Help Needed On Lakes

[pinkdolphin_113]

my dear friend Paul Murray, he owns a couple of night clubs in Scarborough, has recently invested in a lake. he was planning on stocking the lake, waiting a year or 2 and then charging people to fish in it.
its a pretty huge lake and has been filled for about 4 weeks. i'm not sure on the measurements because i haven't seen it for myself yet.
anyway, as i was walking into one of his clubs and he started talkin to me about his lake. he stocked it with 12, 000 fish but there has been a "big layer of white stuff" on the surface of the water. as soon as he tolded me i assumed it would be a protein skin... but can it happen in a lake with so much water??
his water has become toxic and he's lost all of his fish.

i told him that it's beyond my capabilities as an aquarium keeper but, as i'm more interested in the micro aspect of keeping fish, i would too love to get to the bottom of it. i thought it may have been something to do with the zooplankton organisms in the water not being able to respond adequatly to the 12, 000 fish he added.

i then thought it could be something similar to new tank syndrome.

does anyone know what is wrong?

 

[black angel]

too many fish too soon.

the lakes only been going for 4 weeks so hasnt even had time to mature

is there a water source to it? or is it just a hole filled with water?

best to let it age over time and maybe in the autumn he can add 100 fish to get the balance right and then next spring start stocking it.

he would need to sample the water and test for ammonia or send a sample to a lab for detailed analysis, in case theres some contaminate from the land getting in.

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

I agree with black angel . Even though its a lake, you can still add too many fish at once (and 12,000 fish is a lot of fish to add at once, even to a lake). Does the lake have any aquatic plants in it?

 

[pinkdolphin_113]

i couldn't tell ya about the plants! i haven't seen the lake just yet but i think i'll be going up soon. hopefully if i can help him and give him the right information about leaving it for a while, i might be able to fish in it for free and sell day tickets

dya reckon if he does leave it until autumn, he will be about to add 100 fish? and winter would make sure the lake is inhabitable or not (?)

i wouldn't say its a hole... more like a small meteorite crater or something lol and from what he described, there is no water source so yea, a hole in the ground

what fish dya reckon he should stock it with first? i was thinking of tench because of their hardiness(?)

and what dya think his final stocking should consist of?
i ask this because i haven't fish for years and i remember i used to love the challenge of a shoal of bream, a few tench and carp. this was because i was fishing in Scarborough Mere and thats about all that was in there apart from thousands of perch a spot of roach and a couple of hundred pike (which i didn't mind fishing for occassionally but they were just too easy! lol) so thats about all for my experience of fishing.

 

[black angel]

with no water source its going to get polluted really fast, go stagnant. Sounds like it might be too big to have filtration so he should try and find a nearby water source to feed it.

As it is I doubt many large fish would survive without much oxygen in it through the summer...do you know how deep it is? maybe when you go get some pics of it.

 

[ryanp15]

There's a theme park near me in lowestoft with a large lake. It has koi, golden rudd, etc. and I've noticed that there are a few places around the edge where loads of bubbles come up, so it seems they aereate the lake. There's also some big well type things that the water flows over when it gets to that hight, so maybe that's a type of filter.

 

[pinkdolphin_113]

i was talkin to him the other day and he told me there is a water source going in the lake but where from i dont know.
the lake, initially, was smaller and well established. it'd been running for about 6 years before he bought it. when he did buy it, he thought he'd make it bigger so he dug more out around it. and where he emptied it out before or not, i'm not sure of.
i can imagine he would have done otherwise it would have been alot harder digging around the edges if it was filled with water.

i thought, because of this, he'd have to mature the water once again. is this true?

 

[guppy_man]

There's a theme park near me in lowestoft with a large lake. It has koi, golden rudd, etc. and I've noticed that there are a few places around the edge where loads of bubbles come up, so it seems they aereate the lake. There's also some big well type things that the water flows over when it gets to that hight, so maybe that's a type of filter.

Those 'bubbles around the edges' you were talking about were most probably fish feeding. I fish ALOT and when i feed my chosen swim with different baits i get these explosion of bubbles where ive been feeding, this is because they root around in the silt disturbing pockets of air.

pinkdolphin, i think you should think about adding perch to the lake first, ive known these to live in polluted waters and live happily. If you are going to also add roach and rudd i'd add them not long after the perch, but they should be roughly the same size as the perch as they are predators and will attack anything that will fit in its mouth. Then after 3-4 weeks if there are no signs of dieing/dead fish, start to add tench/skimmer bream/bronze bream/carp or what ever you or he entends to have. A nice addition to any lake is orfe/golden tench/goldfish/crucian carp, ghost carp.

I know that the ornamental species suggested above draw more anglers to a fishery, including me

Good luck with it, i'd love to see some pics of the lake.

 

[Rutters19]

with no water source its going to get polluted really fast, go stagnant. Sounds like it might be too big to have filtration so he should try and find a nearby water source to feed it.

As it is I doubt many large fish would survive without much oxygen in it through the summer...do you know how deep it is? maybe when you go get some pics of it.

I have fished literally loads of lakes that have no water source what so ever, so saying they will get "polluted really fast" is not true at all,lakes don't work in the same way as aquariums!!There's more chance of a lake becoming polluted if they have a water source due to the chance of where ever the water is coming from getting polluted. I have experience of this first hand as a lake i was a member of, which had an inlet from a nearby river, became polluted and de-oxygenated the water, thus killing a very large percentage of the fish present in the lake, to say i was gutted is an understatement, as some nice sized carp were found dead, aswell as bream, pike, roach etc etc...

Pinkdolphin:

What you've posted here basically answers my questions in your other thread!!

The best way for your friend to find out the cause of the fish deaths is to get in touch with the Environment Agency, who will be able to come and take a water sample and test it in there lab, aswell as be able to let your friend know if he introduced too many fish too quickly etc etc...

Hope this helps