Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

has been a bit of discussion about Red Fin in AP, hopefully in the next week or so I will have quite a few, I have had 10 for the last 6 weeks or so and my observations are; they are vicious little *frack* ers, they have eaten all my Pygmy Perch, not a real drama as can replace easier, the amazing thing is they have started eating yabbies as well, found a dissected yabbie floating a couple of days ago with red fin munching away at it, yabbie numbers have dwindled heaps in the past few weeks, also not a drama as easily replaceable, the amazing thing is the yabbies are roughly the same size as the red fin, they have eaten all the algae growing on the side of tank also, which also is not a bad thing, they eat all the pellets thrown in for yabbies, in fact they eat everything and grow very slow, as I have 2 tanks I am not overly concerned as I can separate reddies from all other life forms, I can see now why they are such a pest and seriously must be causing all sorts of problems in our water ways, they seem to populate all the good marron spots, hence marron are depleting rapidly, forum member dbird has a couple of red fin also and he said they eat hundreds of mosquito gambusia, they are lean mean eating machines, definitely not a fish if you want to have a few crustaceans and only have 1 tank, it has been written elsewhere that they take a 2-3 years to get to size, my opinion (but no evidence as yet) is that they appear to eat anything thrown at them, keeping up the feed must then speed growth, if they keep eating it has to go somewhere, other than back out, I am going to carry on the experiment and see what happens, in the rivers and dams they stunt due to overpopulation and lack of food, the amount mine seem to eat so far and the size of wellington dam times the amount of red fin in the dam would equal tonnes of food required, as yet I have not witnessed cannibalism, if this did happen then they would regulate population by themselves

wrong forum should be in fish species above maybe someone can fix, but to add the only yabbies I now have left is smaller ones that live in the holes of bricks that the reddies can't get to

The one Reddie I was keeping in my indoor 6ft FT was consuming hundreds of Gambuzia a day as well as any worms, yabbies, goldfish, convict cichlids and crickets I threw in. It did grow a bit in three months but no where near fast enough to warrant all the effort I was putting into catching and growing its food.

Some pictures you may find interesting



Some juvie Marron from a hungry Redfin.



An hours work.



Some large Redfin from the South west (in my younger days)

nice size MM, don't think they're many around that size now, can catch heaps of small ones, was a 2.2kg one caught in collie dam a couple of weeks ago

They look impressive Major.

We will have to pursue this red Fin venture until we succeed. My two littlies that I caught might still be swimming amongst my silvers, but I can't tell.

Farrrr out those red fin are HUGE.
we catch them over here in the murray sometimes
(declared pest) but the biggest ones would lucky to be
20-30 cm long. still good eating though

some reddies courtesy of dbird cheers don and also a pic of a floating yabbie, he has his legs all chewed off, have one more reddie in yabbie tank that I can't catch



Similar to MM's marron

Nice fish MM - well done.


Yeah - my interest is increasing rapidly over the last few weeks thanks to you guys.

Another upside that we may have is that they don't sound that hard to breed, though I think you'd need to have a separate tank for it. Not as easy as our global friends and their Tilapia, but hopefully less technical than trout. The problem may be that they need a large open pond to get any decent larvae/fry survival rate. Probably worth fracking around with for a couple of years.

Nige I wouldn't bother with breeding them although I think they would breed in a tea cup, plenty here and finding more spots, it's just a matter of getting geared up and finding time, as mentioned in my thread Don was feeding them mince and they gobbled it up, will get offcuts from local butcher and have a mincer, the mince will be half the price of trout pellets, the main thing is working out growth time, whilst slow in dams I think being hand fed will speed growth, lack of food and over population slows them down in the wild, I doubt they will grow as fast as trout, and I will always have the technical trout as they are fun to grow and also millions of recipes for them, easy to cook, basically I love trout I have around 20 now so will continue the experiment with them and see how they mingle with trout, I will go and get more though as a few others wanting them, but again time is the factor, we now have the gear

I'll bring you down some frozen BSF too Nocky as I have over 2kg now and still haven't got in fish in the tank yet, let alone ones big enough to eat BSF.

Yep, I too am interested to try seeing how they go on a proper, high protein, some live food, feeding program.

By technical, I was referring to the breeding of trout, not just keeping 'em !

"see how they mingle with trout"

I've caught Redfin on lures as long as their own body, just make sure your Trout are bigger than your Reddies to keep on the safe side.

some live ones would be good Nige, the thing with the reddies they wont come to top and feed, floating pellets stay until they sink, I have squashed some pellets and made them sink and reddies will take them as soon as the sink 3/4 to tank bottom, same with mince, only when I make it sink they attack it, maybe trout will teach them to eat from top

Yep, was planning on bringing them too

Coool, will be very interested to see how they go..