On Monday, September 11, thirty roundtail chub and speckled dase found a new home in the pond at Old City Park.
“We’re starting pretty small,” said Tyler Arnold, a native aquatic biologist for the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources. “Hopefully we can put more in next year.”
The project started in 2021, when the city realized the carp and goldfish population in the pond was threatening other species: the carp were feeding on ducklings and other small birds. The city removed the carp and goldfish by reducing the pond’s water level and treating the water with Rotenone, a natural compound favored as a piscicide because it has a relatively short half-life —since then, the pond has been prepped for the chub.
Roundtail chub are native to the Colorado River Basin, and in Utah, they’re listed as a sensitive species. The main challenges the species faces are competition with invasive species and habitat loss from dams and water diversions. Chub can grow up to 18 inches long, Arnold said: they live mostly in the White River and in Westwater Canyon. Speckled dace are another native species, and will be used in the pond as food for the chub.
The pond will function like a nursery pond, Arnold said. If the population succeeds enough, the DWR can take chub from Old City Park and restore them back into the river.
The thirty fish range in size—most of them are small, only one or two inches, and a few are larger. They were gathered from the Dolores River, after going through an aquatic invasive species inspection and disease inspection. Once a few fish from the Dolores were cleared—disease inspections occur at a lab in Logan—the DWR could begin collecting fish to stock in the pond.
Roundtail chub like big, rocky structures found in deep canyons. Some of the pools they were living in were 12 feet deep, Arnold said, so the DWR utilized electroshock and hoop nets to gather the fish. They were living in the DWR office to make sure they weren’t carrying any invasive species—small enough eggs of invasive species like the Asian clam can survive the chub’s digestive system—and Arnold brought them to Moab.
It took about an hour for the fish to become temperature acclimated: the Old City Park pond was warmer than the cooler they were in, so Arnold introduced a bucket of pond water to their cooler every 15 minutes or so. He’s optimistic that the fish will thrive—the pond is deep enough in the middle, between 10 and 15 feet, so the fish will be able to find deep, rocky structures where they can hide from predators. The drainage pipe from the park springs into the pond keeps the water moving, and also keeps the pond from freezing all the way through in the winter. And there’s plenty of food, with the speckled dace and the pond’s insect population.
“I think it’s gonna be awesome,” Arnold said. “There’s plenty of habitat for them.”
Now, the roundtail chub and the speckled dace are the only fish in the pond. Arnold doesn’t expect any competition between them and the ducks.
