Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

My first choice would be jade or silver perch for the omega 3 content, my second would be blue or nile tilapia for their fast growth rates and ease of care. Unfortunately I haven't been able to source any of these locally and thus far I have been unable to find any breeders who are willing to ship fry or fingerlings internationally.

I have found a few species, including barramundi and butterfly peacock bass that would certainly be 'edible' but the costs for fingerlings are high and the care requirements would be not only complex but beyond my capacity in terms of the large tank size requirements.

The best candidate that I have been able to source locally thus far is Tilapia buttikoferi for a reasonable price, but this species is notoriously aggressive and territorial. I have heard that if kept in groups of 6 or more in a species tank the aggression can be kept to a minimum but I was wondering if anyone else here has any experience with this species? Specifically are there any tips or tricks you've discovered which help to prevent aggression and improve growth rates (aside from the obvious, crowd to distribute hostilities, keep well fed, keep similarly sized, etc).

I would be keeping them in a 240 liter tank for now, if they get over 20cm and I've had some success I may put them in a larger tank/barrel/pond and use the 240 liter for breeding and raising fry. This would be a sort of experiment, perhaps futile given my space constraints and the nature of these fish.

Aside from these questions, if anyone could offer any other advice or happen to know someone willing to ship aussie perch or other tilapia internationally I'd be happy to hear it.

The other choice of course would be to keep purely decorative fish species and forget about the BBQ component of my aquaponics system, but if I could have even a couple dozen plate size fish a year out of my system it certainly would be nice.

Thanks

Find a local fish..... Bringing in small numbers from overseas isn't a great long term plan.. Can't really be a great deal of help though, you probably need to look more into what people are growing locally, surely there must be a bit of a local aquaculture industry there..

The only aquaculture outside of hobbiest aquarium breeders that I know of are large scale salt-water aquaculture farming of various fish, crustaceans, mollusks, and sea vegetables. The tilapia and other freshwater aquaculture products that are consumed here come from Taiwan apparently. From what I understand there is a low demand for freshwater fish here so I guess no one has seen it as a worthwhile investment.

As far as domestic freshwater fish that people 'sport fish' for, the most popular is carp... I know that sounds unthinkable but they think it's delicious apparently, I have seen them catch large bass and toss them back because they are viewed as a pest fish, but they love to eat those carp... I'm sure there are other species in the lakes and rivers but they are mostly cool water species and I am doing a small scale indoor setup, I can't maintain the cool temperatures required for those fish. I need a fish with an ideal temp range of 22-32C that is rapidly growing and delicious... If I can't find one I'll likely just end up with some sort of ornamental tropical fish.