Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hay Erro, your welcome.
you could try growing reds in cages, or if you put them in the dam and let them breed you could fish them heavily to reduce the numbers and feed them back to what's left in the dam, if I remember correctly your dam is 400m square this would be manageable, would take some effort but I think you would be able to maintain a population of sizable fish as once there are some large individuals they will eat large amounts of there own fry and fingerlings and you will have small reds on tap at the end of spring for any one you may wish to supply.

just my thoughts. sorry guys.

just for the record I know there are lots and lots of small reds in the dams I have mentioned but there are some big ones in there still (maybe not Waroona as it was emptied a few years ago) not lots, but big baits in the deeper areas will bring them out sometimes, we get some big ones most times.

My thought was to keep a breeding pair in one tank and fingerlings up to 1kg in the other tank, then IF they can be sexed easily move the Males into the Dam to grow and grow and grow hopefully up to 2kg+, The females ould be eaten at around 1kg and or used for food for the males in the dam.

And of course i'd have enough to supply others for their systems,

sounds good Erro, I think they are worth playing with, I'm sure you will be able to acheve somthing worth while with them.

good luck.

I was up at Howqua(Central Vic) on the long weekend, caught heaps of small redfin in the river.
Also some nice rainbows. yum!

Reported in the latest edition of "Austasia Aquaculture"... Vol 24 No 2...

NBE... the commercial arm of NBC (Ngalang Boodja Council Aboriginal Corporation) is currently applying for approval to culture Redfin in WA

This follows from a three day visit by Paul decker & Tagried Kurwie from Mahurangi Technical Institute.... NZ's leading aquaculture research facility... and the only known producer/exporter of Redfin eggs/fingerlings....

NBE currently operates as "Collie Aquafarm" in an old Wesfarmers coal mine at Collie... producing Marron...

Yep got a paper from the Kiwi's and they find feeding them a problem as did I, they feed the brine shrimps like the tinned ones you buy at supermarkets, not viable I would have thought, well not viable for AP, the kiwi's have plans of selling them in tins like sardines and the guy I was in contact with suggested they didn't have to grow them big and would be priced to easily cover costs, sort of upmaket kippers, the NBC will find that marron and red fin don't match, this is why reddies are classed as noxious and not to be returned to the water if caught, as they are not indigenous (The Fish ) I doubt they would be granted permission, or it would make a mockery of the system

I think they intend to farm the reddies in cages in the marron ponds so there wont be any predation problems. Will be interesting to see if they do get a licence as none have ever been issued before for the species. Even if they did escape (and survive the acidic mine void waters) they would just end up in the Collie River system which is full of them anyway.

Funny that you mention Artemia (brine shrimp) Nocky.... same edition has an article... again a WA company (Cognis Australia)....

That's established a "state-of-the-art" production facility... 1.5 hours north of Geralton... for carotenoid-enriched artemia...

Said to be world-class... to be sold under the tradename "Nutremia" or to the aquaria trade as "ProAqua's PureTrueBlue"....

Gidday all..

I live in Collie WA. Over my childhood i have had much success with redfin in these waters of the Collie river. You need to go upstream from the Wellington Weir and the perch are an abundance.

Lures... all those posted previously i have found to be unsuccessful.. the only one i have ever had success with is the standard redfin spinner... Red lead body, black dots, and a chrome spinner. (They look like juvi perch)

Bait.. the only way to go is with minnows.. live bait.

I intend on having redfin in my system that is to be built at my new property which will reside about 30m from the collie river.. right near the swinging bridge. (About March 2011)

My plan was to have a separate 1000L tank just for the reddies, and have the 5000L reservior for the marron and keeper fish. So reading as much as i can, especially about the viruses that could harm the keepers.

Troutman, wouldnt mind catching up one arvo for a bevvie and a chat.. being only 30min away.

Mark I have had no success with Reddies in system, problem is getting them to feed, I could get them to eat live Gambusia fish but they made a mess with the stuff they didn't eat or spewed food back up, they wouldn't stop eating when full they just attacked the Gambusia, was a big drama in keeping tank clean and my water was tainted in no time

I am supprised you have had so much truble with reds Nocky, I have kept them many times and they are great, even had some that would eat out of my hand! true I have not had them ever take pelet feed (that i know of or remember) but all sorts of frozen food, they are a great fish and IMHO worth the efort to establish in a back yard system, i will give them another go but I need to add a few things to my system first!

Grunta I thought I had them sorted with eating mince as they ate it when I threw it in, but a couple of days later I had balls of mince floating all around the system, studied them for a while and they were throwing the meat back up after about 5 minutes or so, they loved my Pygmy Perch so through in about 500 or so Mosquito Gambusia and they ate about 50 and savaged the rest in about an hour, took a few days to clean that mess, I tried a few Gams at a time and they ate them and after a few minutes spewed them up again, is like they get what they need from the food and ten spew out the leftovers Mob in NZ that are doing them commercially have only had success with feeding them brine shrimp, they were buying tins from supermarkets basically so very expensive, they did have minor success in getting them to take pellets but found a lot of leftovers, I think for AP just too messy

Stangas, there are a couple of other people already doing AP in Collie and another in Allanson who have a small set up with plans to go into a much bigger operation. Neither is using Redfin though.

Another member here is having success with a few reddies but still sound a bit picky about food, I think anyone will find them a pain in the Trout I know work, and eat what is thrown at them, and will soon comment on Silvers but I am sure they will be fine, but have a go with them and let us know how you go, but 4 people including me well agree they are pretty difficult to keep happy in a tank

Wild caught redfin eat all the bread you can give them. Really odd. they wouldn't eat at all, then DW put bread in, and I said: WTF you'll gumm up the system and murk up the water, btu the reddies devoured it.