How Big would a pond have to be to support a breeding population of catfish?

[FishFreak95]

How Big would a pond have to be to support a breeding population of catfish?
I would want to do channels and flatheads and keep fathead minnows in the pond so they can be food and be used as bait. Also i would want to keep sunfish. I Cant do this now but maybe some time in the future?

 

[likestofish]

your not going to keep flatheads in with channels in a msall pond, the flatheads outpace the channels catfish in growth rate and would just eat everything. Also channels are pretty slow growing if just kept naturally.

 

[floater33]

if you have a fully stocked, good sized pond with a few different species of fish -
and you drop a flathead in there -
it will be the only fish in there in a few years.

you don't want one of them in a farm pond.

also, i'm pretty sure some lakes around me aren't even big enough to breed flats - i would say impossible in any pond
same for blues

 

[nativelover]

flats you can breed in a pond...

it will have to be atleast 4ft deep with structure (like a couple 55 gal drums with the bottoms cut out) and have enough room for it to swim around. id say a 50ftx50ft concrete "pool" should do with adequet water flow. have a pump/filter that pumps 3000GPH and another pump just circulating water that pumps another 5000gph and your good.

breeders usually use 30ftx30ft holding pins that are gated off to the river so the river flows in and out. and have one drum with 1 pregnant female per pen.

once they hatch, the fry are removed and grown in large stock ponds (above ground plastic containers) until about 8" and then released into the river.

 

[floater33]

flats you can breed in a pond...

it will have to be atleast 4ft deep with structure (like a couple 55 gal drums with the bottoms cut out) and have enough room for it to swim around. id say a 50ftx50ft concrete "pool" should do with adequet water flow. have a pump/filter that pumps 3000GPH and another pump just circulating water that pumps another 5000gph and your good.

breeders usually use 30ftx30ft holding pins that are gated off to the river so the river flows in and out. and have one drum with 1 pregnant female per pen.

once they hatch, the fry are removed and grown in large stock ponds (above ground plastic containers) until about 8" and then released into the river.

thats pretty interesting i didn't know that...
there is an 8000 acre lake around me that the fish and game says they won't breed in. Thier excuse is that it wasn't big enough- which never really made a whole lot of sense to me.

i was going off that and had no idea you could breed them in a pond