Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi, I am starting a aquaponics system and am wondering what to feed bluegill. Would it be possible to feed them koi fish food? Thanks!

Koi food might work. I use Purina aquamax. A local Purina store special orders it for me. $40 for a 50lb bag cheaper. Than most other things but good quality stuff. There are lots of different varieties of food. I like the Sportfish MVP. It’s high protein and a range of pellet sizes.

I have fed my blue bluegill
Sportsman's Choice TrophyFish Feed
https://www.tractorsupply.com/tsc/produ ... yfish-feed

I have also fed them Purina aquamax they did well with both.

They'll eat pretty much anything. I've fed mine game fish chow, Skrettings trout chow (floating and sinking versions), worms, hard boiled egg, insects, whatever... they'll eat it. The one thing you should know is if you feed them something other than commercial fish chow they won't want to go back onto commercial fish chow very much - might take some coaxing.

Hello, is a blue gill a cichlid? thank you for the reply

http://www.oscarfish.com/article-home/fish/91-cichlids-and-sunfish-comparison.html

no but they are very similar. (note, in the above link, "sunfish" and "bluegill" are nearly the same thing.)

Thank you bro, for the link, I'm going to take a look at it.

The few wild caught bluegill I threw in the tank of my old system took to the organic aquaponic fish feed from Amazon immediately.

Yes though. Both bluegill and koi are omnivorous fish. They will eat anything that will fit into their mouths.

Here is a link to the feed I was using...
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00A7 ... UTF8&psc=1

I'm also using Purina aquamax because that's what I have for my other fish... So far I'm shocked how fast the bluegills are growing. I thought it would take two years to reach harvest size but how fast they have grown since my water warmed up I think it might only take a year from fingerling stage anyways.

+1 on the surprising growth rate. The ones I had surprised me as well. Appetite and growth rate are highly dependent on water temps. Mine were in a greenhouse and did pretty darn well.

I am sure they did not grow as fast as trout or catfish would have. Tilapia would have died because I don't (And never will) heat my water.

Bluegill seem to be a great option for those of us in a climate that is too hot for trout but too cold for tilapia. Using local fish provides a resource that can be caught in abundance for cheap/free. I like the idea of them. Catfish need a larger tank than what I have. I hear 300+ gallons are needed for them.

Crappie or Yellow perch would be awesome too if they took to food like bluegill do. They don't sadly.

However, if someone were to plant some fruit trees nearby. Then after they came into production fully they could make the soldier fly larvae compost bins and capture tonns of larvae to feed crappie, perch, bluegill, etc. etc.

Or just toss a chicken carcass in a metal trash can and give it two days and you have millions of fly larvae... Ask me how I know lol.

I do believe both crappie and yellow perch can be feed trained. I had yellow perch that survived in my system for about a year so they must have been eating the food I was feeding the trout and tilapia or they should have died sooner. I will be adding yellow perch again by fall because I am trading a buddy a couple more IBC tanks for a couple hundred tilapia

That is where yellow perch would shine. Setting up a black soldier fly larvae bin with a ramp going into the tank.

Pretty much every fish species would take to that in a heartbeat!

Even if you don't have your own fruit orchard for a food scrap source... pretty much every restaurant or grocery store in America throws out tonns of food each year (per store probably).

Unlimited free food for your fish of high quality.

Let us know how it goes!

I will subscribe to your AP thread...

Is there something better about feeding them more natural food like maggots and such than feeding them something like Purina AquaMax?

Natural foods are a great thing... it is really no different than our diets though, too much of any one thing isn't good for you. So mixing it up with different food sources is probably the healthiest way to go that way if something is missing from one food source they hopefully get it from another food source.

We're not really trying to keep our fish alive for their full length of time they could survive in the wild, but if you want some good ideas on natural food sources search Paul_B or Paul Baldassano and keywords like fish diet, or fish immunity... he's got a number of posts that are intriguing on the subject... of course he's talking saltwater fish but it isn't that much different for freshwater fish.

Just found an interesting resource with lots of little bullets of knowledge in there.

Keep in mind that is is oriented towards catfish farming in ponds in Africa. Still lots of great info. in there though.


http://www.ag.auburn.edu/fish/internati ... 20Fish.pdf