Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Creating the food chain Trophic Continuum - natural to aquaculture

OK, you guys have already mentioned oxygen, water, and waste management.

Sitting here, reading through it all and trying to decide if I run the heat, the AC, or both today, I think of ...

TEMPERATURE

Each pond has ranges of temperatures it experiences on daily, seasonal, and yearly basis. Knowing the temperature extremes each pond will see tells us what fish species will be possible or impossible for us to keep there - either full time or seasonally. Knowing what the predominant or average temperature in the pond will be helps predict whether a fish species will thrive, do fair to middlin', or be so marginal as to say "Why bother?" (How short a "warm" season can you have and still have it be worthwhile to stock Tilapia? How short a cold season can you have and still feasibly stock trout in the Winter? Do I use Redears, Pumpkinseeds, or Yellow Perch for snail control?)

Other than well known, locally proven successful stocking schemes for fairly typical ponds, considering temperature may be very important. For the pond owner with a new, atypical pond, for the pondmeister wanting to push the envelope (locally, at least) with a colder or warmer than (localized) normal species, or for those of us who envy Cecil Baird (wrt fish, anyway), one piece of advice that must be at least considered is "Stock a forage species suitable to all your possible goals, and measure water temps in your pond, at different locations and especially different depths, for 6 months or a year (long enough to cover temperature crunch time) and see what options will or won't work."

Every pond manager should spend at least $5 on a submersible thermometer and a string ($20 will let you go digital and feel hi-tech!) and know what his water temps are over as many different locations, depths, and days of the year as he or she can.

All the above can be as complicated as we want to make it, and that is just reacting to the temperatures we are given. It becomes even more involved when we try to manage the water temperature. We can try to reduce the stress on our fish in the Winter and ensure a 39 degree F sanctuary zone by not supercooling. We can run cool- or cold-water species year round if we can keep our water temps low enough. For this approach, see posts by Cecil Baird on his trout pond, a small (<.1 acre IIRC) pond which he pumps about 30 gallons per minute of well water into 24/7 during the warmest months to keep the maximum water temps down to 60 degrees F or so. It is completely feasible for the pond manager of average technical ability and modest financial means to hold small but significant numbers of fish in a temperature controlled tank for months on end with the goal of overwintering a warm water species or keeping fish at a more optimum temperature during seasons of either temperture extreme to maximize growth for a number of reasons. To study the "Po' Boy RAS" way of doing this, see Cecil Envy.