Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

First of all....Thanks for this forum everyone! I'm loving it so far! I was about to give up on the whole idea, now I've been inspired anew!

I'm in Philadelphia PA and as soon as the snow melts I'll be out building my system in preparation for spring. So far I'm thinking about a 500 gallon tank with an additional 15x15 shallow water bog type area for growing duckweed, swamp veggies and crayfish.

I'm wondering how many of you out there catch wild fish and put them in with your farm raised fish? I'm mostly concerned about introducing parasites or diseases. I know in closed systems these kind of things can run rampant.

Do you normally quarentine the fish? If so for how long and do you treat them with anything as preventative maintenance?

Folks who are more cautious will quarantine with maybe 3% salt for a couple weeks. Thats for wild-caught or farm raised fingerlings. If you treat with anything besides salt, remember that you are introducing it to your own food chain.

Be sure you understand your local fish and game regulations before you collect natives. You may actually need a fishing license and be subject to creel limits. I was checking on that before I decided to go with tilapia. I came to the conclusion that if I purchased yellow perch fingerlings and kept the receipt, I would be OK. I didn't consider catching my own for complete stocking. The lake nearest here is polluted enough by lawn run-off that I wouldn't want to eat the fish from there.

You might want to make that 0.3% salt... or 3 ppt. You could go as high as 5 ppt as a precautionary salt level.

I can't give the results yet, but that is what we are going to do. We have a country farm pond on our property that has been stocked several times over the years. Bass and Bluegill thrive in the pond. We are choosing to catch the fish from the pond, and use those in out tank. We will be focussing on the bluegill, but will give the bass a try also. We taking this route because we hope the fish will have a better chance of surviving given they are already local. Additionally, we can use the pond water for tank fills, and topoffs. I am using an extra-large bait trap to catch the fish. We also plan to catch fish from the pond to use as chum to feed the AP fish. I will let you know how it goes one way or the other.

I love the idea that you are using a pond on your property to stock with. I am looking forward to see how they do. It also helps that you have a water source that they are familiar with. Do monitor the tanks and keep watch for anything foreign, i.e. parasites.
Enjoy your new adventure in AP

Nice catch TimC. i glossed straight over it!

Decimal point problem--oops. Need more tea. Thanks, guys!

I've got my system stocked with an assortment of native texas sunfish. I decided to go with natives because I could catch them myself, low energy requirements to keep them in the temperature they need and sunfish are really tasty. Natives seemed so much more 'sustainable'. No need for a fish farm and middle men. I really want all bluegill but I'm horrible at IDing fish... so I've got an assortment of them so far and I'm learning all their names as I go... Redspotted Sunfish, Redbreasted Sunfish, Green Sunfish... hehe. Some of them won't get very big and I'll be eating some 4" fish.. but oh well.

My first bluegill came from the wild, all my breeders I have now came from them. Bluegull dont need heat in the winter, or cooling in the summer. They take 2 years to get big though.

Well, our system is finally completed. I loaded it up with pond water, and set my traps. In the first two hours, I cought one bluegill, about 4 inches big. The jumbo bait trap worked great. I was able to get him transferred to the big tank and he seems to have survived the ordeal just fine. I will keep you posted. I am going to check the trap again in a little bit to see if I can find him a friend of two before dark.

I've been doing some research on catching some of our native fish and it turns out that it appears (covering backside) from my interpretation that a bunch of species don't have any restrictions on them in Victoria.

Please tell me if I'm wrong but blackfish north of the divide can be caught at any time and of any size and all galaxiids except Galaxias fuscus and Galaxiella pusilla. Further more they are not listed on the schedule of native fish that must be landed as a carcass. Since they are scale fish you can only catch and keep 40 at a time.

All this as long as you have a recreational fishing permit.

edit ps because it is possible that G. species are classified as "minows" there may actually be no bag limit on them.

I don;t think the issue is about whether you can catch them or not, it's to do with taking them home live as specimen fish. There are strict regulations about collecting specimen fish, to stop people freely collecting for the aquarium trade.. At least that is what I was told is the case here in W.A. just a couple of weeks ago..

Yeah I know there is some legislation to cover that but there is a list of species that they specify may be caught but if kept must be killed and there is a list that of fish that are not allowed to be caught and if caught must be released (I guess) and then there are all the others.

well where the HELL is THAT?

i've read the fishing regs pdf cover to cover (its LONG) and have found no mention of a distinction of taking live versus dead. and i was specifically looking for it

Info towards the bottom of the page here... http://www2.dpi.qld.gov.au/fishweb/2610.html

Lots of info for QLD around, not much for other states.