Others will have second opinions. IMO the best method to know if you are feeding enough fish food to keep the fish plump in the smaller pond (>0.75-1.0ac) is to hand feed. Good hand feeding technique has a few guidelines. These guidelines are not necessary but they provide optimum or ultimate benefits.
1. Add feed as the fish consume it; not all at once.

2. Keep adding food slowly as it is consumed for up to 30 minutes or when the fish slow way down on the rate they eat the food. Allow fish to eat most all the food before adding more food.

3. Taking time to hydrate the food results in smaller sizes of fish to consume larger pellets.

4. Hydrating pellets allows one to form or customize the pellet size for up to the largest fish i.e. small fist size pellets. The hydrating process insures optimal feeding by all sizes of fish that are all being fed using one size of larger pellet for example AM600. A larger soft 9/32"(6-8mm) pellet is edible by 4" fish since the pellet is compressible and soft. Several to 20 pellets that squeezed together is a preferred pellet size by larger fish.

As I mentioned these guidelines are not mandatory but provide ultimate results. Here is a link to previous discussions for hydrating or softening pellets. Basically you add water to the pellets until they reach the desired consistency - usually modeling clay or formable cookie dough.

Last edited by Bill Cody; 01/13/25 03:37 PM.
aka Pond Doctor & Dr. Perca Read Pond Boss Magazine -
America's Journal of Pond Management