I am still a while away from a complete report but i do have an update.
in the 100 gallon aquarium i had 100 bcp, 100bg, and 100 channel cats all in the 1-1.5" range. Last week i moved the fish outside and counted 31 BCP. They looked healthy as in they looked like they have been eating. (they have been in the aquarium for almost 3 months)
I moved the 31 BCP to my outdoor 700 gallon ferrocement tank in my aquaponics. I want to see how they do now without the crowding and without the bluegill competition.
I also had a 100 gallon stock tank with 100 bcp and 100 bg. From this tank i only counted 17 BCP. These too looked very healthy. I moved these 17 BCP into the now vacant aquarium, so i can do a smaller version of the same ferrocement test but i can see them better.
All of the bluegill went into an outdoor 1250 gallon fish tank in my aquaponics dedicated to bluegill and RES. I estimate that tank has around 400 fish total now. All of the channel cats went into a separate outdoor 1250 gallon aquapinic fish tank dedicated to channel catfish. there is between 150 and 200 channel cats in there now.
I was a little bit disappointed in these results. I felt like i was getting a much higher percentage of feed training but i guess not. The next stage is to see how well they retain the feed training when no longer crowded. Of course if they dont do well not crowded. I am in a situation that i could keep crappie crowded with res and bluegill their whole life.
The first two pictures are of bcp and bluegill from the 100 gallon tanks (when i was moving them outside). Most of the bcp are in the 3-5" range. It does look like the bluegill are outperforming them in growth
The second two pictures is of the last two bcp i have alive from my first feed training experiment along with a feed trained res.
