Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Well....... Will they?

no

cool, thanks

depends on how big they are! silvers do become herbavors as they get big but they love small fish when they are any where between say 5cm and 35cm, dont believe me put a few gambusies in with them. i have personaly lost little silvers to larger silvers and i have even had largish male tilapia eat 2-3cm tilapia fingerlings!

fair enuf, but i tried it recently and the 2 little silvers in with my broodfish are still alive and swimming and the bigguns are paying them no attention t all

I was not sure when I put the fingerlings into the pool the water was moving like when I added the yabbies. But now that the water has cleared I can see schools of small silvers and catfish. Can't count them tho.

So in theory you could run SP all year round adding new fingerlings each spring and having fish of all different sizes in the one tank and be able to harvest large SP as you need them with out doing a large cull and storing in the freezer. I know SP won't grow much in winter but atl east they would be fresh when you want them..

yep, I am about to add about 200 silvers 6 inches and 200 silvers 4 inches to a tank with 15 or so fish @ over 1 kg already in it.

I just put a 100 new 100mm Silvers in my tank.... that's currently stocked with 500gm+ Silvers from last year...

This is all good news.

I was going to try the Barra in summer and Trout in winter thing so I could have fish all year round, but it seems people have a lot of trouble with water temp issues and you have to cull and freeze the fish.

SP may take longer to grow but if you have them at various stages of growth you can have fresh fish all year round while maintaining the stock levels for nutirent production.

I think I will stick with SP, a supplier is just around the corner from me, they are easy to keep and I have been told they taste good too.

Simo,
I had the same idea and asked Carey (who is the supplier in Gidgegannup) what he thought. He said that in large ponds there was no problem with having small ones in with the adults because they can hide. But he said that he definately wouldn't put them together in a tank.
Like you, I would like to be able to smooth out the seasonal hassles with trout and barramundi. I would probaly still run them, but the silver perch would help even it out after a year or so.
I iwll be interested in hearing how you go.
Regards
Graham

I will give it a go anyway and just add heaps of hides and make sure the big ones are well fed.

Hi Simo, I'm looking at doing something similar or perhaps having some trout over the winter for variety (but still keeping the SP). I have read in other threads that SP can be aggressive. Have you found that? Would it be sufficient to stand up to the Trout? Can you manage aggression in Silvers and trout with high densities as you can do with some aquarium fish?

It would be great to have an update on how you have gone over the summer.

Cheers
Marc

I've got Silver PErch ranging from 50mm to over 1kg happily swimming around... the only possible problem is in feeding them... the fatter, lazy bastards will eat the smaller pellets in the mix just as much as the bigger floating pellets...

Silvers aren't really aggressive... jades can be...

Silvers wont bully Trout... but the Trout will bully the Silvers, especially to the feed...

But I did have some successfully grow out in my trout tank... all a matter of relevant sizes and numbers I think...

Check the video in my thread, a 150-200mm silver that cant even swallow a 6mm pellet, its pretty funny.