Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Unfortunately, I'm stuck with goldies and such for the moment, but wanted to start planning ahead for the eventual system (drop land prices, drop! ) and was hoping to get an idea on what native fish people have had luck with in the US.

I've read about systems that have used had trout and channel cats, but wanted to know if anyone had tried other North American fish successfully, and if so, under what conditions (high/low stocking density, bred in captivity, etc)?

Thanks, and cheers!

I've had some sunfish for about a year now. I was trying to get bluegill but I think I've got some green sunfish and some red spotted sunfish mixed in with them. They're all breem. The bluegill are the ones I'm really after though because they're the largest of the bunch.

When deciding on what fish to get I of course started out wanting tilapia. They're great! Tasty, grow fast, filter algae out of the water with their gill rakers, breed easily. But, alas, even the mild texas winters could kill them all if I don't have a heater. I don't want to waste the energy on heaters as I'm trying to make this system as sustainable as possible with the least amount of energy input.

That's when I started looking at native fish. Bass want live fish as food.. sounds like a pain. Catfish looked awesome. They grow at a rate of something like .5lb for every 1lb of feed and will be edible in a year. They can tolerate the temperatures here in central texas from hot to cold. I love the taste of catfish. But... they won't spawn in a small (300 gallon) tank. They need a large area (1+ acre I think I read). I can buy catfish fingerlings pretty cheaply but I really wanted to buy fish once and then breed them to keep up my stock.

I finally settled on bluegill. They supposidly grow to eating size in 2 years ... I wish it was a 1 growing season fish but I'll take what I can get. I can catch bluegill fingerlings with a cast net just down the road from my house. They're native and very tolerant to the temps here. They're supposidly easy to train to eat just about anything but mine still won't eat the floating pellets. I don't blame them because when they don't eat the pellets I always break down and feed them from my worm bin or black soldier fly bin. It's also supposed to be possible to get them to breed in captivity. Oh, and they taste good.