Part III.] Pond Fish Culture. 143 



Feeding Goldfish. 



Goldfish are essentially vegetable feeders and are very fond 

 of bread, oatmeal, corn chop, wheat chop, potatoes cut up fine — 

 in fact almost any kind of grain or vegetable stuff that they 

 can manage. They are especially fond of many of the green 

 algse, as well as the duckweeds, and eat up great quantities of 

 green vegetable matter that naturally grows in the ponds. 

 They also eat some of the soft mud or ooze that accumulates on 

 the bottom of the ponds. This material is made up to a large 

 extent of low forms of plant and animal life. It is for this 

 reason that such fish as the carp and goldfish, and the suckers 

 in general, eat it. 



The Problem of Feeding. 



The problem of feeding fish is one that will have to be 

 worked out individually by each person who has charge of a 

 fish pond. It will depend largely upon the kinds of fish that are 

 in the pond, its conditions and natural food supply. What is 

 to be fed, if anything, depends largely upon the most natural 

 and cheapest available food material. 



Where game fish are to be raised for pleasure, sport and 

 food, a number of special things are to be taken into consid- 

 eration. We are experimenting at the Hatchery with various 

 methods that may prove suitable for such fish culture. One of 

 these methods is the use of double ponds. In some respects the 

 plan seems to be good. In one pond the game fish can be kept, 

 and in another such vegetable- and waste-eating fish as goldfish, 

 carp and hickory shad. After the game fish have spawned and 

 their young are large enough to care for themselves, they may 

 be allowed to go into the ponds where there is a good food sup- 

 ply of young vegetable-eating fish. This can easily be done if 

 there are wire screen gates separating the ponds by using 

 gates with different sized meshes. 



We also raise bass, crappie, sunfish and catfish by placing 

 goldfish and gizzard shad in the spawning ponds with them. 

 The young of the goldfish and shad serve as food for the other 

 fish. In some ponds stocked after the above methods we have 

 had good success. However, we feel that there is no absolute 

 method of stocking a fish pond. All conditions must be con- 

 sidered. What will work well in one pond will not work in 

 another. Experience is a teacher that is of great value in this 

 and other lines of fish-culture work. The more knowledge one 

 has of fish and their habits the more likely one is to manage 

 any branch of the fish-culture business successfully. 



By using nets and other contrivances which have been spe- 

 cially built for the purpose, large numbers of grasshoppers 

 can be caught and fed to fish. We have taken two or three 

 quarts at a time in hand nets and fed them to the fish. It is 

 usually necessary to partially disable the hoppers by squeezing 



