Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Fish selection - confusing

Well, pretty happy with my new system up and running fishlessly, but its time to get some fish, man its confusing. Too cold one species die off (barra), too warm and the other one dies off (trout), ideally there would be one that grows well and can be grown all year round, or am I wanting too much.

Recommendations

Silver Perch year round, cohabitating with Trout in winter.

Just read the specs they will live from 2C to 35C water temp, thats pretty good, however 12 months growth = 500gram fish. Little disappointing but not a bad option

Either that or no fish simso

If we can get Jade Perch over here it will be better.

Yeh but again jade perch stop feeding at 18c, I only just cracked over 18C two days ago, looks like the silver perch are the safe option, might get another tank and start some silvers off, and have some fun with the barra in the summer season

the good thing about Jades is they eat heaps in the wormer months and grow faster than weeds! then they fast and use up all there fat stores through the cooler months.

but you can't go wrong with silvers!

good luck with you new system.

any silvers I have seen are only 20mm bigger than they were 9 months ago, I'm still not convinced they are for me, simso it seems the 12 month fish like Red Fin, Silvers, Black Bream etc are long term growers like a couple of years+, I reckon in Perth Barra will be the Go, See EB he should know how they go

9 months of winter nocky.They feed like Trout once the water is over 25.

My silvers grew well over winter inside. Good long term fish.
Can you get catfish. Not sure on there growout but they are fun to feed.

Ok, my comments are going to stick with the fish I know so might not be much help for those in AU.

I don't know about your catfish over there but the Channel Catfish we get here are pretty good growers. They like warm water but will survive cool water and depending on the size fingerlings you get, you might be able to eat some of them pretty quick. (When I et the 15 cm fingerlings, they could be ready for small size eating in only 6 months but we usually like to keep them closer to a year and they can be between 1 and 2 kg by then.) The smaller fingerlings of course take longer.

Most people seem to think Tilapia are the best but that is only true if your water stays between 24 C and 34 C year round.
As soon as your water gets below 20 C, the tilapia don't eat or grow much at all and if the water temp gets below 12 C, you are looking at destroyed immune systems and likely diseases killing off the fish.

Only major benefits I'm seeing in the tilapia over catfish is the tilapia are easy to breed. However, that might not really be a benefit as it means you have to get all male stock or keep the fish in cages to keep them from breeding. The females don't grow when involved in breeding (they can't eat with a mouthful of eggs.) And if you have a tank full of millions of small fry, you will likely not get very many big fish.

As far as eating, the only difference I really notice between catfish and tilapia grown in the same system, is the catfish flesh is a bit denser. The flavor of both is very mild.