Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I am in the process of transitioning the red ear to commercial crumble food. I was waiting to see how many feed trained to report but i can give an update.

I captured about200-300 tilapia fry from my outdoor aquaponics system and put them in with the red ear. This ended up being a tragic idea. I figure i had about 200 red ear fry in the aquarium but the extra food competition turned out to be too much for the twice a day green water injections i was doing. I ended up losing most of the red ear fry.

I removed most of the tilapia from the 60 gallon aquairium but it was too late.

between the 60 gallon aquarium, a 55 galloni fry barrel and the outdoor greenwater ibc, I estimate I have about 4-5 dozen red ears still alive. 3 or 4 or them are very large and growing as fast as the tilapia. The others are very much lagging and starting to be small enough that they are getting chased and harassed by the fig fish so i need to try to remove.

Despite my mistakes and poor mortality, i feel the overall goal has been achieved. i learned a lot and progressed closer to my goal for next year when i try this with crappie. At this juncture i think the best plan is to just move all of the sunfish fry to the greenwater IBC and keep the tank water green until the fish get 1 inch long or so. You can start adding some commercial crumb before that just keep an eye on water quality. At 1 inch move them to a crowded fry tank for feed training. At least that is the game plan the next time i have a hatch... I will see what works and what doesnt and improve from there.

I have about 20 that are eating crushed up commercial feed and this will probably be my last report in 2014. Since they are eating crushed up commercial feed i consider it trivial that i will get them to eat complete pellets form the surface when they are older. I will move these guys outside into my aquaponics system as soon as they are big enough to 1) eat pellets and 2) not get eaten by the other res, bluegill and feed trained hybrid crappie.



I look forward to next year to hopefully trying to reproduce the feed trained black crappie i have in my garage.

i consider adding the tilpaia fry to the tank to be the only real mistake but going forward i believe i can get much better results using larger fish tanks for fry growout. I liked using the 55 gallon aquarium so i could monitor growth and progress easily but that is less important now that i know better what to expect.

In the video i kept saying algae and implying the fry were eating algae but the algae bloom is really food for the zooplankton which the fry eat. But visibly it's just algae bloom water when i use it.

I dont think i ramble too much in the video, all good information (imho)

The moderate success (and documentation) is much appreciated!

Great work, Brian! How'd it work out on that last spawning?

Doh! I only ready page 1 (of 3).

Word,

My feed trained black crappie arent going to be big enough to spawn this year i dont think.. and i lost all of the last 30 or so red ears moving them outside right before a cold front last year.. but they were about 3" long and feed trained. Healthy fish before my mistake.

I have new plans to perfect the process and start working on much higher survival rates. This year it may be with with bluegill again but the goal is thousands of fry to survive.

Brian, do you think I could spawn some of the bluegills in a DWC tank and let the little guys feed off the biota on the roots with any success? I may have some bluegill large enough for it this year and was thinking of putting in some net baskets with gravel. What do you think?

Scotty,

Maybe, but i am not picturing how you plan to keep the fry in the DWC when they are so small?

I had thought to wrap fine screen around the top of the outlet but it sounds like they'd be too small. I'll have to think about this. How long till they would be able to cope with the flow I wonder? Might be able to create a low flow area near one end (maybe with a partially submerged tote).

they dont really swim so much as float at the earlier stages. they are so small, any darting around they do is ineffectual to any currents.

Thanks Brian

Hey Brian, great thread! it is very encouraging. Is there any new info to share?

Thanks,

no useful updates about sunfish. The feed trained crappie i dont think are big enough to reproduce and i wasnt able to source large enough bg this spring to try again. Also, i am focused on remodeling my system so all that has lead to no progress.

It's not impossible to get a spawn going in fall but most likely wont be until next spring/



brian

Very insightful Brian. Well done.

Wow, this is quite a work in progress. Absolutely fascinating. Thank you for sharing