Losing Half of Our Family

On Friday, April 23, we had to give up half of our trout. Over the past few weeks the ammonia levels have just been super high. Not even twice a week water changes and chemicals designed to "lock up" the ammonia have worked.

I called a local pet store and town and explained our situation and asked for some advise. They told me that there should be only 1 inch of fish per gallon, otherwise the bacterial filter was not going to be able to keep up. Well, we probably have about 1 foot of fish per gallon. Time to make a hard decision.

I called Rick Castell from the NM Game and Fish and he offered to remove about half of the trout and take them to Tingley Beach. Luckily, I was gone when he showed up or else I might have cried. My wife said that the kids were very sad to see them go. I hope we made the right decision. We have about 3 more weeks to go until Release Day.

Check out the video to see how many trout we had before they took some of them.

6 Weeks!

Today is six weeks since we received the eggs. The fry are getting bigger and doing well. I am still worried that with so many fish, something has got to go wrong with the water.

Finding the right amount to feed them is another challenge. We are feeding 3 times a day, and they consume the food within 5 minutes or so. Too little or too much? Only time will tell.

The picture shows a close up of the fish during a feeding frenzy.