Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Feeding How often do you feed your fish?

New 1/4 acre pond in South Louisiana. Stocked 2 months ago with few hundred HBG and FHM and Gambusia galore. The goal is to raise big, beautiful plentiful HBG for the kids and grandkids to catch at their leisure in the future. The HBG are doing well, already between 3”-5”. My Texas Hunter feeder is throwing Optimal BG Jr. once per day currently for 1 second, at the recommendation of the hatchery where I got the HBG, Shepherd’s Acadiana Fish Hatchery here in Louisiana. The HBG can’t eat all the food in 15 mins, but they love the food. Maybe I don’t have enough HBG, not sure. Anyway, during these hot summer months in the South, should I be feeding twice a day or once? The hatchery suggested once during summer and twice a day in fall and spring. I’ve tested it and the fish will happily eat twice a day. Any advice is appreciated!

See if this helps for overfeeding on your feeding amount.

Adjusting Texas Hunter Feeder Plate

I am feeding our fish more than once per day on a larger BoW with more fish but don't see any drawback to feeding multiple times a day. First things first though. If you can get the fish and the feeder to where they eat all the food in 5-10 minutes a second feeding should be in the cards for sure. While they will eat on multiple feeds per day if you are wasting food then you will waste twice as much with a second feed at 1 sec. This can cause water quality problems over the long term.

See if you can adjust the feeder plate first. Any time I am at the pond it's really hard not to throw a handful of food to watch the little guys get after it. Maybe hand feeding is your second feeding to help lower the wasted food in the pond.

Good luck!

I am in South Louisiana but have Coppernose instead of HBG. I feed twice a day--6am and 7pm with three Sweeney feeders on a 9-10 acre pond.

I used to feed the more expensive feeds but I now I just feed floating catfish food I get at the coop and the bream eat it like crazy. It is high protein.

Thanks for that advice. I think I’ll try adjusting the plate to throw less and then feed twice a day.

Given how much your fish are enjoying the food and the hot weather, I’d say feeding twice a day during the summer is fine.