Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I was walking around my dam and noticed a few tiny fish in the shallows. I know there are redfin in there, but it is so low and full of weeds i cant catch them. Anyway i tossed in a bait trap and 24hrs later i have 150 20mm fingerlings.

Any ideas what they will eat? i have small fish food that is only 1mm or so in diametre but its hardly what they would get in the wild.

Anything else i should be doing? These are the first fingerlings ive had and my system is only a couple of months old so even 150 tiny fish may be a bit of a stain on the system. (1000ltr fish tanks + sump and about 500ltr of grow beds).

Thanks, Terry

G'day Tez,
If they're redfin they will probably eat anything!
Try goldfish flakes, but I've seen redfin swallow some pretty big stuff.
150 in that tank at their size will probably be ok at the moment
Have you been "Seasoning" the system/

It's been a while,
Thought you had fallen into the pond!

Got any more pics?

Dicko

See if you can get some starter dust... basically powdered pellets...

Or use a coffee grinder or pepper mill to grind down the pellets....

+1 pepper grinder.

Preferably a battery one

With a light, Its dark in possum valley!

seems pretty common that the smaller the fish, the higher the protein is good. Most fish starter powder is really high in protein. However if you don't have easy quick access to small quantity's of such powder, grinding up whatever fish food you can get your hands on should do.

Luckily starting with such small fish, even if you grossly over feed them, your system will probably still handle it fine (unless you have like a micro size tiny system or something.) Tiny fish are usually better off with a pinch of food several times a day.

Well I went fishing yesterday and I also saw stacks of tiny fish.

About 2 schools of 50-100 around 2"-4" and lots of 5mm - 30mm skinny things. I'm pretty sure that they are all black fish and I'm also pretty sure that they will be all dead in about a month because where they are is almost garunteed to have no water come January.

Blackfish are going to be a bit harder to feed than Redfin so any ideas.

I'm also trying to keep the sysem 100% organic so I rather not progrees down the standard comercial fish food path.

crickets and worms.

Certainly for the 2"-4" ones but there were not that many of them and they were a lot harder to catch.

It is the tiny skinny ones that I don't know how to look after.

The only thought I've had so far would be to have them in tanks with a good algal bloom and just try to get as many to grow out as possible until theyget large enough to feed on worms, termites, earwigs, maggots and such.

Just a thought, are you able to collect some Daphnia from the ponds where the fish came from, keep these seperate and feed as required.

H.

Some people have made preparations using some egg to feed tilapia fry. I don't know if that is of much help for the particular situation.

I suppose one might be able to toast up the bugs and then grind them into a powder to feed to the fish but that seems a lot of work.

Some of these fish would have trouble eating even daphnia. I think that is what I'll do though is set up cultures for fish food.

Does anyone have better information on this.

The way I'd approach it would be to set to containers of water add some nutrients and then wait a while. I've had water in one of my GBs (no gravel) and four weeks on there are even beetle larvae in there. Which isn't necessarily a good thing because they would be able to eat these fish until they had at least trebled in size.

How much does a really skinny 30mm fish weigh?

Less than a fat 30mm fish ...

Hi Dicko. Works been a bit busy so my AP play has been limited to a quick feed of the gold fish morning and night. I have some pics and will post on my system page tonight.

I have had small growbeds cycling for about 2 months and slowly been adding more so i have about 500ltrs now and about 200 more to add on the weekend. Water is still very dirty and i have been adding seasol which doesnt help. Plants are struggling, but thats another issue.

there is pleant of algal bloom is not a problem, seems to be pretty costant. Perhaps i'll just throw them a bit of the smaller pellets i have and see what happens.

All the water tests so far have a zero results for nitrate, nitrite and ammonia so im hoping the little iddy biddy fishies kick the system along a bit.

I'll post some more info on my system thread later today. Thanks for all you knowledgable contributions.

terry