Update, 1400 hours, Wednesday, November 16...
Outdoor temperature has plummeted and so has the temperature inside my Morton building. Temperature outside was 22 degrees F. Temperature in the Morton building was 40 degrees F.
Temperature inside the "Perch Hood" was 50 degrees F.
Temperature of the water was 52 degrees F.
Still no mortalities. The water wasn't algaefied yet, but I still drained off all of the water and replaced with new. There were no pellets in the water so I had to assume that perch are feeding, however when I threw some pellets in the perch largely ignored them, perhaps because they didn't want to come to the surface with my ugly mug in the background. I broke up 20 nightcrawlers into about 60 pieces which the perch gobbled up without hesitation, and the bigger perch almost always seemed to get the snack. An interesting observation was that when a night crawler is thrown in as a small piece, the perch will grab it about four inches below the surface, but when an entire nightcrawler is thrown in the yellow perch scatter to the corner until it hits the bottom, then they get up the nerve to come up and start pecking.
The perch are clearly diverging in size, just like the HSB that I raise, with the biggest ones running about 5.5 inches (and one crazy 7 incher). My partner wanted some perch for his pond so I took out the 41 smallest ones and brought them in to town.
P.S. If this commentary is a little mundane let me know. Maybe it can be used as a sleep aid.
