5,000 gallons for Catfish

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I'm close to you and ALOT of other members on MFK. It is the same temperature where you are as it is here ;) The pond is outdoor.....have had a channel cat in it since May 2012....this thread is because I have another ready by the end of the year and I'm curious how many years I can do this before the pond is over-stocked.

Bullshit nobody's close to Towanda, PA lol
 
The pond size is one important factor to take into account. The other is filtration.

If we are talking about an non-natural pond with a manmade filter, I'd say for a fully grown 3'-3.5' channel, one would need about 500-1000 GPH of filtration capacity.

So, I'd imagine that ten 3'-3.5' channels would be able to have enough space in a 5000 gal (except it may be a bit too shallow, 4' depth would be needed) with ~10,000 GPH filtration (and needless to say zero ammonia and zero nitrate at the filter output).
 
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Also, my pond is coincidentally a similar size, and 16 channel cats in there would be way crowded.
 
To help me visualize, my parents have a 10x20 pond that's 4 feet deep, so around 6800 gal. I think I you could probably keep a dozen or so happy in that size. So I vote 12 for yours.
 
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