Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Varies guys;

mine took a handful of pellets on the majority of days through winter (they're now taking 4+ a day). However, throughout winter they were generally happy to tuck into some lettuce or spinach leaves which also helps keep the system ticking over. Also used cabbage and broccoli leaves, just boiled them for a minute or so first to remove the wax coating on them - they ate these just as happily.

My veges certainly grew well on SPs during the winter.

They still produce ammonia... hence nitrates.... perhaps less, but your winter crops are slower growing and require less anyway...

I've happily produced many a cabbage, cauli, brocci... and loads of silverbeet.... through winter... from my Silver Perch tank...

What they said.

And this...

From what I understand from reading posts on here, silvers seem to not be cannibalistic.

From my experience in my tank they tend to grow at very different rates. Mine are from 8-18 cm, which means some are maybe 4 or 5 times the weight of others.

They seem to go nuts for feed in water 20c+ and get pretty laid back at 10c but I think they can deal with whatever happens in adelaide.

I'm going to try putting fry into my new 1000l ft with the existing 11 I have and see how they get on. If they get along ok then I'll get new fry every 6 months and see if I can keep 1 or 2 ready for the plate at any given time. If they dont get along well I'll try plan B or try floating a net basket that sections off a bit of tank for the little ones.


Plan B involves adding fry to a fish tank and pulling out the biggest 3 or 4 each week to transplant into the big system. I can justify heat loss from a heated fishtank if the heat is leaking into my house.

Anyway, the slow time over winter really only matters for that first year if what I'm doing works. It doesn't really matter if you have a stack of big fish ready to eat just sitting at the same size.

If all goes well I think I should be able to maintain a set amount of fish weight all year.

But then, this is my first year so you should listen to everyone else.

kewl - let us know how that goes. I'll get my Barra then in end of March, will get a heap more trout