GROWTH OF CATFISH 
55 
45 
GROWTH OF GOLDEN SHINERS 
AVERAGE WEIGH! IN GRAM 5s 
a a7, 2 eye f0) 13 27, 
JUNE JULY AUG. 
eptember 10, even though standing crops were large. 
faximum crops exceeded 2,000 and 1,000 pounds per acre 
r catfish and shiners, respectively, providing a weight of 
ver 3,000 pounds per acre where the species were com- 
ined. In these tests the highest standing crop of catfish 
ccurred when each half of a pool contained 16 catfish 
lixed with 90 shiners but was less than 1 percent greater 
ian the final weight of 32 catfish alone in an entire pool. 
‘0 significant differences existed in production by 32 cat- 
sh alone or when mixed with shiners. 
As in our 1968 tests, the greatest production of shiners 
‘curred when the shiners were directly associated with 
itfish, but production was not significantly greater than 
at by an equal number of shiners maintained alone in an 
jual volume of water. Perhaps the most impressive result 
Fig. 3.—Growth curves for channel catfish (CC) and 
golden shiners (GS) held in 10-foot-diameter pools at 
various densities and degrees of association. The popu- 
lations contained catfish in lots of 16 or 32, and shiners 
10 in lots of 90 or 180, as diagrammed. The presence or 
SEPT absence of lines bisecting the circles indicates whether 
: the two species were mixed or separated. 
of these experiments was that the total combined produc- 
tion by 32 catfish and 180 shiners when each was main- 
tained alone in separate pools was not significantly larger 
than that made by the two species when combined in one 
pool. 
In the 1968 tests high production by shiners was asso- 
ciated with high plankton turbidity, and high turbidity 
appeared to be related to the amount of pool bottom avail- 
able to foraging catfish. In the more dense populations of 
1969, turbidity was related more to numbers of fish than to 
the existence or activities of one or the other species. The 
factors which probably contributed most to the high turbid- 
ities in 1969 were the greater levels of feeding and of organ- 
ic wastes in those pools containing the higher densities of 
both species. 
