Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I'm in northwest USA and I settled on catfish for my AP system. I don't necessarily have a problem with buying commercial feed for them, but ideally I'd like that to be a short-term solution.

Long-term, I want to feed them mostly with a combination diet of duckweed, soldier fly grubs, and fathead minnows. I plan on raising the minnows in a separate tank as feedstock, and if I add a DWC bed to my system I would put minnows in there to control mosquito larvae which is a big problem due to our extremely wet springs/early summers.

I am still getting my 500-gallon tank cycled, but I picked up a few small fish as canaries (in the coal mine). 12 feeder goldfish and 6 minnows. They survived a day and a half with no ill-effects so I went ahead and added four 5-inch channel catfish fingerlings (I'm impatient, what can I say?). The employee that got the channel cats for me said that they were "raised around koi and other fish so they won't attack them in a pond"

I've heard of course of mammals being raised around other mammals of a different species and coexisting (a dog with a tiger, for example), but I didn't realize that fish were the same. If the cats I bought are too passive, will they avoid eating the minnow feedstock, even when the cats get much bigger? That would make breeding the minnows a waste of time.

The pet shop employee sold me some AquaMax 500 with the channel cats and said they may have to be "trained" to eat floating food instead of sinking food. How would I go about doing that?

Sounds like poppycock to me . Cats are omnivores and once they get big enough they'll begin to predate small fish especially if they feel they're not adequately fed. once they're 8-inchers I'd be surprised if your minnows are still sharing the tank. As to "training" them, even floating food sinks after a bit. They'll figure it out. Cats are pretty hardy.

I was concerned about the floating food thing because my cats have hardly eaten anything since being introduced to my tank. I fed them yesterday evening and noticed they ate some of the floating pellets I put in but mostly they were interested in chasing the poor goldfish around all over the tank. The temp in my tank was about 59-60F yesterday, around 61-62F today. Hopefully it continues to climb.

I guess the fact that they ate some floating pellets, and tried to eat a goldfish that was almost their size, answers both of my questions.

The next question is, does it make sense economically to raise feeder fish for them versus simply buying commercial feed?

Catfish are pretty docile and become pet like. The will keep the tank really clean, pumps shiny . Generally other fish can become aggressive with cats. Most times though co inhabiting a tank with to much of a variety of fish can cause many problems due to stress and disease

I had tandanus cats living amongst trout, silver perch and yabbies.

I did notice that the plastic filter cage over my pump's inlet went from "hmm, I should pull that out and hose it off" to "looks like new" over a period of about 24 hours after I added the catfish to my tank. I can only attribute that to the cats eating the crud off the filter.


I'm not seeing the docile behavior though; they chase the goldfish every time I add food to the tank. Mind you, this is the behavior I'm desiring, so that's good.

Right now I've got 24 channel cats about 5-6" long, 11 goldfish about 2" long, and 6 rosy red minnows about 2" long. The goldfish swim near the surface, the minnows school together and hang out near the goldfish, the cats sit at the bottom and are mostly invisible against the black pond liner.

24 channel cats about 5-6" long, 11 goldfish about 2" long, and 6 rosy red minnows about 2" long.

I'm the same as Charlie I've had no problems whatsoever with my fish but both the Tandanus Catfish and the Silver Perch were all the same size when they were put in the tank, there's a big difference in the size of your fish and I think that might be the problem.

So, my catfish are very shy and like to hide a lot. I've noticed that they don't seem to eat much either, even though the water temps are about 71F right now. When I put pellets in, the remaining goldfish and minnows start pecking at the pellets and the catfish come up and chase them around, but I only see maybe 4-5 catfish actually eating pellets, the rest just chase the other fish. Could the issue be that the catfish don't feel safe because the tank is uncovered and has a fair amount of light falling on it (from the fluorescent grow lights)?

My Catfish were very shy for the first 6-8 months but now they come straight up to feed at the top of the tank, it's not a light problem my tank is covered in timber and does not allow a lot of light in but either way they just like to stay low in the tank.

They do like to hide and mine did a lot of hiding when they were small, but there's nowhere for them to hide now so they have become less afraid over time.

Catfish are bottom feeders and like to stay low in the water so it takes a bit of time to get them feeding on the surface.