Ok so a few guys on here know I am working on a perch pond. Pellet trained perch were stocked last fall and are growing very well on feed. We have dropped in the pond a solid 10,000 emerald shiners and 2000 fat head minnows. All seem to be doing quite well and feeding on pellet scraps too.
We have added 400 paper shell crayfish to the pond and since then the pond water quality has gotten so much nicer. It is clear and clean.
My question is, is there any benefit of me adding or trying to establish a fresh water shrimp population? There is a trout farm north of me that maybe able to sell me a bunch of these little guys to start the pond off. Water is hard pushing 8. I have a very good rocky shore and the crayfish just love it but I do not have any plants at all.
Could dropping in a few hundred of these fresh water shrimp be all for not and could I be wasting my time and money on them?
I really feel I should try my best to get as much diversity as I can in my pond.
Thoughts? Few pictures of the crayfish, fathead, and bluntnose shiners.
Cheers Don.
Great older thread with a lot of good links I've yet to get to all of them. DonoBBD, could you give us an update on how the grass shrimp, crayfish, etc. have done in your pond since this 2010 thread? I really like the looks of your pond in the pictures on the first post of this thread. Has it evolved the way you envisioned? Any more recent pictures? I recall you saying in another thread the metal dock cover getting blown off.
Thanks!
The crayfish are doing much better than I had expected. So much so that I am quite sure my perch left the feed early June and very few went back to it.
In the spring after we stocked them... so stocked in the summer and the following spring we had young crayfish that were just under 1" under every rock you would turn over on the shore line. What ever we hit on they just took right off in our pond.
Could be the 4" medium recycled concrete and the ph of just under 8 along with being a young pond with lots of bio mass to be gained to reach the limit of the ponds carrying capacity.
Only maintenance I have been doing for the pond is just adding pond dye when the bloom gets less then 18"s.
Didn't get into any grass shrimp. After all the reading with out having the plant life in our pond and seeing how fast the perch left the feed I expect the shrimp or scuds would have just been a snack and never populate. Thought I would stick with the local species and give them the habitat they thrive in. This I think was best for my pond application.
Cheers Don.
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