Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Don't forget feeding the brood fish with live food otherwise the eggs and fry won't be very good. Fish food is no good for pre spawn preparation.

Maybe that GHF could breed a few feeder fish in her new system? Then go for guppies in a cage or order a bag of 300 feeders from Ausyfish or any other aquarium fish breeder. And if you can have some green water it would be good also, it does the best in the lipidic reserves of the eggs.

If you get some time one day, maybe phone Ausyfish to see if you could go and see how they do their silvers. It is there I have learned how to breed silvers, jades and a few others, it was during a training period for my aquaculture degree course.

Do you have a microscope? It is very usefull to see the egg evolution (and very interesting also). Waht are you planning to do to prepare the first food for the fry? Green water and newly hatched brine shrimp?

Cheers

Hi Amacafish.
Ausyfish are at the opposite end of the country.I have a contact down here to handle the injecting etc.
I have a nice half blue barrel full of mossie larvae. The water is green and i am feeding these to a few fingerlings found in one of my tanks. Will start putting some in with the broodies too, thanks for the nutrition tip.

I was thinking hatching cysts and gutfilling them with chlorella paste to kick off the fry feeding, not raising green water as such. I think I could manage this but need a bit more confidence and hatchery practice, don't wanna kill 50000 fingerlings.
Yes, I need a good microscope, it's on the shopping list with a million other 'must haves.'
Thanks for ur interest and valuable first hand insights.

Sorry thought Geelong was in NSW, somewhere south of the gold coast.
In fact you're near Melbourne. Nice town too. Haven't been outside of it, stayed a few nights in the Chinese block in a Backpackers.

Having the fry in green water makes them less stressed for light and does a permanent self feeder system for the first days.
Don't go to precise on starting a culture with a selected sample.
What I did for my fingerlings is add everyday into the fry tank, a green algae culture that started on its own by a drop by drop syphon.
Keeps the algae culture going since you can top it up with the fry water overflow and doesn't overtakes the water for fry in FT.
The silvers fry can stay alive 10 days from hatching only on green water (with a few cyclops probably). If ever they start spining around it's done for them, start another batch.

After that they are to big to eat it anymore and then pass them on the brine shrimp or/and daphnia. Having daphnia in the tank is on the same principle of permanent self feeder by live food.
Daphnia breed in FT and stay alive in freshwater contrary to brine shrimp that you a have to monitor the residues after 3-4 hours.

I've been playing with this with my aquariums and it works nice, just have to keep a few tubs for keeping a sample of daphnia, cyclops and green water, don't touch them just put some a handfull of dry straw in them and let nature look after itself. Put a mosie mesh on them because the wrigglers feed on them.

And pick in them every so often to get a starter culture.

I've had better results with green water with live freshwater creatures in my fry tanks because the cycle of phyto/zooplankton/fish is more stable than just a very clean tank.
It's just ideas, I can't prove it but by my experience.

Another way to produce a wide variety of food is to introduce infusoria the first days with the green water.
They are easy to produce with paddy rice rafts in water, a round soft pipe attached as a floating ring and a piece of mesh on it and there you go. The infusoria cysts are in the rice coating and the culture is good in 2 days, better than the 10 days with banana skin method.

After two days, just dilute on third of the culture in the green water, the culture is good 5 days from putting the rice on the raft.
Do not use it after it kills the fry (by experience 6 days is to much, starts brewing afterwards, killed 3 spawns of paradise fish that I had been able to get on 2 days without hormone, 1500 fry at least).

Last advice is to wean the fry on pellets that have been soaked in bloodworm juice, gives the food a good taste for the first days. Just use this technique to create the interest because otherwise they will be searching the food by the taste and won't go for the pellet.
The taste creates the frenzy feeding during the first days of the overlap between brine shrimp and pellets.

If you do hormonal inject don't forget to check the eggs with a canula before injecting. Usually the injection ratio is 1 ml / kg of fish.

Hope this helps as well.

And if you have a lot of eggs from the spawn put a few hundred in dirty green water tank, just in case the main tank has a problem, let mother nature take care of a few just in case (even if you get 1% out, not lost anyway).

Have saved a few selections that way, had sold the parents just after the spawn, killed the main lot by overcrowded and overfeeding, had some aside in a crapy fish tank that needed cleaning, always got a few fishes out of them after a while even without feeding.

Have fun, I'll keep an eye here, i'd love to come and help you but might be a bit far. I've done a fish room in my flat to do experimenting before hopefully starting an AP/fish hatchery business. If you need more, just ask.

cheers big time.

Awesome advice Amacafish.

I forgot to complete with: never use a culture of green water, cyclop or daphnia pulled straight out of the wild. They are usually contaminated and carry pathogens. Keep them and wait at least 3 weeks with a few water changes. The generation of thingies that you caught will die and you'll have a clean new generation to start with. After 3 weeks, syphon the bottom of the tank or tub just to get out the contaminants that could have gone in the bottom mud.
This is adaptable to the situation, I know you aussies have got a few nice clean rivers still.
And to help the brood stock to spawn, since they spawn in floods, do a fair bit of water changes at a lower temp, lower pH, high DO than the FT they are in. This will simulate the rain fall. Fish react very well to a spawn induction by a copy of the natural conditions.
Have fun...

thx for the green water follow up. I would have put my (filtered) mossie water straight in the tank!. I have a few dozen old flip top one litre wine bottles. If i put a starter teaspoon of greenwater in each and topped up with boiled then chilled to room temp freshwater, could I use this in a few weeks?
I could put some hay etc in a bicycle basket and hang it on the inside of the tank to get the daphnia going.Would a little natural ammonia stimulate the whole plankton thing in the same tank? If so, I just need to work backwards to get my dates right so things are coming on as the fry are of a size to use them. It will be a bit hit and miss this first time, so see how we go. I could throw a few pellets in to get nutrients going into the plankton from leaching into the water perhaps.

Timeline rehearsal:

Get greenwater culture going now to put in fry tank when silvers spawn or just prior
Spawn silvers and remove to big tank
36 hours later eggs hatch, have more greenwater underway
Checking for swim bladder development
Basket of hay goes in to stimulate daphnia as feed post greenwater
Need a nutrient source to keep the system going, ideas?
Plenty of gentle aeration. What about light? My shed is dark and low watt fluro globes.
Comfortable on measuring water quality, bit unsure of my ability to maintain them within required parameters.
Grade after 5-6 weeks
How long b4 trying to introduce dust?

Thx once again.

I'll get back to it tonight because i'll need a bit of time to explain the timeline i suppose you would need. I'll explain you better why i disagree with a few of the points you have noted.
Did you know that a book has been edited on silver perch culture in australia.
I must have the ISBN somewhere at home, i'll post it with my thoughts on the larval rearing of the silvers.
See ya later mate.
I'll give ya a nice big reading to do tomorrow.

I have read the book you speak of. It is in the library at the Tafe College I go to. I have borrowed it several times. Will have it beside me as i go thru things step by step.

some new pics

few more

and those weird grosse lisse tommies

Well, I feel I have dispelled my reservations about getting fruiting plants to do the job in AP. Tommies, zuchs, pumpkin and (one) eggplant have all been fine. I expect no probs with the brassics, will know in another 6-8 weeks.
Took a few fish broodie pics, if they are worth seeing, I will put them up shortly.

Looking good TT.

Broodfish