Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I need help understanding how to feed barramundi... For those who have not been following my recent posts, I have got about 20 barramundi (10cm or more in length) a few days ago.

Anyways, I threw some floating pellets this evening and none of the fishes came up to eat the pellets. They seem to gather at the bottom of the tank near an airhose... They cannot be dead otherwise the airhose would probably have bubbled their bodies up...

I have fed trout, goldfishes and koi and these fishes tend to eat the food in front of you so that you can make sure that there is not much remaining food or none... but with barras, do you just throw in some pellets and walk away??? and they will eat the floating (or maybe sinking by the time they get to it) pellets at their own time?? Do they eat food off the bottom of the tank??

Not sure what to do as I do not want to have uneaten food pollute the water, hence killing them instead... Any input would be good... Thanks..

I did read a thread that said barras get stressed with transport. Keep them in the dark(cover them) and dont keep looking at them
even though that is hard to do with a new toy!! They freak out especially if they are a larger size cos they are not used to attention. If you get them when they are smaller they get used to people and will eat from the hand. Also dont feed for a few days
after getting them

Hi Ivan
Try soaking your pellets for a while prior to feeding and then when you throw them in they will sink. I am feeding mine a mixture of floating and sinking pellets. Only a few come to the surface to take the floaters but I think that will change in time as they get more acustomed to their environment.

What's your water temp Ivan??

Moves between 20 to 24degC throughout the day and night... Do I need a heater??

Well they'd certainly benefit from getting the water to 26+...

No doubt they've been raised at temperatures around or above 26... coupled with transportation, and temperature acclimatisation... they probably wont feed for the first 2-3 days anyway....

Being larger fish and preferring water temps silghtly higher... they're probably taking a while to acclimatise...

The reason for hanging around the oxygen stone... is probably not only for the oxygen.... but the fact that the air being pumped in is probably creating a small "warmer" zone in the tank...

I threw in a few pellets this afternoon anyways.... if they eat that's fine, if not, hopefully the pump would pick them up and send them to the growbeds...

I should probably organise an electric heater for the transitional period of weather between winter and summer and visa versa...

500W enough for a 1000L water??

Just...

Okay... I will try to get one 500W heater first and try... my tank is slightly buried so hopefully that would help a bit...

If you can.. get a "jaeger"...

Just got a 3 kw heater at the tip not game to use it as the meter would jump off the wall

When to the shops today, got a Eheim Jager heater... I presume that's the make you are talking about??

Only problem is that it is only 300W... saw the 500W titantium heaters... It is a Resun brand... but it seems to be the setup has an external temperature controller with a separate temperature probe from the heater coil, etc... Did not really like it, and the guy at the store pretty much convinced me to go with the Jager as they are made in Germany and has 3 years warranty... Plus the Jager are all in one setup, temperature controls and heater coil in one... and fully submersible....

I thought the name was quite close to what you were mentioning so it must be good that there are two recommendations... apparently the box says that it will do 600L to 1000L... I figured I will try out 1 heater first... if it does not control too well, I will go back and get another....

If you can cut back on your overnight cycles it will be a lot less work for your heater also if you dont already have covers on your tank that will help a lot to

My Barra wont even look at food below 21c at 28c they take it out of my hand.

Same Daryl.... I dropped my heaters off when I drained my barra tank down... and the temp dropped back to about 20-21.... wouldn't feed at all....

The day before when the tank was 24.... I fed them 6 times....

hello ivan, i've got the same exact heater on a 1000L tank with barra as well. It does help keep the early morning temps a bit higher but when it says rated for 600 to 1000L its referring to an indoor tank. If you really wanted to stay above 25C would probably need at least two of these heaters and not worth the power costs. As Daryl said cover and cut back a bit on overnight cycles to help out as well. I've got it every 1.5hr instead of 1hr cycle at night.

As far as feeding barra at first I crushed up some pellets to sink right away and left some whole and over time crushed less and less forcing them to come up and eat. Give em a few days and once water temps warm you will see a huge difference in their eating habits.