How many Moz TP would we need to put in this 1/2 acre pond to get started?
Ideally you would have 10 lbs of Females. Seed production is a function of weight ... not number. Now at 6" this is 5 fish to the pound and so it would take 50 6" females to produce the seed you need for the scenario above. 1 year females are usually going to be 6" to 7" in length if given plenty of feed. You don't need many males. Not more than 1 for every 5 females is necessary. If you overstock the males, production of fry will suffer. You may need to purchase 40 to 50 lbs of adults to get the females you need. the remaining adults can be released in the lake if you desire and could help generate a generational cohort a little sooner (as 0-year females will mature before their male counterparts).
To get higher survival of fry, let the brood remain in the pond only as long as it takes for the last females to release the first cohort from their mouths. This will probably be between day 24 to 28 or so. A large mesh seine (1" or so) can harvest the brood while leaving the fry to grow to day seventy. The brood could be released in the main lake to continue producing. Rather than flush the crop of 3.5 " TP, I might try to harvest most by seine and protect them in blocking nets or cages for a day or two in the main lake. The purpose here would be to increase survival to reproductive age. The more females of the forage pond crop that survive to reproduce ... the more forage this scenario will make.
After harvesting the TP ... flush the rest and then refill the pond and stock 20 brood pairs of BG flushing and redoing every 60 days. You should produce a lot forage from that 1/2 acre but by far most of will probably come in the final stages of summer and autumn from the offspring of the 3.5" TP fry from the first crop of the forage pond.
