If you have never done this before, then you have a very steep and slippery slope learning curve to accomplish your goals for raising BG in tanks to feed your targeted predator fish. I assume your are wanting to grow BG fry to feed to another fish?. You never really explained in detail why you want to utilize the BG fry. Tell us more details why you want to grow / raise the BG fry in a tank/s? IMO having dealt with fish growing for over 45 years it will be much easier and quicker to get your predators eating pellets which will likely involve changing your fish growing methods. Even BG are considered a form of predator in that they normally eat live animal foods. In fisheries, predator does not always mean fish eating fish.
It is difficult but not impossible to train larger fish to eat pellets, but this takes creativity and quite a bit of effort and a significant amount of time. The easiest and simplest way in a pond system, but not the only way, to do this is start replacing your existing predators with pellet raised ones on a 1:1 or 2:1 basis or higher. Then you feed the target fish high protein pellets. This method is the most cost effective and most efficient way to grow big fish quickly compared to feeding them small fish. Many members here have proven this method many times. Feeding fish to fish is energy inefficient and more costly that pellet feeding fish. You are doing a form or animal husbandry we call aquaculture. Growing the feeder fish to feed to other fish is a very time consuming operation that often results in lots of fish deaths as one learns how and what to do and what not to do. Your home work, if done well, should have explained that live food to grow fish requires 10 lbs of wet food to grow 1 lb of fish whereas using the best quality fish pellets can achieve a 1.5 to 1 ratio of pellets to grow 1 lb of fish biomass. The best fish foods are designed to have a high food conversion ratio. IMO cheap fish good is not worth the money for growing the higher quality sport fish species.
Last edited by Bill Cody; 11/26/24 11:13 AM.
