raising minnows in pond

I have a small pond, maybe 50 ft x 30 ft, not very deep. After driving 10 miles to buy minnows and paying $4.75 for 36 shiners, I have decided to MAYBE try raising my own minners. My pond has a lot of pumpkin seed perch in it and some turtles. A 22 will take care of the turtles. I can buy minnows from the fish truck in march or april when it comes around. My questions are #1 are the perch going to eat my bought minnows and am I wasting my time. Yeah, I'm stingy, but $4.75 for 3 dozen miners , I can go buy fish for the cost of fish bait. Any and all advise appreciated. Thanks.

Yes they will eat your minnows to a point. Worst is eating the eggs. Need to put in some good tight cover for them to get into. I would talk to Fish and Game or county extension agent. Maybe can help you with killing off the punkinseeds then help with establishing a minnow population.

Why not shock the tank to get the perch out?

shock it or rotenone it to clear the perch out. If you use rotenone then you should wait until warmer weather.

what about a couple of cages for your minnows in the pond.. or some type of net to keep bigger fish out of a certain area of the pond

Jhef, That's my thoughts exactly, build a minner tank using hardware cloth and 2x4's. I suspect about 4' long, 3' wide and 3' deep. Any thoughts on size?

id make it as big as i could .then use dividers for different minnows..use the pool noodles to keep it afloat, and be sure to put a top on it or the birds will have easy pickings

also can you get electricity out to the pond. you could get the big chemical totes and use a small pump.. to pump fresh water from pond through your minnow container..

Large minnows are $13 per dozen and small crappie minnows are $3.50 per dozen in California around Sacramento. They replaced the Gold Rush with the cost of fishing. With the two pole limit for each fishing license that bought an extra pole tag, you dont need as many minnows unless they are biting. Raising minnows is worth the try out here.

I would kill off or drain the pond before stocking minnows. Read up on feeding and spawning shiners. Might be able to have big bags shipped to you but not sure it would be any cheaper. You interested in pink minnows called Tuffies or Shiners ?

Turtles are going to cut right through that fabric to get to your minnows, and the pumpkinseeds are going to eat your minnows.

Drain the pond. A pond that small you can drain in 1 day by renting a gas water pump. Drain the sucker and let it dry, and pick out the turtles. Fill it back up and wait a few weeks before adding your minnows. Then use minnow traps to catch your daily use of minnows and return the extras back to your pond.

The pink minnows are called rosie reds and are a color phase of a fathead. They will spawn 4-6X/season depending on your location in the country. I rotenoned my pond to clear all the fish them added 2-3 bales o any type of hay to add nutrients as it rotted. Suspend some shipping pallets in the water with Styrofoam to allow the fatheads to have a spawning structure. It also keeps the crawdads from canabalizing the minnow eggs. Tie the floating structures to opposite banks to stabilize the pallets. Add a gallon of fatheads or rosies to the pond in March so they will start spawning as soon as the water warms. Mine start in March and quit in September. Your pond could have close to .75 to 1.0 million minnows by fall. You will be giving them away by next spring just to keep them in check. This is based on a 1/4 acre pond. Been there done that.

We have a small decorative pond in front of the house. It is about 8 feet in diamter and has about 8 large pond comets and two koi. We have been dumping out leftover minnows the past five or six outings. We harvested six or seven dozen since wee started, but the past couple of tries, we seined no minnows. We think the comets are eating them. I think it is best to have a separate tank or pool. I don't even care about breeding. I just hate losing what I have paid for.

My wife informed me that, during feeding, there were a slew of minnows coming up. So, the cold water probably kept them out of our unmbrella seine..