I've been reading/researching a lot (mostly here on the PB forums) over the past couple months to educate myself on fisheries biology, and I'm continually impressed and thankful for all the help and top-notch expertise that's shared freely in this community.

There seem to be some tried and true stocking formulas on this site, and I could be content with trusting and following along, but only after I question some things (I enjoy overthinking things). Also, my situation as far as the food chain is a bit different than others', since I'm from PA where everything's illegal (I'm still not quite convinced that if a fish warden saw me catch a bass from my own pond and release it back into the same BOW, that I wouldn't be convicted of an illegal introduction and have my wages garnished for the next 25 years... I am kidding, but you get the idea.).

I'd summarize that most peoples' goal for their fishery is to maximize the target biomass in their BOW. That biomass may be allocated towards a few individual trophy fish, a large number of smaller fish, and allocated among any number of target species, but in general we want as much biomass as we can confidently/stably maintain.

(BRIEF MATH LECTURE - SKIP TO NEXT PARAGRAPH IF YOU DON'T CARE)
I'm a mathematician, so the nerd in me pictures this like a typical operations research maximization problem, where you have an n-dimensional graph with lots of limiting factors (e.g., DO, zooplankton), and we're testing all the limits to see how far out from 0 we can push the biomass before hitting some limiting factor. If we're running into a limit in the amount of biomass in our ponds, we can usually manage the pond in a way that moves this limit out so the biomass can increase a bit more. For example, without aeration, DO is probably a big limiting factor for a lot of ponds, so if the owner puts in a properly sized aeration system, the limit line representing DO moves out, allowing more biomass than before, and the pond's biomass probably will bump up into a different limiting factor as it expands.

That long-winded sideshow to get to my main motivation for writing this: My family has a 0.5ac, 20 year-old fishery that has become very unbalanced/boring, and we'd like to begin a big revamp this year. We currently have LMB, BG, PS, GC, and have stocked a bit of everything else over the years that we haven't seen recently (so not sure if any have survived), like YP, BCP, a few SMB and RBT. We'd like to start over and make it a SMB and YP pond. I have a few thoughts/questions as I'm planning the food chain.

Thought #1: It seems to me that several discussions on forage and the food chain suggest stocking various species that all have a very similar diet, and thus don't truly move much more biomass up the food chain. For example, stocking 15 species of minnow/shiner that all just eat zooplankton and insects doesn't give you 15X the forage as stocking only 1 or 2 of those species (I get that there could be other differences and other benefits). You only have X lbs of zooplankton in your system which can be converted into little fish biomass, so adding more species doesn't seem to me like it would increase conversion of zooplankton into forage lbs, if you're already up against that zooplankton limit with only 1 or 2 species.

Thought #2 (1.5 really): I think the main base-level inputs to the food chain are nutrients and sun, right? So on leg 1 of the chain, nutrients and sun are converted into phytoplankton, which is converted into zooplankton, which is converted into your typical forage fish like GSH (ignoring FHM since they're more of a short-term forage) and YOY game fish. Thus, leg 1 is pretty well converted and moved up the chain to be available for your game fish. But then, what about leg 2 of the chain, where nutrients and sun are converted into algae and macrophytes? This leads me to my next question...

Question #1: How can I move algae and macrophytes up the food chain in PA, considering this beautiful state's laws and other considerations:
1. Tilapia - Illegal.
2. Crayfish - Illegal. Yes, seriously, even native species are illegal to stock, even between BOWs on your own property.
3. PK shrimp - Lovely, but nearly impossible to source.
4. LCS - Lovely, but nearly impossible to source, or crazy expensive (only source I've found: Sachs Systems Aquaculture)
5. Scuds - Are they likely to maintain a population under predation, without heavy weed cover (which in a SMB pond, I'd try to keep the weeds light-moderate)?
I really, really would like to find a (legal) way to move this algae/macrophyte leg of the chain up into fish biomass, so any thoughts at all would be stellar.

Thought/Question #7/C/whatever: If one's goal is maximizing pounds of SMB (or other apex predator), does it really make sense to stock such heavy numbers of YP relative to SMB (e.g., I've seen 5YP:1SMB or 10YP:1SMB)? I'd like to hear from more experienced/educated members, but my thought is that GSH and YP have a decent bit of overlap on diet, and plus they predate each other (GSH adults on YP fry, YP on GSH fry and juveniles), and given the assumed 10 lbs of forage to gain 1 lb of predator, this seems like just a big waste of food chain potential given the 10:1 loss of biomass at each level of predation. You have 10 lbs of zooplankton converted into 1 lb of GSH, which is converted into 0.1 lb of YP (assuming the YP are mostly going to predate the GSH given their high density relative to SMB and piscivorous nature), which is converted into 0.01 lb of SMB. I.e., only 1/100th lb of apex predator per 10 lbs of zooplankton. Why not cut way back on YP numbers to allow a shorter food chain (also to allow YP to get bigger due to less overcrowding, which is really the point of YP as forage, no? Have a bigger forage fish available for your bigger trophy bass?), so more of the small-medium SMB can prey directly on GSH, thus converting 10 lbs of zooplankton into 1/10th lb of SMB (10X better conversion than with the added YP link in the food chain). In a SMB pond, I've seen that fertilization is strongly recommended against, so I need to make the most out of the limited amount of zooplankton available. Or, in your experience/opinion, is zooplankton typically not a limiting factor at all? As in, with loads of GSH and YP stocked and reproducing SMB, you don't think the fish can even consume all the plentiful zooplankton available?

I'd greatly appreciate any thoughts, corrections, or tutelage.