Not surprising, but I found a paper by one of D Willis' students to do a very good job evaluating feeds for LMB.
http://pubstorage.sdstate.edu/wfs/thesis/Csargo%20Isak%20J%202011%20MS.pdf

It's a 2011 MS thesis. He looked at fingerling feeds and then feeds for larger bass. The larger bass portion is on pgs 14-33 (still only 3.6" at start). He included only one Aquamax, and 3 others we don't seem to talk about.

• Bio Oregon BioDiet Grower (BDG)
• Silver Cup Steelhead (SCS)
• Purina AquaMax Grower 400 (PAG)
• Richloam Bass Fry Diet 12 (RBF)

They all run protein 49-61%, fat 16-20%. AQ400 is the cheapest/lb and BDG is 2x that. He cites some good literature in why high protein and lipids <20%. I was going to include several in the summary I've been working on, but this thesis does a nice job.

This was a 100 day experiment in indoor tanks and they were fed to satiation.

Survival, growth, and LCS (liver color scale) values were positively correlated with protein and P:E and negatively correlated with fat and carbohydrates, ... FCR were negatively correlated with protein and P:E and positively correlated with fat and carbohydrates

So, if you only care about conversion rate, high fat/low protein is the way to go. However, the other side of the coin is growth rate. Both growth by weight and length are best with high protein/low fat. Data and regression coefficients are in Tables 2-2 and 2-4 (pgs 32&33) if you want to see for yourself.

He concludes the best feed for intensive aquaculture is Richland Bass Fry Diet (61% protein/16% fat) and feed to satiation 3-4 times daily during daylight hours. Feed conversion was .79 kg feed/kg gain for RBF, and others were .95-1.05. The cost per kg gained was lowest for AQ400, but RBF was only 30% more. For outdoor / pond use, perhaps one chooses another feed.

You have another very good summary of a fish food study. Thanks for the efforts and presentation.

Another study with some interesting graphs of results. ..from Colorado State, 1981. Everyone seems to act like an age 1 bass is representative of all growing-out bass, the adults.
http://jn.nutrition.org/content/111/6/1085.full.pdf

Lipids were 10% in all, they replaced carbohydrates to increase protein.

This shows how much they fed to satiation and then how the response to protein levels just max out. Interesting differences SMB vs LMB and age 0 vs age 1 too.





This experiment was only 15-68 days long. They did it in 10 liter buckets. I'd think the small scale reduces value of the data.

One thing I rarely hear about is the wet weight to dry weight conversion of largemouth bass. Maybe more simply put, if you dehydrate a largemouth bass, what are you left with.

The Richloam Diet, which converted at .79/1.0 still presents a certain amount of waste when you take into account that you are converting dry weight pellet to wet weight LMB tissue.

If you were to arbitrarily assign a 80% water content to a live LMB, then that means that the .79 kg dry weight of Richloam diet is converting to .2 kg LMB dry weight. This is a 4:1 conversion, which still represents 75% of product being converted to waste.

If you take that same theory to the AQM 400 at a so-called 1:1 rate, then 1 kg of dry feed is being converted to .2 kg dry LMB tissue...or a 5:1 rate, represeting 80% of feed wasted.

Why is this important? Well, because "cost" isn't just in the cost to buy the feed. Cost also encompasses the degradation of water quality one sees both in indoor tanks, and outdoor ponds.

Do you see what I'm getting at DNickolaus?

(This is in no way meant to contradict the findings. I'd just like to add another layer to what is considered the cost of feed. Too many people just look at the front-end side, and not the back-end costs in water quality)

So one could say waste is as important as lbs gained..

It all depends.

I would guess that there are varying levels of importance to the amount of waste produced. In an indoor recirculating system, the amount (and type) of waste is absolutely critical. But in a high flow-through large pond or lake, it would be of significantly less importance. It constantly amazes me that people who have spent tens, or even hundreds of thousands of dollars on their pond will infuse tons of inferior high-waste feeds.

Yessir. Some papers discuss wet vs dry conversion. It might be interesting to see what contributes to the lack of efficiency. Carbs or fiber might be an angle.

Some papers have evaluated feed with things like chicken feathers. Those feeds are notably undesirable.. like high mortality even, not just poor performance.

EXACTLY! This has the makings of a great thread.

Cody, Baird, TJ?

I noticed one thing today as I was watching the fish eat floating pellets. There was a mixture of AM400, AM600 and AM LMB pellets in the pond. My LMB wouldn't touch the AM400, and only one LMB ate one LMB pellet. They would swim past 1 or 2 pellets, and suck down a group of 4-8 pellets clumped together. These are LMB that are in the >3# size, possibly pushing 5#.

I also watched YP come to the surface to feed. I had a 12"-13" YP come up, pass up a single AM600 pellet to grab a group that had 5 pellets floating together. The RBT in the pond would porpose along the surface, grabbing individual pellets each time they came "up" and they'd probably grab around 10 pellets total before going back to the depths.