Had a pond dug a couple years ago approx. 50' x 70' , 10' deep in the middle. Have an aerator on the bottom, it's lined. How did you get a little ecosystem going. We put some cattails in a couple spots and i just put in a about a hundred fat head minnows yesterday. Will the small inverterbrate life just find it? There's waterskimmers and such all ready. Threw cattail seeds along the edge. Plan on getting brook trout, bluegills and hopefully channel cats. What do I feed the minnows to help them get going first and established before I get predator fish in there. I figure to toss in some cover and spawning boxes but what about feed for the minnows?

Friend of mine built some ponds on his place, after they filled he put those minnows in and by the next year there were thousands of them....so they found something to eat right away. The ponds were spring fed, he never fed them

Do some reading, then ask some questions

https://forums.pondboss.com/

www.pondboss.com is an excellent resource for pond owners.

Keith

we fertilized hatchery ponds with sheep manure, chicken litter and alfalfa meal to create a phytoplankton bloom which feeds the zooplankton

Be very careful about planting cattail, It will spread like wildfire and when they go dormant in the fall the vegetation will go in the pond and eventually fill it up very shallow, and nothing else can live in it. Same for moss like coon tail, or lotus.

A 10' deep, lined pond doesn't seem like good conditions for brook trout. It sounds like a better spot for warm water fish

He's in Montana!

I'm with BigBob on the cattails. We have a pond that has been over run with cattails. Eradicating them is difficult as you have to kill them below the water line or pull the root out. Then they come back the following year and you are doing it all over again. We finally hired a tract hoe to come in and re-dig the entire shore line.

If i was digging a pond I'd plant some evergreens in it before it filled in with water. I'd throw every field rock and boulder in there I could lay hands on. Id sein for crawfish and catch frogs. Minnows like you did already which I assume you have to be funny about what kind they are and I'd start catching and releasing some of my favorite dandys. Small mouth, perch, red ears. I got a low spot picked out, likely hit a spring, I just haven't dug mine yet.

The best farm pond I ever fished had large boulders scattered throughout for structure. I think it helps with temperature too. Heck of a spot. The guy that had the John Deere dealership in the 80's selling all those snow blowers and lawn tractors you see used for sale these days bought that place back in the day. If you got permission to fish in there you were blessed. Best example of a fishing pond I ever seen.

Buy some RTU Sonar herbicide. Make short work of any vegetation in the water effortlessly ! Once treated it will take several years for them to return .

Cattails suck

Catfish will become very predatory. They will eat everything in your pond if you let them get big enough. If you feed - they will get all the food

Their roots can destroy a pond liner also

You don't need to plant cattails ducks and geese will bring in enough seeds to give you more then you will want.there a pain in the arse and like mentioned you basically will have to pull them up by the roots or spray them even then they will keep coming back.spray is expensive and won't get any cheaper.

In Montana it will winter kill is my guess only 10 feet deep unless you have a constant flow of fresh water. In the summer you may have fish soup when it gets hot especially trout.

Ten foot that pond will be full of algae which will pull out the oxygen also cattails will fill most of the pond in very soon.

I went to every friend I had with a pond right before spawn and caught a few bass and bluegill and stocked my pond... They spawned in my pond...

Fish got pretty skinny the first year but after that all were fine..
Been 5 yrs and I'm gonna start grabbing a meal or 2 of bluegill and a few bass every year now just to keep things growing now that it's established

Plastic is bad for the environment,,,,
Next time clay line it

There use to be cattails in our pond but they died out for some reason. Maybe the watershield killed them. Not sure.

A few plants of broadleaf (native) cattail started growing in the swamp next to my pond a few years ago. I tried transplanting some to the pond but my knucklehead labs kept trampling it to death during their many daily swims.

It hasn't spread much in the swamp since I first saw it 3-4 years ago.

If it had been invasive narrowleaf cattail I would have destroyed it immediately.

Good information

But the root is edible and quite tasty!

Agree the cattails will be put to use both for us and the pigs will get to eat them. This whole thing has been a few years in the making. First I wanted to keep everything local so I hired a guy here to dig the pond, trouble is he can dig but doesn't know squat about ponds. First he said bentonite to line it, have a lot of clay in the soil to start. Trouble is he didn't pack the ground tight first, skated out of it when I suggested it. Put a couple tons of bentonite only to have it leak what water I put in. Got a hand tamper and did what I could, held kinda some water. Wiated a year or so then called him and said we got to do something here, a few grand spent so far. He says call this place out of Bozeman that specalizes in pond building, should have done that from the start instead of worrying about helping local. Anyway another few grand and now I have a pond that holds, he sThis summers plan is to put a pump in and run that water into an old abandoned irrigation ditch that I lined, it will go through a bunch of rocks and plants, collect in a pool and them pumped back into the pond through a waterfall I'll make. I have pumps and solar generators for each, inflow and out flow. Give a bit of water flow and filtration too. Have an aerator on the bottom as well.Pond guy said he's grown some big trout in that type setup. I want bluegills and such too because that's what was in my grandparents ponds. Something like this really is a neat addition to the place, Thanks for the replies

Ponds really are a great addition to any property. When I bought this place back in 89 there was a small, spring-fed, hand-dug pond here. It was used to water livestock, part of my property used to be pasture.

I dug it bigger with my backhoe and put a stone bridge with a 24" culvert under it where the spring creek exits the property a hundred yards or so from the pond.

My kids spent endless hours down there exploring and catching frogs and anything else they can get a hold of. Now my grandkids do the same thing. I love sitting down there and trying to ID the endless stream of green frogs, bull frogs, crayfish, salamanders, tadpoles and whatever else they bring me for inspection and congratulations.

My dogs swim in the pond multiple times a day spring through fall and my kids bring their dogs over on the weekends and they all go swimming.

A few years ago we started having our annual rubber ducky races in the spring when water flow was highest. It's a blast and everybody enjoys it.

Sounds like you are installing an oversized bog filter. They are pretty good at filtering large quantities of water. I am familiar with them due to aquascape designs. Good resource for information. Many blogs have a perforated pipe attached to a sump. It is handy to have the sump big enough to fit a pump every now and then to remove excess sediment.

Agree with the comments about coattails in the pond itself. If they get out of hand, cutting below the waterline at a specific time of year will drown them. In Minnesota late July to early August is about right. Your area may vary. It sounds strange drowning a cattail, but it is around a 90 percent kill rate if timed correctly.

Is it a butly liner ?

For your original question. The pond should provide plenty of food for the minnows on its own. I would probably not drink a cup of tap water that has been sitting on my deck for a month because there is most likely stuff living in that water. Spiking the pond to promote algae as already suggested or throwing in some fish food every now and then will probably help build the minnow population faster.

With an aerator the bluegill and trout will do just fine in ten feet of water. Run that aerator in the winter too. Winterkill is caused by ice trapping toxic gas in the pond. The aerator will blow hole in the ice and allow the toxic gas to escape. Have a customer with 16 koi that range from 10" - 20" long. They overwinter in a 36" deep, - approx. 4000 gallon pond. In the twelve years I have cleaned it in the spring I have only ever found one dead fish. That pond is older than 12 years as was the dead fish. Quite likely the fish died of old age.

Sounds like a fun pond