Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi,

I have a system going with koi. I feed the koi duckweed. I recently started feeding them duckweed. Now, it looks like the koi really love the DW but it also looks like there is quite a bit of decayed plant debris on the bottom of my fish tank. It's an ebb/flow and every the grow bed is draining it blows the debris all around the tank. Is there a snail or scavenging or some type of animal i could get that would eat the decaying plant matter or will the koi nibble at it?

Some species of catfish will eat just about anything off the bottom. I have blue channel cats, and only about half of them will come to the top to feed...for the most part they would rather pick bits off the bottom.

Snails would be hard to contain, but perhaps some crawfish might do the job for you if you do not want a bottom feeding fish.

what type of catfish would you recommend?

Probably channel catfish over your way I would think.. There are some carp species that feed off the bottom as well, though they may not be readily available.

My channel catfish happily come to the surface for food. They are not usually into eating plants all that much, but I suppose that could be cause I feed them well so that they will feed me well.

Do you have any pictures of the system so we can see how it's set up and perhaps help you find a solution to your plant debris problem?

What part of Florida? I'm near Mount Dora in central Florida.

I have heard that ell-tailed catfish will eat from the bottom of the tank and are suitable for aquaponics. I haven't got any at the moment but I plan to try them with the next lot of silver perch fingerling's. They are available from the Namoi Valley Fish Farm, Narrabri.

Florida Fish Farms sells Channel Catfish through their minimum order is usually $35 which would buy you 50-100 catfish which would probably be too many for your situation, and they don't always have the small numbers on hand (they only go in and disturb a pond when they have large orders to fill and those of us wanting small numbers have to keep calling to find out if they are going to be harvesting any time soon.)

Perhaps next year I will be in a better position to provide small numbers of catfish when people want them.

feed the Kio a bit less, like a few starving days, and they will clean the whole tank and the pumps as well