Adding 5,000 Prawns to Our New Pond!

Folks at home welcome back to the Crimson Oak Pond and today we're going to be stocking 5,000 of these jumbo shrimp known as freshwater prawns into our pond we're also going to be installing a volcano pump that'll benefit all of the fish in the pond as well as installing a new Squirrel House in the Big Oak Tree so one of our most successful projects last year was building this prawn Pond and the reason we decided to add prawns into the 5 acre Pond is because we can't add crawfish because they could burrow a hole through our clay liner and as you can see these jumbo prawns are a huge protein snack for the bass and also another reason that the bass went from 2 in to 5 lb in about 18 months so what you see here is the average size adult prawn that we grew and it took about 5 months and we would release some of them right here on the Pond's Edge but a lot of them got put in at night and were an easy meal for the bass under the green lights so it's time to restock the prawns this year we have one slight problem the prawn Pond got a big upgrade and now looks like this so this year going to be raising them in three different bodies of water and our shipment just came in of 5,000 post larva prongs and you can see these are juveniles and when they're first born they're about an eighth of an inch long but we feed them a heavy protein diet and they'll reach adult size in only 4 months so the first thing we're going to do is start out by putting them in a holding tank so we can control the temperature the only difficulty with Raisin prawns is making sure their water temperature doesn't get too low because they can't survive in anything below the mid-50s so we're releasing the first bag pch in here and just like last year they immediately go to the side of the containers and start feeding on any type of algae that's in the tank and now let's talk about the second body of water we're going to be adding the prawns to if you guys recall when we were building this Pond right at the top of the waterfalls we dug out a wetland filter all right beautiful afternoon out here with the sun setting now we're about to stock some prawns and we're going to put some in the Wetland filter and down there in the main Pond but the prawns down there may get eaten by the Blu gills or Bass But the perfect thing about having this Wetland filter is you got this nice little Sanctuary so this entire area has no predators in it plus it's a wetland filter so it's full of nutrients you can see algae down there on the bottom well I have to take that last statement back I said there wasn't any predators in there but if you recall last week's video The Tiger Bass spawned and I made an attempt to catch some of those baby bass fry and I was only successful in Catching one of them but this little guy now lives in the Wetland filter that's going to get stocked full of prawns he may grow at a record rate and by the way I asked you all to help me name him and by far the most popular name was Truman so congratulations Richard you are the winner so we're at that time a year where we shouldn't have any more cold nights so we're going to go ahead and put some right here in the Wetland filter and this top layer is only about a foot and a half deep but the gravel goes down 6 ft deep so while these prawns are at the post larva stage they could get down there in that gravel and we couldn't see them for weeks or maybe even up to a month until they get big enough for their Force to come out and there's the perch right there that the Eagle's been landing on there's a cool shot of them hanging out all right so now these guys have acclimated to the holding tank which we filled with pond water out of Cedar Falls so we're going to transport some of them into the Wetland filter and the prawn should Thrive here fresh water algae and plenty of places to hide all right there's two things the prawns need in their holding tank one is warm water so we got this thermometer set to about 80° to offset any nighttime temperatures out here the second thing they need is a lot of oxygen so we're going to drop some of these pucks down to the bottom there now second one so I've been feeding these guys a heavy dose of protein pellets and it is amazing to see how quickly they grow each day I come out here they're noticeably bigger now it's time to move some to the 5 acre Pond all right we're in the shallow corner pocket of Bonnie's Bayou and we're going to release some prawns right here in this area you can see this is extremely shallow right here and and there's a lot of algae for the prawns to feed off of you can see it's a perfect safe haven for all those fish that just hatched and if there's any of you out there that want to stock prawns but don't have a good setup like a holding tank or a prawn Pond the best thing to do is just Overstock the shallow areas of your pond especially the areas that have the vegetation because While most of them will get eaten up by the bluegills and other small fish still roughly 10% of them are going to make it to that adult size and if you stock enough numbers in the beginning that 10% could be enough to have an impact on your bass so now it's time to install the volcano pump into the pond and there's several benefits to this that we're going to be talking about here in just a moment but its basic job is to act as a huge airation pump it's 5 1/2 horsepower but the other cool feature about this model is it has these big canister LED lights so you can pretty much put on a light show at night and we're using some 5 gallon buckets filled with cement as anchor points and we've got 200 ft of power and lighting cable that are going to connect back to our control panel and it floats which is a good thing we got the control box mounted some conduit leading down into the water and I had the guys from Southeastern Pond come out to help me install this these guys are very knowledgeable and made it look like an easy job so we wanted to get it out in at least that 6ft depth range so we chose right out to the left of Alcatraz Island out in the center of the pond and once the guys got everything anchored down there's only one thing left to do and that's power it on and I'll have to say guys this video does not do it justice the volume of water this thing moves is incredible people install Pond airators or fountains for the Aesthetics look but the volcano style is completely opposite it has one major job and that surface Iration and a lot of L of people call surface aerators an insurance policy for your fish so anytime you have a lot of vegetation or in our case Plank and Bloom from the fertilizer and you get these real hot summer days sometimes either a thunderstorm can trigger it by dumping a lot of cold rain water in the pond or even those very hot temperatures can cause that Plankton Bloom to die off rapidly and when vegetation or Plankton dies at a rapid rate it depletes all of the dissolved oxygen which can lead to a fish kill and you lose every fish in the pond so for starters this pump's going to prevent that and the second benefit is that as we add more and more fish to the pond each spring when we have new spawns and introduce more Blu Gill small bass and even tilapia the increase in number of fish is going to require more dissolved oxygen which this pump is going to provide more than they could ever need but this airator is going to improve the water quality and will also reduce algae growth because by producing more oxygen in the water it converts things like phosphorus which algae typically uses for food and not to mention by churning up the water a lot of those algae spores get pushed down deeper and die off because they don't have access to the sunlight another added benefit is a reduction in mosquitoes because they require still calm water for their eggs to develop and it's also going to reduce the accumulation of bottom sediment so the organic matter in the pond decomposes much slower under low oxygen conditions so as you can see by adding more dissolved oxygen there are numerous benefits and this system works great in conjunction with our diffusers and we installed three diffusers just after we built the pond and the diffuser is really good at last but not least we had to check out the LED lights at night the really cool thing about this is they have built-in color patterns for holidays throughout the year so like red white and blue during fourth of July green and red during Christmas so now our fish are going to know what holiday it is they should be celebrating now today we're going to be working with a product called Sunday to help improve the lawn around our backyard pond as well as out at the farm and we started the first application of the Sunday product about 6 weeks ago and this is what our long looked like it was in pretty good shape but you could see there were a couple of bad spots and this is a quick look at what the lawn looks like 6 weeks after applying the Sunday product and just in case you didn't see that video Sunday's products are extremely easy to use you basically just hook them up to a water hose there you go it's got pretty good range on it Sunday works as a subscription service and you start out by using the tools they give you to take a soul sample of the backyard and you send that off to their experts and based on your so and climate they'll send you back the exact mix of fertilizer you need to keep your yard looking great throughout the year so Sunday takes all the guest work out of it and make it extremely easy to use with these pouches that attach to your water hose so if you're interested in checking them out head over to gets sunday.com bamabass and for a limited time they're offering 30% off your first long care Box by using code bamabass 30 at checkout so Nate makes has been building a squirrel house for the fox squirrel we call Foxy and we put out a few feeder stations to see which area had the most squirrel activity and that turned out to be highly entertaining in itself because as always you never know what you're going to get with the wildlife we saw Flying Squirrels George Jones The posum and even clever raccoons figuring out ways to open the feeding stations and access the peanuts all right out of all the squirrel feeder stations we put out the nut bar did the best it's pretty self-explanatory it's in this giant oak tree lot of animals living and using this tree each day so we're probably going to mount the squirrel house right here on this big Branch but the tough part is figuring out how to get power and ethernet down here to this location because we're literally 1,500 ft away from the closest power source but I'm always up for a challenge so let me just show you guys this cool little package here by Dakota lithium called the power box I call it the juice box there's a lot of these type deals out on the market but this one is by far the best trust me I've tried a bunch of them so to start off with it has a lithium battery this one is the 135 amp hour which will give you juice for quite a while well the best part about this is they've made a waterproof device that has a multi-function inverter built into it but not only that it has built-in storage for things like this switch I can mount it right there the 120 volt plugs are right there everything get stored away nicely so I like this product so much I'm even going to put a link down in the video description so you can check it out now the second part of this deal is getting the Wi-Fi signal down here so we're going to mount this up high in the tree and it's going to send the video signal from the squirrel box camera 1,500 ft away to the cabin without any day loss we're even going to be able to live stream it so time to get everything set up and installed all right Nate out here delivering the Squirrel House what we got Nate we got the beautiful mahogany front door set wood floor inside come around back you got waterproof hinges up top way you can open her up let's see the inside of the Squirrel House got the full housing Suite in there got the kitchen got the living room with the TV over here got the bedroom set down here got the squirrel bed right there even built in a camera so all you guys can [Laughter] watch Candle on the table so the first thing we had to do was set the table with some almonds and a variety of nuts to hopefully lure the squirrels into their new home we also put some bonus items in in the refrigerator it's going to be interesting to see if they can figure out how to open it and Nate was even thoughtful enough to build them their own front lawn he's got little hidden gems everywhere you can see they even have a fireplace I like the front lawn dude nice good cut yeah I wonder who's going to get up here and cut the grass so big shout out to Nate makes an incredible job the animals are always happy when you show up and we may have had to do one or two sketchy things that wouldn't be approved by OSHA but hey if we're ever going to live stream all these cameras these things are necessary so one last look at the inside of the house unfortunately we installed this so late in the week you're going to have to wait until the next episode to see the squirrels enter their new home so now let's go check in on our little buddies and Cedar Falls and I'll have to say I'm starting to love the bass we call Johnny and June and the Blu gills there's something special about having fish that aren't scared of people and now every time I come up to the pond they swim over and greet me and a lot of this began when we started feeding the bluegills the protein pellets but the bass Started enjoying us coming by for a different reason so this Pond was built with shallow shelves so that the bait fish like the golden shiners we stock in here have a way to hide and get away from the bass well every time we walk up we scare those shiners out of the shallow pockets and that's when Johnny and June get aggressive so pretty much every time we come up to the pond the fish get a full belly so now they look forward to us stopping by and it's that time of year where all the lies are blooming which also means that it's toad time so if you're around any body of water this time of year there's a very good chance you're going to hear that mating call from the frogs and toads and this is nothing new to us we've been seeing it the past few years in the backyard pond so when you hear these little guys around the edge of the pond if you look closely you'll start seeing these strings of eggs and then when you come back a couple days later those eggs become tadpoles and you may see thousands of them but they're very beneficial because those Tad poles eat the algae off the rocks and basically help give your pond a good cleaning and once they fatten up they also become an easy meal for the blue gills but there's one guy out there that's not too happy with the invasion of the toads and that's Moby he said not in my house so next week I promise we're going to give you a full update on the backyard pond and Moby they're all doing great and have gained a lot of weight over the winter so now let's check in on the two bald eagles they are official residents we see them out here every day usually stopping down to snag a fish early in the morning or as you can see here scooping up the tiny fish on the edge of the banks but there's one thing you're for sure to see every day when the Eagles are around and that's the angry crows they are sworn enemies and the crows make sure to let the Eagles know it but I did see something interesting I was watching a group of crows run the eagle off but I'm pretty sure one of those wasn't a crow maybe a small Hulk or something that swooped down and tapped him we also had a special guest appearance from one of their babies the juven Eyal Eagle we hadn't seen him in about a month so it's always nice when he stops by but check this out guys look what I saw floating on the side of the pond I believe this is that mystery fish that we started seeing right after I stocked the pond with bass he was floating because he choked on another fish but that's interesting to see I wonder how many of these guys are in here all righty Fish Feeding time we got some live golden shiners I got about a dozen or so pet bass that hang out right out here in front of the dock so I've been working on hand feeding the bass and I'm starting to get very very close there's a couple of them that'll come right up to my hand and I just know the first one that explodes on it like Moby used to I'm probably going to drop the camera in the water but so far I can get to within just a couple inches of them but I can't make them commit but I'm determined to make it happen so while we watch a feeding clip I want to talk to you about the antennas if you look on the right you can partially see one of the antennas that we're using to track the fish so one of the big reasons for installing the antennas is to gather a bunch of data and hopefully learn something about bass that we didn't already know so asked you all to give me some ideas on what type of things we should track with the data and there were several comments but one of the comments I lik the most was about tracking the data to see which time of day the fish were most active and that type of data could really help out fishermen knowing what time of day the fish are actively feeding throughout the seasons of the year because one thing I noticed last year was that the bass would feed pretty heavily at night time in the summer you could hear them out there on the dock feeding at night around the pond so we don't have a ton of data yet but if you just look back over the past 2 weeks we have some pretty interesting data so let's start with a green light antenna on the left so this graph makes perfect sense a lot of the bass congregate around the green light at night because that's where I feed them and you can see that most of the bass activity was between 4 and 700 p.m. but that data could be a little bit biased because I'm out there feeding them so the oak Throne is probably a lot more like what you would see out in other ponds and lakes and I found a couple things very interesting so most of the fish appearances occurred between 18 and 20 which again is right there at dark and is pretty common so I wasn't very surprised but what I was surprised about was there being almost zero was there being almost zero activity early in the morning right at daylight so typically that could be one of your best fishing times but as you can see for this twoe period the fish were not active at all in this particular area and we also did one more graph just to see which fish were the most active in each area so Jaws Odin and Excalibur hang out around the green light and Xavier Dixie and unit probably live near the oak throne but we're going to keep analyzing the data leave a comment below if you'd like to see any particular graph and check that out got the green volcano matching the underwater green lights perfectly and you know here in the South it is officially crawfish season and this is our 10th Annual crawfish cooking and I'll typically cook for around 70 to 100 people so it's going to get hectic with five burners going at the same time we got the Crawfish tables laid out over here and you know if Nate makes is around the tables are going to have to have that engraved secon logo so we start out by purging them and just running a bunch of water through them but the key to a successful crawfish bowl is you have to Pardon one of the Crawfish and release them back into the wild and by far the best crawfish seasoning you'll ever taste is a combination between these two which are swamp fire and the Louisiana seasoning the swamp fire adds the spice the Louisiana is the salt and we got the Cajun butter for the potatoes and sausage but trust me folks you cannot go wrong with this recipe if you try it one time you'll probably never try anything else and if you're interested in our exact recipe and how long to cook the Crawfish potatoes sausage corn you can go check out some of our old videos where we have everything detailed and listed out so pretty much everywhere in the country's been experiencing some crazy weather but thankfully all of ours has been flooding and not tornadoes but as you can see the Eagles are doing their best to weather the storm up in the eagle Tower but eventually it's just too much and here's one thing you never like to see because every time we get those flood-like rains Cedar Falls goes from Crystal Clear to muddy water but if you look closely at all that water that's flowing back there behind the Wetland filter down into the drain that'll give you an idea of exactly how much water flow we had because at one point the entire drain filled up and started overflowing and that's got a 36 in pipe that HTS it down into the 5 acre pond so that was a massive amount of water flowing through that ditch and it's also a major reason we put that drain in there because had we not that volume of water could have done a lot of damage to Cedar Falls and we got a visit from one of our favorite farm animals the owl that we call Hooter and Hooter's been doing a little hunting tonight and I tried and tried to see what type of animal this was that he captured and brought up to the eagle Tower at first I thought it was a baby rabbit but the feet didn't really match up so I'm not 100% sure what this is but that's another reason we built the squirrel house to give foxy a little bit higher chances of survival so this is a first for me a rainbow trout jumped in the shallow part of the pond and spooked The Blue Heron doesn't look like he's having much luck today and look at this little friendly guy I found in the driveway this little guy is making his rounds and we also had a new duck show up and I was a little surprised because once the Eagles pretty much much moved in all the Ducks left but you can see this guy's relaxed and not a worry in the world taking him a nice nap out here in the pond so one of my subscribers reached out last week and said did you know you had an invasive grass out there at the farm and this particular grass is known as Coan grass or grass and is extremely invasive down here in the South and you can see these little cotton-like tops are how they spread the seeds and I did some research it is extremely hard to kill and usually requires several applications of Roundup but I'm worried about doing that near the pond so if any of you guys have experience of getting rid of this grass or if you know of a safe chemical to spray around ponds let me know all right time to go catch some fish see how big they've gotten there's a little bit of algae in the pond so we're going to try out the Frog today got him nice one put up a good F it's tough to beat that it's one healthy fish chunky all right this fish has been caught before 56 9587 and it weighs 2.27 lb and this fish is named Lily and Lily got the award for the most aggressive fish last spring because I caught her released her and then caught her again 15 minutes later oh no get out of there he got me in the Treet top I put out not a giant good fight though there we go all right this fish has not been caught his tag is going to be 22 32598 he weighs 1.78 lb got him where are you running to we go all right this fish has been caught 5 six 9705 anyways 1.65 and this fish is named turbo putting on some weight a little at a time and now it's time to feed Mr tiger and this may be the last time you see us feeding him because I'm pretty sure we're about to move him out to the farm so my question to you all is should we put him in a 5 acre Pond and potentially never see him again kind of like Bonnie and Clyde or should we put him in Cedar Falls and get to keep a close eye on him let me know what you all think because we're going to be moving him out this week all right right folks that's going to wrap up this video make sure to hit that subscribe button to keep up with these ponds and aggressive bass prawns and even get to see who shows up in the squirrel house but I hope y'all enjoyed this one and we will see you all next time [Music]

Channel: BamaBass

Views: 347,397

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Id: qHbMtCOZ33M

Length: 24min 17sec (1457 seconds)

Published: Mon May 06 2024