Originally Posted by Bill Cody
For pellet eating fish, I have found that if the pellet eaters do not have a long history of many generations eating pellets thus their offspring tend to not quickly learn to be good pellet eating fish food unless the new generations are each trained or conditioned to eat pellets. Instinct tells the new generation to focus on eating historically what was eaten in the past - usually natural foods. One very good example is with trout. Trout have for many, many years been raised from fry to adults all eating pellets. This tendency to eat pelleted food has been engrained in the genetic composition of trout. Thus trout fry very readily accept pellet fry power soon after hatching. I and many regional yellow perch growers who are using a local long time domesticated strain of YP (43yrs) are seeing the same thing happening as what happens with the new generations of trout who quickly learn to eat pelleted fish food. These new generation YP have a very high percentage rate of pellet acceptance.
I'm going to say I'm seeing very similar results with some SMB I've had all winter.. I cannot get the to eat pellets using any method. They were sourced from another grower and the only thing I can get them to eat is freeze dried krill, yet they will NOT transition to krill meal based feed, hydrated or otherwise. I think these fish are nearly 2" shorter than the pellet eaters from my own offspring selection.