Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Yesterday I bought 150 silver perch to stock my large flood and drain system that's been sitting fallow for the past couple of months. It was interesting to see them being transported down from at least a couple of hours away. They were transported in 1000 litre plastic containers that looked like giant eskies. Pure oxygen was pumped into the water from an oxygen tank, and to calm the fish 10ml of clove oil had been added to the 1000 litres of water.

The clove oil has a calming effect on the fish and when the container was opened there were a few just floating on their sides or upside down, and I was a little concerned as to their state of health at first. They were scooped out in a net, brought around the back, and dumped into my tank, and as they hit the fresh water, you could see them begin to perk up almost straight away in the fresh water.

It's now been almost 24 hours and I've had no deaths, so I'm very happy..
The perch are BIG....! Bigger than what I needed really, but I'm not complaining..

Hi Joel,

May I ask where you get them and how much they are?

Cheers

Johnnie

I got these from a guy that breeds fish about 2 hours north of Perth, He's in the yellow pages under aquaculture, if you want his details I'll look them up for you..

The fish weren't super cheap because they were so big, well in fact I guess they are super cheap considering their size, they're about 250-300g each. They cost about $2.60 each delivered to my door, not bad then you consider that small goldfish cost at least that much.....

Geez that's pretty good considering up here they want $1 per fish (pre GST)....of course if you want to but 20,000 fish you can get them for only 17c each!

hi Joel

was that from the people in badgingarra ?

frosty

Yep, that was the guy from badgingarra Frosty... He had no Murray Cod, but plenty of silver perch at different sizes, and lots of Barra as well...

thanks joel

was wondering how to afford a trip to Badgie with the price of fuel and how to get them home alive

but how many do you have to buy to get delivery ?

and how much are his barra ?

although we wil b a wile before we are ready

frosty

The Barra would be difficult at your place Frosty, trying to keep them warm would be a fairly big effort... I'm not sure how much they are, I didn't even ask because I wasn't particularly interested in them..

You should give him a ring, he's quite a nice bloke and he was a little flexible in the price and fish size etc.. One of the strange things was that as well as producing fish, he also had a few thousand capsicum plants that he was growing hydroponically. Although he thought the aquaponics idea has come merit, he couldn't see himself changing over to aquaponics at all, it's too easy to buy and use the formulations....

thanks joel

one thing puzzles me a little if you dont mind you said about it being too cold here in the topic about the tilapia too ..........

but johnie has tilapia at armadale and you have barra and here is about 3 degrees warmer than perth average and from what I remember when living in jandakot 30 years ago it freezing down there and also in Armadale ???


frosty

I had the Barra only growing over summer Frosty, just for 6 months while things were warm. And the Tilapia, well I had 2 of them in my original system and they died over winter... I think Johnnie is using heaters to keep his alive, is that right Johnnie??

Basically they are both tropical fish and will suffer when water temperatures drop....

Yep, I am just playing around with some tilapia and green chromides

... I am using one 300 W heater ($ 60) to heat a wheelie bin full of water (240 L I think).

I need to put the bin on a thin polystyrene sheet and wrap it in bubble wrap for insulation.

If it starts to get real cold I will need to reduce the airflow through the system.

I have no doubt that these fish would die unless heated. (Perhaps a simple solar heater would be a good idea!)

thanks guys

fair enough then I missed the bit about the heater

frosty

My fish arrived today, very exciting to be getting started at last... 50 x Silver Perch and 50 x Jade Perch. They settled in ok, but by nightfall I had lost 5 Silver perch. Something strange about this. At the hatchery when the guy was bagging the Silver Perch a couple of them rolled over and died right there and then, he replaced them immediately, but bit strange, now I have lost 5.......I hope that is the end of that problem.
Murray

Did you get them from the place out near Beenleigh Murray? Did they have any problem with the small quantity you purchased? For my test setup I will only get 15-20 (though if the death rate is as high as you have experienced I might want to get a couple more) and I wonder if they will not want to bother with the sale

That was me - Veggie Boy. Must have logged me out after I posted to the systems thread