Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Feeding Feed trial experiment

OK. So I know some may think the FCR is very high and should have been lower. However, the FCR is excellent and demonstrates that both feeds are of very good quality. We can arrive at this understanding by comparing the feed to dried fish using the assumption that dried fish converts as well as its equivalent wet weight.

It's been commonly said that annual maintenance of a predator is 5 lbs forage for every pound of predator. The equivalent dry weight of 5 lbs BG (BG have moisture content of 80%) would then be 1 lb per year per pound of predator. So we can imagine that 1 lb of feed made from 100% BG would be able to sustain 1 lb of predator. Let's also assume that BG require the same maintenance. It is also commonly said that forage consumed above maintenance converts at 10 lbs Forage to 1 lb gain of predator. Converting to dry weight BG, then 2 lbs of dried BG converts to 1 lb gain. Let's assume this conversion also applies to BG as well and so let's feed a hypothetical group of BG a hypothetical feed made from 100% dried BG at the rate fed thus far in the trial working with this conversion and maintenance.

Below is a spreadsheet where predicted growth is calculated from the feed consumed exceeding the maintenance. The FCR is the dry weight equivalent of 10 lbs wet BG/1 LB wet predator (2 lbs Dry BG/1 LB wet predator). So an FCR of 2, based on the assumption of feed made from 100% dried fish. The maintenance rate is 1 lb/lb fish/150 day growing season or 0.677 % of body weight per day. The feed rate is 2.2 ounces which is 2.847% of the initial weight of the treatments. The feed rate is fixed for the first 10 days beginning day 1 and ending day 11. So the first thing I want you to notice is just how close this prediction is to actual results thus far. The predicted gain is only off by 3 grams (1.26%). So it is clear that if dry fish will convert equally with respect to the wet weight equivalent, both feeds in the trial convert comparably relative to 100% dried fish.



In the next SS I adjusted the FCR until the prediction matches Snipes results so far. This really doesn't change the FCR that much (~1%) so its pretty remarkable that we could predict the outcome of 10 days of feeding this closely with such arcane principles of 5 lbs maintenance per year and 10 lbs forage to 1 lb gain. Its also remarkable that the feeds slightly out performed the assumptions of dried fish as feed.



To be sure, dried fish may convert better than its wet weight equivalent. I don't know, but if it does, or if the conversion of wet weight forage is better than assumed then gross conversion in cages lower than a Gross FCR=2 could be obtained. Please keep in mind that the limit is very close to 2 for any fish that converts wet BG at 10 to 1.