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Live food from ponds


JORG
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I took my dog for a run today (I drive she runs) and made a few pit stops to check out how the ponds are coming along.

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Some fairy shrimp that I'm going to use to seed my 120 gal tub in the sunroom

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I think these are glass worms back in the old days pet stores used to sell them. Fish love them

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Some river shrimp they grow to an inch in lenght and are a great live food. They are much easier to get in irrigation canels than ponds thou.

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This is a mix of small stuff that has been sifted through a small mesh net it consists of various species and makes premiun fry food

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A few peices of green that I will try to grow .

I didn't really expect to find much as the ice just went out but was still surprised at the amount of life in the sloughs and ponds. As things progress I will post more pics and info on harvesting and processing the live food

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To catch them I use a large fine meshed aquarium net that I taped to an 8 foot maple stick. Then to sort the bugs I normally just pour them through different size mesh netting. I spent some extra time sorting with a turkey baster this time for photographing purposes but you only need to separate the sizes when using them for food.

Here's a pic of some pond predators that the bumblebee cats enjoyed.

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  • 1 month later...

Well I had a little time on Thursday so I went down the road and got some free food

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As you can see I use a basic large sized fine meshed net that I taped to a 8 foot peice of maple I like to do figure 8 patterns when I am swishing for bugs as it tends to bring up bugs hanging out on or near the bottom. The trick is to not touch the bottom as you will get a bunch of gunk in your net. Right now the ponds are so loaded that it should only take half a minute or so before you have a good net full.

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Do this a half dozen times and you should have a good load, depending on your pond

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Now when you get home you have 2 choices either keep it alive and feed till it is used up or freeze it. To keep it alive it helps to add an airstone and keep it cool but with the high numbers of bugs in the bucket I usually see a large die off within a couple days. So if I want to save some for winter I will freeze some. I like to sort them for size before I freeze them. I start by setting up 3 containers and then use a large mesh net first to dip into one of the containers a few dozen times so all you have left are the larger bugs the smaller stuff will shift through, then you place what ever is left in there own container and repeat till your bucket is empty then you repeat this again using a smaller mesh net and so on down the line till you have them sorted.

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For freezing I use a 1/4 cup of bugs and a 1/4 cup of water as I like to have the packages thin

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Here is the first 4 packs ready for the freezer

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  • 1 year later...

I'm thinking this year will be bad for mosquito's here is a pic of 2 pounds of mosquito larva (weighed without water) from a slough that never produces any significant amounts of mosquito larva

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