jpsdad wrote: "Everyone who reads my posts knows I have only recently acquired a property with a pond."
I feel this is a disconnect.
Using this 'catfish' thread as an example, I don't see how the original poster could glean from this post that you have never tried any of this, and thus in fact have no idea if this is even feasible:
Think about what this means if you are right. In essence, its like saying the experience of Swingle and others that replicated his results means nothing unless jpsdad or some other member replicates their results. Can you see where this isn't quite right? What if instead of Swingle and other scientists we applied the same litmus test to everything we the members have experienced? Sometimes reversing the order of things can make one take a step back and wonder how he thought the original in first place. But to your point, I think I can trust Swingle's experience. My post was a short little to "the point suggestion" of what I thought he could grow at the outer limit. It was meant to be a conversation starting place for further discussion.
gehajake, it's OK with me that you don't trust science. I'd like to persuade you to warm up to it but everyone has their own way of doing things. I know when I write about technical things that it doesn't speak to many. Most are not inclined to finish reading them I think. Consider my thread on conversion, It may have reached only a couple regulars and few others. But I know if you studied it with the intent to understand it before passing judgment, you stand a good chance of understanding the importance of those principles and why no magic occurs despite anyone's experience. A couple of years ago I came across a paper where the authors provided equations for Feed rates and Gross FCR. The feed rate equation was regressed from tests they performed to discover feed rates that optimized Gross FCR for catfish of differing weights. The optimum feeding rate changes as the catfish grow . The idea of course was to lower the cost of producing catfish. Within a day I had a spreadsheet that I could use to grow out catfish according to their experience. Pretty cool don't you think? All their meticulous testing and record keeping. All that experience. So cool that I don't have to do all that in order to apply what they learned from experience. Sweet stuff to me anyways. Some time later, when learning how to plot SGR to find intrinsic FCR and the maintenance rate ... it occurred to me that I could test whether those scientists findings of Gross FCR were consistent with theory. Indeed the results of that regression confirmed beyond any shadow of doubt that their findings of FCR at the differing feeding rates were fully consistent with theory. Was very satisfying and it strengthened my trust in their findings and the theory as well.
