I like where your curiosity is taking you. To be sure, the main reason to understand optimum feeding is to increase the bottom line. Anyways, I'll share with you some of my thoughts.

With regard to trout, according to the reference noted in my previous post:

Quote
When fed nearly to satiation, trout will consume roughly 1 to 2 percent of their body weight in dry feed at each feeding.

I would think that most any fish has a similar Specific Satiation Rate (SSR). I say it that way because this is a legitimate scientific metric of consumption even though I have never given this metric enough thought. So one of the great things about interaction with others is the sharing of questions and the sharing of ideas. Regrouping and rereading to spot information that earlier didn't pop out. So in this spirit let's compare this range of SSRs (1 to 2 %) to the optimum SFRs in the table recommended by an arbitrary feed manufacture of its arbitrary feed. For a fish that will satiate at 2 %. For SFRs > 2, this would require more than 1 feeding. If optimum efficiency of any given feeding is below the SSR then even SFRs less than 2 could benefit by splitting the ration into two feedings ... in terms of efficiency.

I don't know if you noticed, but the table displays the entire life cycle beginning with free swimming sac fry. I know this because I am familiar with counts per pound but the confirmation is that the feed rate increases in the second row. You see in the first row, the fry is still assimilating its yolk. Without the yolk you will notice feeding rates decline thereafter. Indeed, in hatcheries, fry feeding is separated into periodic feeding spreading out the ration to consumable chunks that are within the limits of satiation.

Now let's consider your pond. We have natural foods to deal with that are not in a hatchery building or its feeding raceways. The situation is clear as mud. If we could depend that all of the maintenance being provided by pond organisms, then any consumption which did not take fish into inefficient consumption would be assimilated optimally. This a rather difficult question, IMWOT, where contributions of feed have the potential to achieve the SFR of maximum efficiency and to exceed the SFR of maximum efficiency. But back to your question. If one is feeding 1 lb per day ... the efficiency could be improved by dividing into 4 1/4 lb feedings. Here I am assuming that dominant fish are not getting the less efficient satiation ration at the expense of consumption by other fish.

So its complicated in a pond with natural foods. It's not just that one has to balance the predators and prey ... one must also balance the feed to natural consumption in order to use feed at optimum efficiency. Yet even if some nutrients are wasted through efficiency, there remains opportunity for the nutrients to reassert in the food chain which provides food as demanded/supplied (in the spirit of economy) by predators.

Last edited by jpsdad; 05/22/22 09:35 AM.

It isn't what we don't know that gives us trouble, it's what we know that ain't so - Will Rogers