Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

What are these silvers people keep mentioning? Not goldies eh?
What sizes`are they?
Will the keep in South Oz.

The full name is silver perch or Bidyanus bidyanus

What sought of water temperatures would you see in winter..
..

Not interested (at this stage) in having them, planning well underway for bigger system(S) and run goldies for .... well until all the possible mistakes and glitches are sorted.

Most like run this until next years trout season

Silver perch are the stock standard summer fish here, they go off the feed in winter and take a few years to grow to eating size. Hardy fish though apparently they aren't the best tasting from what I've heard. Still waiting for mine to get bigger, next summer I should be able to taste and make my own decision on taste.

My guess is that you'll be pleasantly surprised when you taste your silver perch. I like them smoked - white fleshed but moist. Maybe a bit oily but not unpleasantly so. I've also enjoyed them baked and pan fried.

If you've eaten whole fish in a Chinese restaurant it might have been a silver perch.

Cheers Dave, good to get some positive feedback on their taste. I'm hoping I like them there's 60 odd swimming around in the backyard.. Interesting about smoking them, that's how we prefer the trout I'll definitely be trying it. It'll be nice being able to see the bones before they go into my mouth, my pet hate with trout. Whenever I've seen them cooked they are always stuffed with herbs. I've also heard they get tough when they are older, any comment on this?

Tough is the opposite of my experience Skeggley. Very moist and tender. But I've never eaten one older than my first batch... now a bit over 3 years. I've been eating them as they got to about 500 grams so the ones left in my tank were the runts of the batch. They tend to grow better when the biggest ones are taken out.

They don't grow very fast - jade perch get to plate sized in half the time - but they're almost bullet proof in my experience.

They seem to smoke well because of the high omega 3 content. I brine them overnight in salty strong black tea with a bit of sugar added. Whack them in a hot smoker and then stand back so my wife and mates don't knock me over in the rush to have a taste

Mmm, I can see a smoker coming on the wish list.