i'm with ewest.....in the first place one of the reasons i stocked the sunnies from the ranchpond is that they live here. there's no absolute mine are pure GSF, but they have all the attributes and then some (large growth ).
they used to be in my pond years ago before renovation and before it dried up the first time in ~1998. to everybody's knowledge in the neighborhood, they were never "stocked" in my pond, they just showed up (for those bird theory lovers we do have intense heron, egret, kingfisher, and killdeer traffic between the two ponds).
they are as close to "native" fish as i could get. they can withstand the worst conditions i have to offer, and some of those conditions are pretty harsh towards the end of summer. i figured what better gene pool to use than what is successful in my environment....give them more food than they can eat and see what happens.
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