powerlifting,
Hey I wasn't trying to encourage a fish kill at all. The impression I had was that you wanted to know the maximum weight of fish you could grow in a 1/20th acre pond farming fish for food. That happened to be the maximum weight I thought you could (should limit yourself to) achieve.
The rate I recommended of 1000 CC/acre is recommended in Texas when feeding without aeration. The booklet can be found via Texas A&M
here. So obviously once CC get to be about a pound, if all survived, there is a standing weight of 1000 lbs of CC per acre. That is as far as would push the catfish. But I do like the MOZ TP to go along with them. Swingle found that the CC ate most of the feed while MOZ TP consumed the wastes and gained on the things that the CC couldn't utilize. One of the benefits of TP is that their presence can improve water quality. They achieve that by preventing wastes from building up on the bottom and consuming phytoplankton. Swingle found, and this has been repeated numerous times, that the presence of TP doesn't not interfere with the growth of the catfish. You feed only the catfish ... whatever the TP gain is a bonus crop that takes no extra feed at all. I was thinking somewhere between 400 and 800 lbs/acre of TP could be grown in addition ... but I don't know for sure ... hence the "probably grow 70 to 90 lbs" But don't take my word for it. There is a lot of information out there.
One of biggest problems one can get into with a small pond is over-feeding. The CC are going Six-tuple in weight in a grow out and the TP probably 8-tuple or more. So at the start of the season you won't have a high standing weight of fish (unless you are making incomplete harvests). You should understand the standing weight throughout the grow out so that only the recommended weight of feed is given. This will help to limit deterioration of water quality and will improve FCR. As you approach the end of the grow out the standing weight of fish, depending on stocking and feed rates, can attain weights that could cause concern and might require curtailment of feeding. Of course, as the weight gets higher the fish actually need more feed to keep growing. So if you begin to see catfish piping in the morning, this is a good time to consider harvesting and stopping the feed. Also this is good time to review your records and plan the following year to reduce the number of CC so that the feed to take them to grow out's end is no more than what you fed.
Incomplete harvest is going to hurt FCR in subsequent years. Big CC do not convert as well as fingerlings. They can eat some of the overstock too. So a means of complete harvest will improve production. The TP will not survive winter so a complete harvest is in order for them too. You should expect 5" to 8" TP at the end of grow out. They are small but they can be cleaned on the round or fileted if you don't mind a small filet.
