Thanks for doing the work, jpsdad! We so often overlook past research because it happened years ago, a sort of chronological snobbery that fallaciously assumes recency equals quality. Well done.
It will take several more readings for me to "assimilate" all the data, but one immediate conclusion is that artificial fish food, even with good levels of fish meal, is not a perfect substitute for the real thing, at least for LMB. Valuable supplement, but not a replacement if growth is to be maximized. The fishy food chain must be maintained! I do wonder if similar conclusions would be true of BG, HSB, and RBT.
But what about the calories expended to catch the prey, such as GAMs? Floating pellets don't require much effort to consume, which I always thought was a big advantage.
One thing that jumps out at me is the age of the study (55 years) and the light years that the fish food industry has changed.
What was the length of those LMB? Weight was from 0.716g to 19.24g.
How does the caloric content of a gam compare to a BG? Since Gams are a very small fish (common length average is 3.9 cm) they would only fit in a narrow window of a LMB lifespan as optimal feed. (4.5" - 8.25" in length)
Since they dried the fish to weigh them, we'd need to add water back to the fish to see how they compare to artificial feed since the LMB aren't eating dried fish.
