I wanted to add a couple comments to the above info. A question was brought up about how it would be handled if the subject pond would have contained zebra mussels. Which is a good question but something I don't deal with in a pond environment but something we do face on larger impoundments and I'll give a quick run-down of how that's handled. First, we do not move fish from known infected water.. But lets just say for the sake of argument that snrub's forage pond had zebras (it doesn't). The water supply from a well would be used (and should always be different) for the transport tanks. fish from seine would be rinsed while in dipnet with fresh, known clean water, such as the hose and showerhead we were using to rinse each handful of fish to clear veligers. From there they'd go right into salt solution, netted and rinsed again with fresh water and tanked. If fish are properly rinsed with adequate water there is no place for the veliger to exist as they DO NOT attach to gills like other mussel larvae do. To transfer the veligers it takes water in any amount probable in the process to make the pass. If fish are handled correctly and nets, buckets, etc, do not contaminate the transfer water it's very highly unlikely to carry any on the fish themselves. About the above forage pond seine project,....FUN!! It was a bit tuff but not too bad. Had some good help on hand and that always makes things work better. snrub has a beautiful place there and in general, his waters are of such quality the fish grow very fast in a natural state. Our process was pretty much explained on how everything went but I changed up a few things on the transport side I'd like to explain. When we filled my 200 gal tank with water I knew we'd be hauling those fish to Rstringer's place so I used 50% of the electrolyte/sedative I normally do and the reason is that the fish coming out of the salt bath are already in Lala land and I wanted them to partially come out of that state vs being heavily salted. I'm hoping that Rusto's fish all done well after release. I used a 50/50 mix of tank water with Rusto'd pond water for obvious reasons of temp/chemistry but also to bring those fish out of their semi sedated state at a nice slow rate as we transferred those into buckets and after a short period of time, then netted and dropped right into pond. I don't know how many fish we moved total from seine to transfer but several thousand would be my guess. of those 1000's of fish maybe 6 or 7 were touched by hand and I think the guys involved caught on to my desires to never touch the fish if possible. I think we did the best we could to insure a near 100% chance of survival for everything we moved. I actively practice "all fish matter" :-)) in my efforts to not introduce unnecessary slime removal that induces more stress and the dreaded "fuzz' saprolignia. I feel this effort was well planned and executed and I'm glad we could make it all come together! Thanks guys (and Gals!)
