Time for an update. Going to keep things simple because this has been kicking my butt for various reasons..
After all fish were measured and weighed, I ended up using 40 per side.
Average weight= 54.78g
Average length= 141.1mm
WR average total= 99.477%
I weighed many fish in many combinations to get as close as possible in each side per weight.
Left=2191.6g, Right 2190.4
Left fed Purina Aquamax 500
Right fed Optimal BG
Both sides fed 3% of Total weight at start=2.2oz per side of each feed.
Day 11 I pulled, measured 10 fish from each and weighed the total in a bucket with 20lbs of water.
Purina side (left)=2449.2g
Optimal side (right)= 2408.8g, = 40.4 diff, minus original skew of 1.2g on left = total gain of
Purina= 257.8
Optimal= 218.4
39.4g advantage to Purina at 11 days= 1.6% better weight gain.
I am NOT going to pull and weigh every 10 days-this was incredibly stressful to the fish (and me)..
I'm going 30 days before I pull again which will be 22 July, 2021.
Personal notes at this time-- No real difference was noted on how fast fish began to feed. Some days fish fed much more aggressively than others but both sides reacted very much the same. Note- I expected some mortality after handling fish but have yet to note any morts.
The bottom line right now is this is just the beginning and I'm sure there are small errors that add up, so don't read too much into this just yet, as 10-11 days doesn't mean much to me at this point.
I chose not to post a bunch of pics right now because this whole deal has been way more time consuming than I had previously planned for, but I'm keeping up the best i can so we all can get "something" out of this without too many open variables to contend with.
I will add I went to 2.6oz/day on feed after weighing to stay ahead of the curve and they still consume total in less than 30 seconds at each of 3 feedings (.87g per event).