@pinetar - Interesting about multiple feedings per day. LMB are definitely grazing eaters. I've read that they take 18 hours to digest, but pellets don't have bones and I postulate they don't take as much time to digest as natural feed (most of the papers I read were based on wild LMB not farmed feeder trained). What were your thoughts on that, is that why you do so many feeding per day?

You have 7 feedings, what is your times or rough feed amounts?
Are you going to collapse those feed times as day light times compress?
Do you measure water temperature?
You have longer feed seasons in Alabama, when does your water/ feeding slow down? If at all?

How many feeders do you have? Do you feed at multiple spots?
What size brand do you have?

I feed 4 times per day (your 7 is interesting).
I use a Aqua Pro 25DF and currently using AM 500 will be switching to 600 next 50lb bag, which should be around roughly August 16th.

7:30am 50 secs
11am 15 secs
2pm 15 secs
4:30pm 30 secs
This is currently about 22-25 lbs per week.

I'm increasing the feed times by 3% per day or roughly 20% per week. Ultimately, by the end of August, I'll start lowering the feed increase down as the metabolic rate decreases, also I'll move my last and first feedings as I don't want them feeding too late in the evenings.

I've got a spreadsheet and day by day growth chart that I'm attempting to follow their growth to see how closely it fits the stories and papers that I've read.

I do dusk feed checks for like a 5-10 sec burst. The fish feed like mad, it's gone in seconds except the stuff close to the dock, they get that later after I leave.

2 questions I have related to this:
For the Aqua Pro DX Is there a formula for the amount of feed dispersed per second of operation? (Ultimately I could spend an evening exercising my 7th grade algebra prowess, but I'm looking for either the AquaPro folks to provide something or some other smart guy to have done the work for me.)

Does anyone else do formula based managed feeding?

I've got to do is get the formulas based on water temperatures for my region then dial it in with real data and tune the chart in over multiple harvest terms.

Everyone is telling me hand feeding is the way to go, but I can't afford to do this as I'm still a working man trying to pay bills at a "real" job.

Great thread, I was just getting to post this one.
Again, Pondboss forums rule.

Ken

Ken Mac - 1st 1/2 acre pond 2011, planning on a 10 larger scale aqua farming.