Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Water chemistry Oily, Brown, Rusty colored film. Please help!!

It's sort of a trick question because it all depends on how fast the LMB grow. Lets take an acre pond as an example just because it's easier to figure out.

Take Dave's example of 100# of predators/acre, and my 500# fish carrying capacity. If a LMB needs 10# of fish to put on a pound, then you'd need 1,000# of forage fish for the 100# of LMB in a pond to have enough food for them to grow. I don't think that is possible without extensive fish and water quality management. i.e. Aaron M's set-up. So, I think you'd probably be better off with about 40 to 50 pounds of LMB in the pond, although like Dave says, every fish is a predator to some extent. To me that means you're looking at roughly 15 LMB at 3# each per acre to get that growth.

Maintenance is another matter, you could have more LMB, and the growth rate would be slower. I haven't seen any numbers on how much food a LMB needs to maintain a certain weight.