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Small wildlife pond/habitat in Northern California

 
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Hi there everyone!

This is my first post and I've been lurking on this website for a bit of time now.
Is this the correct forum to post this? There's a lot involved in this project and I'm not keen on the correct forums to post for certain subjects.

It goes without saying that I have aspirations to build a pond and a surrounding seasonal wetland area.
The rocks you see are representative of the outermost portions of the prospective pond. It will be oblong shaped and the space is approx. 20ft W x 35ft L.
The depth will be determined by whether or not I can actually house trout within the body of water. But all things considered, I would be making the deepest part closest to where the grass patches are at the present time.
My main concern is temps. Would it be feasible and easy to keep 10-20 trout in a pond of this size year around?
The elevation is around 4300ft, with the hottest months being upwards of 96F with the extremes reaching 101. However these are peak temps that may last 1 1/2 hours or less, and things drop off significantly during the evening and nighttime hours and usually are in the low 70's to high 60's. The winter temps drop as low as 25F (there are occasional times when it can get to 20F but rarely does it go below).

As you can see in some of the pictures there is somewhat of a slope to the terrain that runs from N to S. So I also wanted to ask for some suggestions about possible overflow?
I've got any more questions and there is much more detailed/planned out for this project but for the sake of keeping this brief, I'll leave this post as it is now.

I will post more pics with a hose line and other details to give a better perspective of the shape of the pond in a few days.
Thank you so much in advance!
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pollinator
Posts: 5347
Location: Bendigo , Australia
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I have grown trout from fingerlings.
I use a farm dam 80ft x 40 ft and about 10ft deep.
It has water moving into from time to time.
It has vegetation around that can drop in or harbour insects etc.
I actually cannot remember what the trout feed on, but I never feed them.

Surface area, depth vegetation are all issues to look at now.
Good luck.

 
John C Daley
pollinator
Posts: 5347
Location: Bendigo , Australia
477
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Your question prompted me to purchase some new fingerlings. Silver Perch $AU2 each.
My dam will take about 125.
I was reminded that Trout do not like shallow water, 10 ft because in Australia the water may get over 27deg. C in temp.
The Silver Perch will live up to 37 deg. C.
 
Dave Burch
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John C Daley wrote:Your question prompted me to purchase some new fingerlings. Silver Perch $AU2 each.
My dam will take about 125.
I was reminded that Trout do not like shallow water, 10 ft because in Australia the water may get over 27deg. C in temp.
The Silver Perch will live up to 37 deg. C.



So if I’m understanding you correctly. The more depth the better?
Would 5 feet suffice?
I mean it makes sense and all, but I’m not sure how fast the temps will rise in the dead of summer or how thick the ice will get on a body of water this size.
I also wanted to see what people would say about a concept I was interested in creating ever since I started becoming interested in building a pond. But funny enough I’ve seen the same concept here on this forum. It’s of a stream in a closed loop system.
Here’s the link:
https://permies.com/t/133796/Pond-Concept-Artifical-stream
This concept I’m sure will cause temps to increase with absolute certainty. But as to how much I’m not sure.
I’ve been contemplating about having the stream run from where the deep end would be away towards a pump that would run the water underground to a feature at the top of the slope. I would then have it run down into the main body on the deep end.
Courtesy of my wonderful art skills… Blue arrows representing the flow and the black line the underground line.
Obviously this is a rough drawing and the stream would be much more elaborate.

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John C Daley wrote:I have grown trout from fingerlings.
I use a farm dam 80ft x 40 ft and about 10ft deep.
It has water moving into from time to time.
It has vegetation around that can drop in or harbour insects etc.
I actually cannot remember what the trout feed on, but I never feed them.

Surface area, depth vegetation are all issues to look at now.
Good luck.

If the right habitat was in place, the surface area took over to grow periphyton naturally from phosphorus and nitrogen in the water column. Bugs is the most important part to start!
Take a look at some ideas here at this artificial fish cover site called Fishiding.com
Shallow water fry protection
fry habitat

 
I brought this back from the farm where they grow the tiny ads:
the permaculture bootcamp in winter (plus half-assed holidays)
https://permies.com/t/149839/permaculture-projects/permaculture-bootcamp-winter-assed-holidays
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