I had never heard/read the statement by Swingle. Interesting but it seems to me that they would be almost immediately eaten in an established pond.
Also, Swingle mostly wrote prior to it being common to feed our BG. I wonder if that could be a consideration.
That may be because Swingle didn't quite say it like that. He referenced stocking BG in fertilized pond with and without Gambusia. The Gambusia were stocked at the rate of 1629 adults per hectare. Divided by 2.47 it is converted to 659 adult Gambusia per acre (~1 lb). The Gambusia were stocked in tandem with 3900 2" BG. At 218 BG/lb this is about 18 lbs of BG. The production from May 2 to Nov 15 was 349.4 kg/hectare with Gambusia and 186.4 kg/hectare without. The only difference between treatments were the Gambusia. I converted things to lbs/acre as courtesy.
Swingle reported that most of mosquito fish had been eaten by the time of harvest which was done by draining the ponds. The BG starting weight was only a little over 8 kilos so the weight of BG expanded by 4200%. In the reference, Swingle didn't mention whether the initial stocking of BG produced a generation that was part of the production number. I think, however, he stocked the BG at such density so as to inhibit reproduction of BG and still attain a harvestable size of 6".
I'll comment more on this and provide a link to the reference later but have just run out of time for the moment ...
