Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Corrective stocking larger forage fish

Flechero, no matter how you try to slice it, no fish available for stocking can produce higher numbers of forage than tilapia...none

In your forage pond scenario, feeding aquamax 5D00 and 5D01 for fry would cost < $100 for the entire season. and the grower pellets would cost around $40 per 50 pound bag.

With these nutritionally COMPLETE diet feeds in your forage pond, you will get about 1 pound of fish for every 1.5 pounds of feed. Throw a bunch of fertilizer in to grow algae and you can reduce the feed cost.

Even if CC or BG could gain one pound flesh per four pounds feed, you won't find a decent feed for one third the tilapia feed price, or any fish that will produce nealy the total pounds of fish annually.

Also, Tilapia need to be stocked based on VEGETATED acres, not surface acres...A 35 acre pond at 10 pounds per surface acre with Moz. is roughly $3500 annually --- if this same pond has 10 acres that doesn't produce vegetation, the stocking rate would be for 25 surface acres.

Tilapia are the lowest priced forage fish, period.

A benefit to the larger bass gorging themselves in the fall on larger tilapia will result in the bass entering winter with more lipids (fat) and the fat produces far more energy than the muscle mass normally consumed during the winter. This results in less weight loss for the bass over the winter and probably no loss in muscle mass...your fish have the potential to become even larger than a normal forage scenario would allow.