Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Creating habitat ? Adding cover = greater fish growth

I think it depends on the size of fish and a few other variables.

For small fish and up to young adult fish, normal amounts of manmade structure have less than significant affects on growth rates compared to the control situations.

For large adult or mature fish, especially predatory fish, the structure could easily contribute to increased growth rates due to more forage fish being drawn or attracted to the structure compared to completely bare bottom areas. Increased concentrations of forage fish at structure sites should improve the predator's catch rate of forage fish (assuming the predator was an ambush predator).

However this concept would also be affected by the type of predator species (feeding habits) and the amount or percentage of structure in relation to surface area of the water body. AS the amount of structure increases the growth rates would increase but not necessarily in direct proportion. Varying the amount of structure could affect the study's outcome. The type of structure (interstitial spacing) and overall density of both predator and forage fish would also have impacts on growth rates. The type of forage fish could also have an influence on the study results. Not all forage fish respond the same way to structure. Numerous variables may or may not influence the growth rates.

The study design or methods could easily introduce a bias to the results.