An update. The first week of October I did a cage swap and sampled the black crappies. Based on a total count, the initial stocking was 32 fingerlings (3"-4"), not the 25 I thought. To date, I have not seen any dead fish, either floaters or ones that died and sank to the bottom of the cage.
During the cage swap, I culled any fish under 6" which totaled 17. Of the 15 keepers, I sampled 5 fish. Average weight 75 grams (58, 73, 89, 68 and 89). Average length 7", nothing over 7.25". Of the 17 that were culled, most averaged 5-6" with a few runts still 3-4".
As stated in the initial post, I started feeding with Aquamax 5D05 pellets, first as "mealworm" pellets, switching to Aquamax whole pellets, 5D06, in late August. The reason for the switch in pellet size was twofold. (1) My supplier was out of 5D05 and (2) at that point in time I was down to ~7 lbs of the 5D05 but wanted to save it for my RBT this Fall. From this and previous cage raising trials involving YP, BG and RBT, I've decided that any future attempts at cage raising fish (starting with fingerlings) will be done using Aquamax 5D04 pellets for the simple reason that moistened small pellets can be formed into larger pellets as the fish grow. For the few fish I raise, I don't come close to using 50lbs of feed / growing season.
Russ
