Trout have for many, many years been raised from fry to adults all eating pellets. This tendency to eat pelleted food has been engrained in the genetic composition of trout. Thus trout fry very readily accept pellet fry power soon after hatching. I and many regional yellow perch growers who are using a local long time domesticated strain of YP (43yrs) are seeing the same thing happening as what happens with the new generations of trout who quickly learn to eat pelleted fish food. These new generation YP have a very high percentage rate of pellet acceptance.

My hybrid crappie are eating pellets the optimal blue gill they will not eat the Jr as well kind strange I just did not think any kind of crappie would take pellets but these do.

Good job!

I hope you have an epic crappie fry in your future.

I'm going to say I'm seeing very similar results with some SMB I've had all winter.. I cannot get the to eat pellets using any method. They were sourced from another grower and the only thing I can get them to eat is freeze dried krill, yet they will NOT transition to krill meal based feed, hydrated or otherwise. I think these fish are nearly 2" shorter than the pellet eaters from my own offspring selection.

Wow, those are some picky eaters, Snipe!

I would think at some point they would get hungry enough to eat something besides their preferred food ... which shows how little I know about feed training fish.

I am sure you have tried everything, but I will throw out one potentially stupid idea.

There are lots of examples in nature of an individual animal that has learned a beneficial behavior and it teaches that behavior to other animals in its group. What would happen if you tagged one of YOUR SMB that does readily eat pellets and put him in the tank with the picky eaters? When they observed that fish popping the pellets, might it induce them to also pop the pellets?

I had been using Aquamax 500 for past few years, but very discouraging to see the price increase from $55 for 50 pounds to $70 in one year. I'm sure all the brands have increased, but in general the inflation has been terrible.

There's 700 fish in the same tank, a mix of mine and the other source fish. Very few have learned by example, wish it was that simple but it hasn't proven to be so..

It was a good question though, Rod.

Optimal is still $60 for 40 lb bag that ships free to your door and price has not changed. It throws better and in my opinion, fish eat it better and grow faster and to me it goes farther.