advice on a farm pond??

We are about to hire a guy with big tonka toys to dig out a pond for us. It will be in a small pasture, fed by a very small creek. I am guessing the pond will be about 1/2 acre or so. We are positioning the pond so that we can also catch rainwater runoff and pump the water to the veggie garden for irregation, and of course provide water to the animals.

Just wondering if ya'll have any experience with this, and have any advice or reccomendations before we begin? We haven't decided on what type of fish to stock yet - definately something edible. Our small farm is growing on the basis of sustainable living, and we try to recycle everything we can. Any ideas you can offer?

Many thanks,
Cindy Lou

I can offer a few ideas.

The small creek as its source is great but you should know where it comes from and if any potential contaminants may be flowing into it (thus contaminating your pond).

Depending on the flow of the creek it could easily take as long as a year or more to get your pond up to its proper level. And, speaking of level, be sure to install an overflow pipe.

As for water run-off also contributing to the water level, if possible have it run into the pond in one designated area so it can be controlled somewhat and not cause bank erosion.

It may take up to two years before your pond can suppost animal life (fish, etc). Greenery needs to grow good first, then a bit of algae as well. You do not want super clear pond water.

As for fish, there are fish hatcheries that regularly sell fingerlings for pond stocking. They will have a chart telling you how many of which kind will survive in a pond your size and also when is the best time to stock them. Personally I'd recommend some bass, catfish, bream/brim, lots of minnows, and definitely some redear (also known as shellcracker).

Lastly, for now, by all means, your pond depth should average 8 feet or better. Quote, "Average". This means it could be 4 ft deep at one end and 12 ft deep at the other and you should be okay. A nice sloped bottom at one end and a good semi-steep slope at the dam end is perfect.

Hope this helps! You'll love having a pond on your property!

Thanks, Horseshoe, that is good information. I am starting to do some homework on possible plants to put in the pond to stimulate good algae and food for fish. I am also thinking that maybe we should get a windmill to help aerate the water and maybe the windmill could pump the water to the garden? I think that we need to install the plumbing right after the digging is done before the water fills up the pond. Maybe I should post this in the pond/water garden forum to get suggestions on pond plants?

The overflow pipe will definitely have to be done during the digging. For pumping water you can do something as simple as inserting a hose into the pond and hooking it up to your pump/windmill/whatever.

Natural plant growth in your area will automatically just "show up" and start growing in and around your pond, saving you money on purchasing plants.

Another thing, you'll love having a small dock/deck on your pond! When the digging is finished that is the time to get those support posts in that you'll build the dock on. If you choose not to do that you can make a floating dock with 55 gal barrels at a later time.

Have fun! You'll really enjoy that pond!

In many states you need to have a permit to dam up a creek on your land. It can mean water downriver wouldn't be available to someone downstream which would be a violation of their water rights. I would check into the laws before you put out the big bucks for the equipment to dig. I would hate for you to dig it and then have to pay someone to fill it back in.

Good luck. We love the pond we have here. It was here when we moved in and is about a half acre in total. Just this weekend we counted over 200 pots of waterlilies in there and we are almost ready to plant some directly into the mud and let them take over sections of the pond.

I agree with Ponditis, check with your county's NRCS (National Resource Conservation Services) to make sure what your are doing is legal. And if it is legal, you may be able to apply for grants to help you with your project. I do know one go around for deadline for applying for grants is May 31.

oh my gosh - that's Tuesday! I had no idea there would be grants available. Fortunately, the little creek runs through our property and then flows into a bigger creek which is the back border of our property. Noone else would be affected by us re-routing the creek through a pond. Thanks!

Most definitely check on water rights. It can be much more complex than you think. The state of Colorado just lost a legal battle with the State of Kansas over 45 years of water from the Arkansas River. Even though it originates in Colorado, the shallow wells allowed to be drilled on the eastern plains depleted the water in the river in Kansas. It became a multimillion dollar water bill.

Another vote for checking things out. Our local DNR put the stop to a person who had already done the work ($$$$) for a really nice pond ( on their property) to do some trout growing-different situation, but here they have a say from that to having to pay for a dam (old one) on your property to be taken down. Also checking the water-we have a lot of farms neat major trout stream-carrying a lot of Atrazine from farm wash-out and affecting the ground water for miles around.
All that said, good luck. Am looking for a bit of land and the spring that could make a pond would be four star excellent.

A few other things to consider when you divert a creek:

What is it's maximum flood level. Look at its history. We have a seasonal creek running through our ranch. My husband has also toyed with the idea of diverting the creek into a pond. Our county extension agent, by the way, says it's a bad idea. The creek is only about 3 miles long so it doesn't drain a very large area. Under saturated ground conditions, the deepest it had ever gotten, since we've lived here, was 5 or 6 feet. There are wooded areas I have never been in. When we were looking property,my husband said he saw some debris midway up some of the large live oaks near the creek. I didn't pay much attention. This past November, our saturated soil received another 10-1/2 inches of rain in a day. That creek became a raging torrent, overflowing its banks. That's when I understood how the debris got into the ive oaks. We're just lucky we didn't lose any cattle. No overflow pipe would have handled that overflow. I'm pretty sure there was enough water flowing to have taken any earthen dam with creating a disaster down stream.

Check for underground pipelines before you dig. There is a spider web of pipelines under a good deal of Texas. Before we dig, we need to have the owners, of the pipelines running through our property, come survey and tell us if it's safe to dig. When we had our large stock pond dug 5 years ago, we were told it was safe to dig in that area. Since we plan to build our house nearby, I called for another survey. That's when I found out that our stock pond is partly over the pipeline. It seems the pipe is plastic and without a tracer wire to help locate it with a metal detector.

Have your soil surveyed for clay content at the ultimate depth you want your pond. It's expensive to have to add a clay layer or other impervious materials. Our neighor had a shallow pond he had deepened. Hit gravel and his pond wouldn't hold water. He had to pay to have it refilled to its original depth.

This one has been covered by others, but I'd like to add to it. Your pond will catch any pollutants, animal and plant life that drains into it. I had planned to stock our large pond with yellow and blue catfish ( One acre minimum for bass.) until a runoff from our other neighor's pond dumped mud catfish into it. Eating muddy tasting catfish is not what I had in mind and anything that kills those catfish, kills everything else first so I had to abandon the idea of stocking the pond. By the way, the turtles and other animal life in our ponds today got there on their own.

Unless the sides of the pond are verticle, your livestock will trample your plants into the mud. Water primroses are tenacious enough to withstand being trodden on.

We had help in finding a good spot for our large stockpond. The local USDA representative is very knowledgible, knows alot about soils, land contour, etc.

Good luck with your pond.

bettydee,

That is a lot of good information. I hadn't thought about the possibility of storm waters causing the creek to flood the pond and wash away the dam. We had a pretty big storm last spring and got lots of rain and the creek did overflow its banks. With a storm like that I can see how it could wash away
the dam along with all the fish we stock, etc.

Since our water table is only about 2 feet below the surface, I am thinking that maybe we should just dig a holding pond - and not feed it with the creek. That way the water level in the pond will be controlled by the underground water table - which in theory would never overflow.

Thanks so much for your help!
Cindy Lou

We dug our pond with a Berm all the way around. We normally get more rain than the amount of evaporation so it stays basically full. Do you have access to water from the larger stream, or does your stream flow all year? This way you could control the runoff into your pond, and a 2 inch gasoline pump will deliver about 20,000 gallons of water per gallon of gas. This is how we have controlled ours, and there is no blocked stream. We stocked Bluecatfish and Coppernose Bream. Also Bass, which was a mistake.
Good luck.
trois

trois, that sounds very interesting. The little creek usually flows year round - but in a drought year it may stop flowing for a couple weeks during the summer. Yes, we have acces to the big creek (which is like a small river) and it has lots of water in it all the time. It is maybe 60-70 yards from the pond site.

I'd like to hear more about your pump - is that only used when you have a dry spell?

We have been discussing what kind of fish to stock it with. Why is the bass a mistake? I have heard that the catfish can be a mistake - that they take over and eat everything. I was hoping for some stocking info as well.

thanks,
cindy lou

It is the bass that will eat all the young of all the other fish. The catfish (Bluecats) cause no trouble at all. They don't muddy the water as some catfish do.
Most farm supply stores carry the pumps. I only use it if the pond level drops by 4 inches.This keeps the cattails from spreading further out into the pond.
The big advantage of using the pump is that when you get big rains, it won't wash away all your fish. You should have a very wide spillway so the water will be very shallow when it overflows from big rainstorms. Just a dam on a creek takes most of the control away from you. Just place the pond in a flood free place. Our neighbor had his pond too close to the stream and the water got up completely over his pond and all his fish were gone
Do you plan to catch and eat the fish? Our Bream are about a pound each and are delicious. We feed the catfish for a couple of months in the spring.
We have a lot of very large Catfish, and they are delicious. Some are now over 30 pounds.
trois.

yes, I plan to eat the fish!! I am hoping that we will have plenty of fish to eat. I didn't realize that the bass ate all the other fish - seems like I always hear people talking about stocking a pond with bass. I am not really all that fond of eating bass.

Recently I heard about people raising tilapia fish for food? Apparently that is a big business - and the tilapia grow quickly, have more meat than bone and are fairly east to clean - compared to catfish I reckon! Although, I sure do enjoy a fresh fried catfish now and then. Ever hear of anyone stocking a pond with tilapia fish?

http://ag.arizona.edu/azaqua/ata.html


tilapia- edited to add link and correct spelling

This message was edited Jun 6, 2005 2:50 PM

The problem here is that they don't make it through the winter, so you have to restock every year. Also, you must catch them with a net, as they do not eat baits.
They are slightly better tasting than catfish, but not much. Catfish are easy to clean. So are bream. When you are ready, let me know and I will tell you how..
I don't like to eat bass at all. Flavor not that good.

We found out that when stocking a new pond you aren't supposed to put the bass in at the same time as the other fingerlings. If you stock in the Later Summer/Fall of the year with your brim, cats, redear, etc then you should wait till the Spring of the following year to put in the bass. This also depends on the size of the pond and how many fish it can support. Because we put in the above-mentioned fish, including bass, at the same time, you have to limit the number of bass you put in and also be sure to include quite a few minnows. The minnows will easily multiply and be a food source for many of the fish as they grow in size, including the bass. If I find my notes on the quantities we put in I'll holler. (I remember they recommended adding a much smaller amount of bass as compared to all the other fish types we put in.)

We waited two years before adding a small number of bass. We had so many minnows that at times the top of the pond looked like solid ground. All of the minnows were gone 3 months after we installed the bass, and since, we have probably 3 or 4 thousand stunted bass, of about 6 inches, that eat all the spawn of the other fish. I have found 20 or 30 dead bass with small catfish in their mouths that were a little too big. The original Bream are too large for the bass, but their numbers are not increasing. We only put 20 Bass in the pond, 500 Bream, and 500 Blue cats. We have had to restock after catching a lot of the Bream and big catfish, with larger fish to prevent the Bass from eating them. The only good thing is that the bass eat their own young when they reach 2 to 3 inches, or we would have nothing but dead fish. They quickly learn about being caught by fishermen and refuse to eat anything that doesn't already live in the pond. Our pond is about 3/4 acre in size.

Yep! I hear ya on the waiting period...we did too. Apparently it takes that long to sustain plant life/algae/bacterial life in a pond, and that is what the "low on the totem pole" feeders need to live off.

trois, do you remember how many minnows you stocked? My DD (age 9 at the time) enjoyed figuring up the quantities we put in, i.e. "so many bags of X amount + XXXX"!) The total was in the "umpteen thousands"! :>) To this day there are many minnows in the pond (it is about half acre pond).

A pond your size needs to be seined to get rid of the over-abundance of bass. "Two or three thousand" is way too many for a pond your size. Maybe you should have us all come over for a "day of fishing", eh? We could have a contest....The one who yanks the most bass outta the pond wins a _____ (fill in the blank, with anything other than "a free bass"!)

It's very important to manage a pond. X amount of fish must be pulled out weekly/monthly to maintain the proper balance. What makes it even more important is the type and size of fish that is removed. Many folks say that (for example) "7 pounds of fish must be removed monthly", however, of those 7 pounds it is also important to remove so many pounds of each fish OR X amount of Bass (or cats, or brim, etc). It sure gets tricky, eh?

According to what I have found out, other than killing all the fish and starting all over, would be to stock about 10 sterile strippers, which would eat all the bass and smaller fish. The biggest mistake I made was to stock Florida Bass. They are much harder to catch than regular bass. We have had many Bass experts try their luck and each caughtt one, then the others stop feeding for the rest of the day. Seining would not be possible unless most of the water was removed first.
I can still catch catfish and large bream, I would just like to be rid of the bass. All of them.

When we stocked the bass, there were millions of minnows. We put 5000 in for starters. They multiplied like crazy.

This message was edited Jun 7, 2005 9:41 PM

Zowie! That's a lot of minnows, eh? Guess they fed all those bass! I'm not familiar with Fla Bass. They certainly sound prolific though! (Also not familiar with "strippers"...maybe we call them by another name here though.)

I hear ya though...it would be good to have a pond with only brim (bream) and cats in it...those are my favorites (and much better eating than bass!).

I listened to an expert instead of becoming one. Bad mistake.

Stripped Bass. They are common in large lake around here. They run much larger than regular bass, and are easier to catch.
The minnows were so thick that when they all came to the surface, my non swimming dog tried to run across the pond. He sank, and we had to pull him out. He almost drowned when a small pup, and never recovered from his fear. He even taught my Rotter to be afraid of the water until one day she fell in and found out she could swim.

Ohh...I was wondering if that is what you meant! We have striped bass here, also. We also call them "rock fish", and yes, they tend to be in the deep water lakes and/or large rivers (especially for spawning).

Funny story about your dog running on water (also serious so I'm not laffing too much). Those were definitely THOUSANDS of minnows! (Wonder how they are stir-fried, eh? You coulda had a fortune on your hands!) ;>)

Trois,

When you mentioned all those fish, I imagined a very large lake. I was surprised when you said the pond was 3/4 acre. Bass are not recommended for ponds less than 1 acre. A & M's extension has a lot of literature on stocking ponds and how to manage them. There is a formula for calculating how many bass and of what size to remove from a pond to avoid have tons of stunted fish. The minnows were probably after oxygen. The surface area of a pond determines how many and what size fish it can support. I'm surprised you haven't had a large fish kill.

The thing to do is to find out how sensitive bass are to Rotenone. Stunned fish float will float and can be removed from the surface. Any fish you wish to keep will revived and be OK if placed in buckets of fresh water until the Rotenone has dissipated. As a student in a biology class, I once participated in a project to remove goldfish from a pond. Our job was to row around picking up all floaters. The blue gill and crappie went into buckets of fresh water. Goldfish went into a waterless bucket. With luck, the bass will be more sensitive to Rotenone than catfish & others.

We went through all those calculations and stocked at half the rate in order to prevent oxygen depletion. The County extension agent, A&M grad, insisted that we had to have the bass to prevent bream overpopulation. The minnows were on top feeding on the zoo plankton. We have never had an oxygen depletion problem. We have done all the testing, eary morning testing for low oxygen, PH and all that. The only problem we have had is that the bass prevent other fish from reproducing. At this time there are approximately 300 catfish that weigh 8 to 30 pounds, most in the 10 to 12 pound bracket. There are a number, less than 50 of small 3 to 5 pound catfish.. 200 to 300 large bream 1/2 to 1.5 pounds, and almost no small bream at all. I check every morning for fish on top, which is a sign of low oxygen, and they always come up and eat a bit and are lively. Just no reproduction because of the bass that I was persuaded to put into the pond.
I just found out that our new neighbor that has a similar sized pond was given the same advice by the same agent. I will be watching just to see if he has the same type of problems. We still have all the fish we and friends can eat, and never have to worry about catching a little fish, as there are none, except bass.