Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hey all! This is my first post on the board here. I've been doing all kinds of research on my aquaculture (eventually aquaplonics) pond I'm creating, and this seems to be the best source of information.

I have a few questions I'm hoping to get some help with.

I am an avid planted tank enthusiast, and have been keeping different species' of freshwater prawn for ages, typical neocardina/cardina. I am near the final stages of my fresh water Tilipia pond. It's a rice paddy roughly 4 feet (121cm) deep and holding roughly 4,500 US gallons (17034L) connected via a channel to a pond that's 6 feet (182cm) deep and holds roughly 5,500 US gallons (20820L). In the pond(s) I plan to keep Aurea Tilipia, I can catch it locally.

I am hoping that I can keep my fresh water prawns (possibly some other aquarium fish? Cichlids?) in the pond(s) as well. A freshwater aquarium can hold 20 Red Cherry Shrimp per gallon, so I figure the ponds will be able to hold at least 50,000 prawns, and at that high a number the tilipia will not be able to completely eradicate them.

What I'm looking for is some advice, has anyone kept hobbyist prawns in their ponds? What about other aquarium fish? I plan to take all the precautions to make this as much like a giant aquarium as possible (heaters,chillers,aerators,bio-filters,physical-filters,etc), but I'm sure there are some things i don't know. As a general rule of thumb, is it possible to keep hobbyist aquarium fish and prawns in large ponds?

Cheers,
Nick

I guess it's dependent on whether or not the fish species will eat the prawns...

I really know nothing about Hobbyist prawns????? Are they edible?

Most of us here are more experienced in edible fish species and flood and drain gravel beds as filters that also happen to grow veggies that use the nutrients from the fish water so we don't need to do constant water changes.

However, I will warn you that flood and drain gravel beds have a tendency to chill water during even our Mild Florida winters so heating the water may well be needed to keep tilapia alive.

Anyway, I have experience with Blue Tilapia and Channel Catfish as well as flood and drain gravel bed Aquaponics in Central Florida.

For Newbies here I usually recommend reading the Basic Info and Useful Info sections of the Forum to get the basics down. Then choose a few of the bigger member system threads to read through completely. Since you have been keeping fish and planted aquariums you probably have a pretty good handle on the fish keeping stuff and chemistry.

Welcome!!!!

Prawn and tilapia are common in polyculture as the tilapia eat vegitable matter. Your other Cichlids like Oscars may be predatory fish and you may be extremely suprised how many they can eat.

Thanks for the warm welcome and quick responses!

I guess what I'm asking is, are there any differences beyond fluctuations in PH and temperature in ponds compared to aquariums? If my pond will truly be a giant aquarium then the shrimp will do fine.

TCLynx, I s'pose you could eat them, but I doubt they'd be very tastey. Most of them only grow to a few inches too, so there wouldn't be a whole lot to eat. I want to raise these as a sustainable source for my aquarium projects. If I could go out to the backyard to snag some shrimp for a new tank instead of paying 2$ a pop that'd be real nice. Oh, and I'll definitely be reading the basic and useful info sections you mentioned .

Here's what I want to keep incase ya'll are curious.

http://www.planetinverts.com/Crystal%20 ... hrimp.html

http://www.planetinverts.com/Cardinal_Shrimp.html

http://www.planetinverts.com/Red%20Cherry%20Shrimp.html

http://www.planetinverts.com/Blue%20Tiger%20Shrimp.html

So I s'pose they'll do fine in the pond as long as my fish populations don't get em' all? And Tilapia won't?

I was also considering stocking channel cats, but I'd imagine they'd eat tilapia fingerlings, shrimp, and anything else they could fit in their mouthes.

http://library.wur.nl/wda/dissertations/dis4178.pdf (scientific study on tilapia-prawn polyculture).

Looking at the water requirements for the different shrimp you posted, it might be difficult. Their temperature requirements are right around those of tilapia, but the cardinal shrimp needs a pH of at least 7,0 while the crystal red shrimp prefers 6.2-6.8. A mature aquaponics system usually settles between pH 6-7 (unless you have a lot of sea shells), which might be too low for some species?


Anyway, I'm very interested; please keep us updated (with pictures)!

My channel catfish didn't do all that well at eating the tilapia fry (I guess I was feeding them too well and the fry were fast swimmers.)

I expect the catfish would eat the shrimp, I believe in the wild that crustations are a big portion of the catfish diet.

Now I may be in inland central Florida where it got colder than your location but if your prawns need temperatures that are good for tilapia, it might be costly to keep them warm enough in an outdoor system over winter if we have many winters like the past two. None of my outdoor tilapia survived and I have another friend down in Orlando that lost all the tilapia and other tropicals that were living in his pool this winter.

Thanks for the Xzorby, I'll look it over this evening. As far as care requirements, that website says they vary, but I have kept all those shrimp in the past, and they all do fine in water around 7.3-7.5 PH and water ranging from 70-85(f).


TCLynx, for keeping the pond warm I was going to use two inline spa heaters ( http://www.google.com/products/catalog? ... sa=title#p ), they do around 900GPH each and if I run em' both at the same time it should keep the water tolerable, ontop of that I'll gather up breeding sets of each species' I keep, put them in large rubbermaid trash cans, bring em' in the house, add aerators, and change their water out every day hopefully that'd keep em' alive long enough, that way if I do lose all my pond fish it won't be a total lose.

I guess if the catfish will eat the shrimp that's a no to them. I really like catfish,too. Oh well.

Well it will all depend on the set up. You might be able to keep catfish just fine if you keep them well fed, they might not be interested in hunting. Also, I've done things like keep the tilapia in cages (to control breeding) Perhaps you have a part of the system for the catfish where they can't eat all your shrimp.

Good Luck with it all.