My wife & I bouaght a cool little place in East Texas about 7 months ago. It has a 1/3 acre tank that held only frogs and turtles. I stocked it with copper nose blue gill from Tyler Fish Farm in mid April, but like most unmanaged ponds, mine is filling up with FA and duckweed. We pulld an enormous amount of duckweed out over the winter, but didn't get it all. The algae isn't a huge problem yet, but I want to manage it. I read through some of the other posts, and think I will try a combination of Tilapia and chemical to clean things up, but I have a couple of questions.

1. In a previous post where Tilapia were used it was stated that Tilapia can be as big as 6 inches at stocking, and I don't have a single fish in the pond that could eat them, so how do I manage that issue.

2. I chose a product sold through Tractor Supply called Shore Kleen, anyone have any experience with it? It only cost me $60, so if it is not something recommended by stocked pond owners I'll return it to the store.

By the way, I stocked 300 fingerling blue gill in April, at the recommendation of the Fish Farm. I also stocked some teeny little minnows (2000 or s0). I have not fed the fish anything since I stocked them, and I rousted most of the turtles. I check each day to make sure I still have a healthy population of fish, and we seem to be doing OK. Thoughts?

Regards,

BHR

for a 1/3rd acre pond that's only a few pounds of tilapia to clean it spotless so I doubt it'd be much a concern to manage them

Congrats! You can't find a better copper nose bluegill than what Tyler Fish Farms sells.

As far as size of the Tilapia, since you don't have bass, you don't have to worry about loosing the Tilapia to predation...so go with smaller ones because you will get more per pound that way. Tilapia will start reproducing at about 3 inches (less sometimes) and can produce 300 to 400 fry every few days at that size.

Without any predators, you will have noticeable Tilapia die off this fall when temps hit 55 degrees and below. It really isn't a problem however, as Nature's clean-up crew is ready and able to deal with the bounty. The dead fish will be quickly removed.

How do you plan to keep the bluegill population under control? Left unmanaged, they will quickly overpopulate a small pond. You may want to consider adding a few bass just for population control.

Thanks so much! I will add some Bass to hold down the blue gill and toss in the tilapia. You folks are so cool,

BHR