So nice to feel the warm sun today. Going to see 60s for the next day or two
Pond water table continues to go down. The YP were glad to see the branches show up in the pond and draped their eggs over several of them. I also see several egg strands in the deeper water around some pallets. I'm going to keep almost all the strands in this year and see if we can actually get a good crop of youngster YP
My Optimal food came this week! Thanks to the crew who gets those orders shipped out right on time. I believe they used Fedex which seems to still be able to get things done on time. USPS is hopeless, UPS always a day or two late, and Amazon is doing the bait and switch lately. The ad says arrives in 2 days. You put it in your cart and suddenly the delivery changes to 3 days. Then you buy, they wait 2 days to finally get it shipped and then they move the expected date one more day out. I'm ready to cancel Prime membership. I never get 2 day shipping anymore so what am I paying for? (they say it is extreme weather or COVID or computer error, or driver error or this or that... I suspect it is lack of people willing to go to work anymore...)
I buy the Optimal BG and the BG Jr. sizes and mix them 50/50. I thought the 'length' of the pellet was smaller in the BG Jr. size, but to my eye it appears that the diameter is just a tad smaller on the extruder for the BG Jr. size. I see a variety of longer and shorter pellets in each bag. The point of mixing was to get more of the smaller pellets mixed in with the larger ones for a variety of gape sizes. If the bag already do that (blend size lengths) then I guess the smaller diameter of the BG Jr also helps.
I'm amazed how my spotfin shiners are immediately at the surface eating today. They didn't lose a speck of their pellet training and knew right where I would be to throw the first handful of the season. The water is exceptionally clear right now and they seemed unafraid to come into the clear shallows to chase the food. I'm really impressed at some of the size of the adults. Judging from the bank I would say I have some 5" adults. I'm not sure how big they can get but we have to be getting close to their top size. Looking forward to trying to dream up some new crevice spawning devices and would really like to focus on reproduction this year. I'd love to help others get these critters in their ponds. They are fun to watch and seem to be good survivors, at least in the chemistry of my specific water hole.
Has anyone ever experimented with taking live minnows/shiners, putting them in a water bath that has had 100% oxygen bubbled into it for a while to saturate the water, then slowly freeze the water and minnows and bubbles into a solid block of ice? Would they survive when thawed? Would this be a way to extend their life when shipping further distances in warmer weather conditions? If they could go into a hibernation mode then as the ice slowly melted they would slowly warm up, there hopefully would be plenty of dissolved oxygen, and their metabolism and oxygen needs at low temps would also be low. They may not hurt themselves by swimming around frantically in a bag everytime the box jostles in the truck or airplane too.
