Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hey VB... Yeah I have the details at home somewhere, I'll get back to you tomorrow about the manufacturer... Give me a bit of a nudge if I forget.......

Hi All,

Love the forum Joel, i found your site about a year ago and i'm Just about to set up a greenhouse with the grow beds.

I've had about 60 silver perch stashed in a 1000L tank for over 9 moths and find them VERY forgiving and they are supposed to be very good eating.

I originally brought 20 inside into a 180 litre aquarium to play with and found they tolerated fairly "bad" water conditions even though i found no mention of this on the web. I used to do water changes about every 3 days due to the ammonia levels.

Then, parially due to lazyness, i did waterchanges only when the water was really filthy, about every two weeks. 20 fingerlings in a 4 ft aquarium is WWAY too much in my opinion!

I found that they tolerated a PH of 6.5 with rediculous ammonia levels 4ppm+ VERY WELL. and with good feeding they trippled in size over about 6 months.

All came to a sad end when i lost power for about 16hrs one day, as i have a HUGE air pump running 5 large airstones in the 4ft tank (nessesary with 20 fish in that size tank)

Anyway the 40 odd fingerlings in the 1000lt tank share the same bad conditions + pea soup due to the algae, but have not grown (at all really!) due to the very little feed i give them, but are all alive and not diseased.

They tolerate the cooler weather here in victoria, the 1000 lt tank dropps to around 14C during the winter, providing it gets a little sun during the daytime.

Sorry for the lonn winded post, but i prefer to give more info than less!

So in short give silver perch a go!

Does anyone have any idea on fish that will breed in captivity and can be eaten but AREN'T prohibited in australia? Its not so much that i want to sell them or anything, but the reason i got my fish so early in relation to setting up my system is that i found it REALLY hard to try and order 100 fingerling down here! I'd just like the population to be self sustaining.

I eventually got onto a mob in QLD, AUSYFISH and begged them to ship me some silver perch.

Thanks again Joel for setting up just a cool site on a coll subject!
Steve

Gday Steve, good to see you here...

Yep I have to agree with you about the silver perch, they are a tough fish, infact, I think perhaps a seperate subject should be started on them...

The system wont let me log in today.
Breeding your own fish is a good idea but, sometimes the fish you want wont reproduce.
Silver perch apparently need a large differential in tide to breed. The growers who produce fingerlings have to inject the females or so ia m advised. I have silver perch in my dams so I will have to devise a way of testing if I can get them to breed. Lowering and raising the dam level dramatically perhaps
Cheers Penny

Hi Penny, I'd be interested to know where you get your fingerlings from.... And could you tell me roughly how long you keep your silver perch before you harvest them?? Good to see you Penny...

p.s. sometimes the system can seem a little dicky and you may have to try logging in a couple of times before it works. Let me know if you have further dramas.

Joel - how did you go finding that into about the fish food - nudge nudge.

Thanks

The pellets I use are made by Ridley Aquafeed they're in Deception Bay, Qld.

I get mine from Brett O'Brien at Pickering Brook. interesting bloke and good price.

When I harvest I try to take them at Plate size which is about 30 cm as this provides a single serve size fillet for restaurants. This is however theoretical at the moment as I have not sold any yet. I've pulled back and decided to concentrate on getting the property up and running as an integrated system first. But the fishing is good in the dams!!!!

I dont eat much fish but even I like silver perch and my son's mother in law is chinese and tells me that mine are the best fish she has tasted. And she is an amazing cook.

Silver perch also have some of the highest level of omega 3 oil for freshwater fish.

Thanks Joel.