Up here, I found that FA wasn't controlled until I hit the 40# per surface acre amount.
As it is with almost all fish, you want your stocker fish to survive, and the YOY to get eaten. So, you have to stock Tilapia that are large enough to avoid predation by any LMB or other fish in the pond.
I stocked a pond last year that the previous year was stocked with 3"-4" Tilapia (at the correct # per surface acre). The previous year the owner didn't have the algae control that he wanted. When I talked to him in August, he said that stocking the larger fish seemed to do the trick - he said he never saw any of the smaller tilapia that he stocked, and thinks that the LMB in the pond ate the majority of them.
