Update-
After multiple delays, all digging/excavation is complete & all banks seeded with a rye/fescue blend & covered in straw. My best SWAG is that we're right at 1/4 acre in size, with about a 40/40/20 split of 8-10'/4-6'/<3'. We left a roughly 8'x12' island covered in switch grass & some pretty purple wildflowers in 3-4' of water for visual interest & just because. Prior to finishing the last round of digging, water level had only dropped about 18" after a hot dry summer of almost no rain, so it's holding water well & while the spring didn't keep it topped off against the drought, it certainly helped.
We put in a little over 3# of pink FHM in last month (along with 5 dozen mixed black & pink FHM we tossed in just for fun in August) & 100 PK shrimp last week. Wish I'd gotten them in sooner, but wasn't sure how excavating the final 1/3 of the pond would affect them. Roughly half the August FHM, which were all 1 1/2"-2" were floaters the first day, so I didn't have high hopes for them, but when I'd see the September fish, all an 1" or so, a few days after they went in, there were teeny tiny black FHM schooling with them. Now that the pond's clearing back up, we see several small schools of FHM feeding all over the pond, with way more of the black ones than we put in, so I'll take a leap of faith & assume they're reproducing. I've got a couple pallets tossed in to help out with that endeavor. With little vegetation currently & getting a late start, I know conditions aren't ideal for the forage species, but with zero predators to contend with, I'm hoping they'll be okay.
Been doing a ton of reading here on both vegetation & what kind of rock I'll need & where it'll go. Hoping to get the rock in over the winter & start getting plants in as soon as it's warm enough.
Also have a question or two that I will add to the next post, so as to not make this one too ponderous.
Last edited by CrazyCarl; 10/17/22 12:03 AM.
