Update: Smallmouth Bass I cultured

I know this isn't an aquarium post per sei, but I thought some of you may be interested as it regards a native species.

I caught via hook and line and placed about 13 broodfish smallmouth (originally bought as fingerlings) from my main .62 acre pond into one of my small 1/10th acre ponds -- complete with gravel and rubble nests -- in hopes they would do their thing. I inquired here previously if anyone had any idea from close up pics of of the urogenital openings, which were male and female. Apparently these fish were not old enough yet to show definite signs of being egg laden in the females. Thank you for your responses.

After a definite hatch in late May (black swim up fry) I removed the broodifsh via hook and line and put them back in their original pond. Just this last week I repeatedly seined the pond and drained to recover what I missed.


Anyway, I came up with 754 fingerlings with two morts in the last week and so far no moribund fish.

I needed to remove them ASAP to get them inside for feed training as the larger they are the more difficult it is to feed train them. They are also easier and more economical to maintain and grow at a uniform rate inside on commercial feed. So far everything seems to be going well, no small feat considering I moved these fish in water temps in the upper 80's! I credit salt to saving my butt, as little handling as possible, and plenty of air.

About 100 or so are 3 to 4 1/2 inches and the rest are 1.5 to 2.0 inches. I have them separated in two tanks to prevent cannibalism. My guess is the larger ones are cannibals or took to fathead minnow and stickleback offspring that multiplied in the pond. This is after I planted what I thought were all fatheads for feed for the broodfish. I also screwed up by pumping in green water from my adjacent perch production pond, and apparently introduced yellow perch larvae which were ahead in development, and probably did some munching on the smb fry. I harvested a couple hundred rotund yellow perch up to about 4 inches, and there were hundreds of sticklebacks.

Here's a smallie about 3 1/2 inches:





Here's a smaller one about 1.5 inches:




Sorry about the blurry pics but my 76 year old dad that helped me seine and sort took them took them. Bless his heart I think the heat was getting to him! (Air temps were in the upper 90's when we seined!


Here's the larger inside RAS tank with the more numerous smaller fish:



And a smaller tank for the larger less numerous fish:


You may think there are aren't as many fish as pictured, but they have a tendency to hide under the front lip of the tank when you approach. That, and to me, when you have numerous fish in a tank there always seems to be less than there is.

I would have preferred a flow through tank at pond side to feed train these fish but the water is so un
Godly warm this year that worried me. I also can't use salt in a flow through tank.

The downside to not using a flow through tank is the mess these numerous small fish make. I've had to in the early days do some partial water changes twice a day!

Next year I hope to expand this to two or three ponds and will either carefully sort out the sticklebacks (most numerous in the pond) before adding the fatheads or only feed pellets to the feed trained brood fish. For some reason they went off the pellets when I added them to the pond and I was concerned that needed to eat.

I'm selling these wholesale and they are quite lucrative considering there are only five producers in the entire country.

Edited by az9, 22 July 2012 - 03:59 PM.

The downside to not using a flow through tank is the mess these numerous small fish make. I've had to in the early days do some partial water changes twice a day!

Do you think there would be an effective way to incorporate an algal growth system for biological filtration with your RAS? I've had great success with using algae to keep nitrates down and it grows well in salted water also. It wouldn't necessarily heat the water any and could greatly reduce your water changes. The size of your system could possibly make the implementation a little more difficult though. Just thought I'd throw that out as an idea if you are looking for a way to reduce water change intervals.

Fascinating post, and I just kind of love smallies too.

Steve,

The only concern I would have is the algae could compete for space on the RBC. Or perhaps that is unfounded?

That's a good point. I'm really not sure if most algae has a greater preference for nitrate or ammonia. I don't believe most algae has as strong of a preference for ammonia/ammonium over nitrate as the majority of aquatic plants though. If the water went directly form your RBC to the algae screens then the algae wouldn't have a choice of preference and whatever type grew would use the nitrate coming from the RBC without having the opportunity to use any ammonia. That should eliminate any matters of competition between the two. The screen area needed and the amount of lighting might be the one thing that could make it prohibitive for your situation. There are some simple formulas for figuring out screen sizes and lighting needs according to water volume and amount of food given daily. I could probably find them for you if you think it's something you'd be interested in.

I appreciate it Steve but I see no need to do so at this time as I've got my hands full as it is. I'm a keep it simple stupid guy.

The board of animal health picked up 60 for slaughter and testing for VHS destined for Purdue so I can sell them out of state. A loss of up to $330.00 in sales and an expense of $300.00 for testing because some twits at APHIS think VHS will be the scourge of fish in North America. I'm just a hobby farmer , many fish farms spend thousands in health testing costs. In New York they actually test for diseases that don't effect the species being tested.

Never mind VHS has never been found on a fish farm and fish are testing positive in all the major Great Lakes ports with no clinical sign of disease. Seems to me fish are and can develop an immunity to this alleged black plague of fish that never panned out.

Edited by az9, 26 July 2012 - 07:44 PM.

Update:

I'm down from the original number considerably. Apparently even though I graded I didn't grade sufficiently, and the ones that refused to eat the commercial feed became weak and thin. They were probably easy prey for the larger fish. I also may have had some drain issues that may have allowed some fish to escape down the drain during water changes. I mounted 1/8th plastic screening to prevent escape but possibly there were some problems. I won't know until I check, which will be soon, as I have moved all fish to cages in the pond. It sounds like a stupid mistake but with my tank configuration it's very difficult to attach a screen to the drain. There's also a diffuser above the drain which doesn't allow an easy view of the drain to see if there are any problems. I seriously considering removing the diffuser from my tanks and aerating in the RBC tank or a side stream tank of some kind.

I'm also not 100 percent confident in the original count as I was not the one that compiled the numbers. I did the counting by 10's and the other party was supposed to make a mark for each 10. I'm thinking someone may have messed up on that and the number of fish was inflated.

What amazes me is the growth rate of some of the shooters that are feeding aggressively on pellets in a cage. I have some fish in the 5 to 6 inch range that are only 3 1/2 months old!

This was my first year and a learning curve. Next year I will:

1.) Produce fish in two ponds vs. just one

2.) If I plant fatheads for broodstock forage I will make sure there are no sticklebacks mixed in. When I drained the pond there were more sticklebacks than smallmouth!

3.) Will not pump water from the adjacent perch production pond to inoculate the smb pond with phytoplankton. In doing so I inadvertently pumped in some yellow perch larvae, which probably competed with the smb, if not ate some of them. (They were spawned earlier so they had a head start.)

4.) Will grade fish into three groups, probably four which this year I only did two. And probably continue to grad if needed.

5.) Will probably feed train the smb in floating cages vs. my RAS tanks. This will preclude some stress which is involved in frequently manually cleaning bottom debris and water changes. And no escape issues. It's also more cost effective to build cages of varying mesh size and cage size vs. adding tanks. I have a lot of experience with cages and have really good luck with them.

Edited by az9, 27 August 2012 - 11:40 AM.