I wasn't sure to start a new thread or join this one, it's my first post.
I've got my first 1/2 acre Aqua-culture farm pond (1,000 LMB 2-4"fingerlings in April 2011.) Stocked some BG for feeders for next year (20 of them.)
The LMBs are all now easily 6" (although I have not checked them, just visually when they are feeding.) Some of them are starting to get wider.
I have a little AquaPro ADF 25 feeder, I had some problems with it and feeder stopped operating properly (it gummed up and I lost the little gear!) So the bass ate all 2,000 minnows and every living thing in my brand new pond (there were about a billion tadpoles that are gone.) I've got solar lights on the pond and on little floating bug pallets, that I think are helping them feed naturally at night and in the evenings.
Now the automated feeder is working again properly. I still have not added more than 40lbs of Aquamax 500 feed to the pond yet. I was feeding them 18 seconds at 7am and 12 seconds at 4pm. What I noticed is at noon, if I feed them they would feed hard again. There's a paper I read about 2x daily feeding vs 4 times daily feeding. The result in the paper was 2x was better than 1x, but that the marginal increase in number of feedings per day, did not justify the 4x feedings. The suggestion was 4x might be better, but not better if you have to pay folks to do it, I have an automated feeder and am going to move to 4x times per day 7:30 - 11:30, 2:30 and 5pm. I chose 5pm, cause I want the fish and food to be metabolized by dark when the DO depletion occurs. The paper suggested that smaller runts or less aggressive fish get their turn to feed better. The data suggested better distribution of growth among the entire population.
May: 2-4" fingerlings (about 8 grams each??) small amt of
Jun: didn't measure but definitely bigger
Jul: fingerlings definitely pushing the 6" mark.
Aug:
My goal was by November to have 8-10 fish, which would weight about 1/4-1/2 lb.
There are too many of moving variables, but this weekend I increased the feed rate to 4 times per day
28 secs in the morning.
12 secs at 11am
12 secs at 2 pm
18 secs at 5 pm
A 20 second burst is about 400 pellets. I found that the fish would clean this up in about 2 minutes or less. I visited at noon once, the automated feeder has a "test" mode, they hit it pretty hard, this is when I realized my times where low and started increasing them steadily (mid 3 week in june).
Note: I don't live in Oklahoma, Ohio is cold and snow. We typically don't get alot of 90+ degree temperature days.
What is the weight of 5", 6", 7", 8" LMB?
What is the typical month over month growth?
Great site. Love the details, questions and discussions. There are so many forum posts which apply to my questions on the feeder, feeder rates, LMB growths. Awesome community.
Ken
Hey I found this:
http://www.bassfishingcourse.com/small_large_bass.htmlI was reading away elsewhere and forgot it click update, so this is actually, my 2nd post (it was the first one started though!)
