Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Anyone use catfish as the main fish in their aquaponic system? they are popular food fish in this country.

TCL does

Do they eat little but grow fast? or just eat a lot so not cost effective on commercial system?

catfish are pretty heavily farmed, so I would guess they are economical.

I do know they'll eat just about anything.

We just found out 2 days ago that the local feed store has a fish truck coming TOMORROW!!!

We plan to get channel cats and hybrid bluegill. Will post back how things go.

Channel Catfish are a heavily farmed Aquaculture fish. I have 45 of them in my system and up until a week ago, they were my only fish. They seem to grow pretty fast, they eat well. They do fine on pellets but seem to really enjoy certain bugs, worms slugs, etc.

One of the main drawbacks or benefits (depending on your point of view) is that the catfish arn't as easy to breed in tank culture.

They are not nearly as easy to handle as the Tilapia but don't die if the water temp drops below 55 F. They will also grow well in the same temps as the tilapia.

Toffee,

What's more, according to SRAC "Pond Culture of Tilapia", channel cats and tilapia grow well in ponds together. I don't know how they would do in high-density recirc systems (typical AP), but sure would be nice. Do you have a source that doesn't require a stocking permit or are you going to put up with the CA requirements? I've been thinking about it and even eyed the catfish feed at the local feed store a week or two back...

I'm in Florida so I don't know anything about CA stocking permit requirements or anything.

There is no problem around here getting Channel Catfish, Blue gill, sunfish, or bass. The tilapia are not a problem either so long as they are the blue tilapia. If you want any other type of tilapia around here they seem to want you to have a aquaculture permit though there is one member that says it isn't required for personal use though I don't know that the suppliers believe him.

It might be possible to have cats and Tilapia in the same pond but I suspect the catfish will eat the little ones and babies. This might be good depending on your point of view but it sounds like the more productive method of growing tilapia is to have several tanks or divided raceway so you can keep the fish separated by size and gender for faster growth. I don't intend to have my catfish share a tank with the tilapia unless they are separated by a cage. My catfish are quite large already and most of my tilapia are still little guys needing high protein food.

I agree in theory. You have far more experience with catfish and I would certainly not want snack-sized tilapia confined with catfish. I expect that in a pond they would segregate vertically and come in little contact. But, perhaps if one started with tilapia, then stocked smaller catfish, the tilapia would always be out of danger.

warning: the above may contain ideas unfettered by reality.

One might think that catfish would hang out on the bottom and tilapia would be more likely to go to the surface but I've notice that the tilapia seem to rest on the bottom when not feeding and the catfish happily come to the surface for food so one would need to be very careful of size. I'm not sure which fish would be more aggressive to other species. I do know tilapia can be quite rough with eachother as I've had one fish killed by other tilapia of breeding age. As far as I can tell there has so far been little aggression between the catfish but they seem to like to swim back and forth clustering together and brushing against eachother.

I am enjoying my catfish very much. They coexist with my big goldfish and they are fun to watch coming up for food.

You can just gut em, halve them down the long way, slather them with salsa and lob them onto the grill whole just like that.

They are also cute as heck, and their nickname is "Fiddler Fish."

Here is a "HappyCatfish" Smiley that I doodled at lunch today...
>:D{

I asked a local fishery a few days ago about getting catfish, and the reply was "no one can compete [price-wise] with Arkansas, and good luck getting an import permit."

I think my only chance for catfish will be the Dept of Natural Resources in the spring, they sell fingerlings, but only for a very brief period of time.

When I first got into AP, I lucked into some left over DNR fingerlings, but they've all died by now. I had them in a blue barrel, and didn't get them moved to the commercial system fast enough.

yep , same in Australia, get your order in 6 months in advance, otherwise you will miss out.

What I have found, is good communication, between supplier and buyer, always got me the fish I was chasing, and inbetween of no fish, urea sorted out that gap ....Good luck and God Bless, what a wonderful system, you have created

In Thailand we use cat fish to control tilapia population.
Let them live in the same pond. Cat fish won't attack large tillapia but not the smaller.

I just got 20 4"-6"channel cats from the fish farm and had two in my 90 gal indoor tank along with some 2"-3" tilapia and I will say that the tilapia ended up pecking away at the cats tail till one died and I'm going to have to pull the other out - it may be because with the indoor aquarium I don't feed them nearly as aggressively as the ap system outside so maybe they are hungry or maybe it's the confined space - haven't moved them into separate IBC tanks outside (due to plumbing issues) yet but honestly it would be hard to see if they are fighting without constantly scooping them out