High stocking or recruitment rates of juvenile fish can result in growth rate depression, so fisheries managers may need to consider a trade-off between producing large numbers or large sizes of fish. Analysis of food production, feeding, and bioenergetics of growth leads to a model for predicting such density-dependent growth depression. This model can be expressed as a simple hyperbolic equation whose parameters can be estimated from field data on maximum growth rates and growth depressions under controlled field conditions, If feeding rates are assumed proportional to the square of body length, the equation leads to a von Bertalanffy growth curve with only the asymptotic size varying with density, When all sizes of fish consume the same foods, the model predicts that increasing density will lead to parallel Ford–Walford plots with intercepts that are inversely proportional to density, A key complication regards partitioning of the food resource by small and large fish, which may lead to differ...
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Walters et al. (1993) studied this question.