Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations HSB farming in barn and pond?

This link has some controversial statements about numbers of HSB per acre and weight gain per pound of food.

http://www.vet.upenn.edu/schoolresources/communications/publications/bellwether/44/fishfarm.html

They say:

The studies at New Bolton Center and in Philadelphia should tell. One thing the researchers do know, compared to chicken, fish are more efficient in converting feed into market weight. It takes a 0.97 lbs. of fish food to yield one pound of fish. Theoretically a farmer could raise 4,000 fish per acre of pond and could earn between $6,000-$10,000 if all goes well. If the cost of closed system fish farming can be brought down, a producer then could look at a similar profit.

I could find no followup even though this was written in the winter 1999

This is the magazine archive links

http://www.vet.upenn.edu/bellwether/archives.shtml

Has anyone ever heard of numbers like 4000 hsb per acre and 1# weight gain per .97 pound of food?

Commercial farms actually raise that many fish, but "top off" the pond. In other words, they harvest the fastest growing fish once those creatures are of marketable size. While the end production numbers may say a pond grew that many fish, there are not that many fish in there at one time. If a farmer is to supply a market, he must have a consistent supply of saleable fish. Most hybrid striper farms don't harvest entire ponds at one time. Regarding the conversion rate, I haven't heard of a farm which gets a pound of fish from less than a pound of food. I can see how that happens though, if a pond raises predator fish such as hybrid striped bass, because the pond can raise forage fish, too. The hybrid stripers eat fish food, and forage fish. Weigh the hsb after growth, compare to the amount of fish food, and the conversion rate can be lower. But, that's deceiving. Assuming the fish only receive pelleted fish food, expect it to take somewhere around two pounds of feed to grow a pound of fish...sometimes more.