Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

My requirements are: easy to feed (I am hoping to focus on duckweed and some worms), prefers cold weather but can handle the heat, and longevity. These fish are purely for biomass. I am not looking for quick meat conversion.

goldfish

bluegill would work, aggessive little buggers, and quite striking colors, and a lower protein feed would be ok for them
mine did eat some duckweed last year, and love worms and bugs, but they really do need to get a good pellet as well

Try to focus on fish that are naturally in your area and can tolerate your weather.

oh, and yellow perch is a "cool water" species...

I agree with Thorn. Stay with locally aclimatized fish to start with. Saves on heating or cooling water, and cuts down on subsidiary systems until you get your system running the way you want. You can always make it more complicated later when it's more stable and you are more experience with all the HSM's that will occur.


Joe

I read somewhere on this forum that Trout were cold water fish, but there was a reason for not raising Trout...not sure?



Personally, if you like a particular fish, give it a try! Nature is very adaptable.

later,

jeff c

Huh? Trout are probably the best cold water fish to grow if your laws allow it

and temps!

And trout will be happy to eat worms but the duckweed no

Goldfish and koi are good as ornamental fish for long term, are pretty easy to feed and fairly adaptable to temperature ranges.

Bluegill are probably appropriate if you might want to eat fish but are not in a rush. Locally available fish for farm pond stocking would be appropriate for your climate.

What about minnows? Fathead minnows might be worth raising and you could breed them and sell as bait if you really get addicted.

Catfish are great if you want to grow big food and locally available fish will be appropriate to your climate.

Both catfish and bluegill are warm water fish that will survive cold too.

Trout are cold water fish but they don't survive HOT.

I doubt you will grow a huge amount of fish only feeding worms and duckweed. If you are growing lots of duckweed in your AP system water you will not have much nutrients left over to grow any veggies.

You will have to add something to feed the system and generally in aquaponics that would be fish food. You can't really expect to harvest large veggie crops from an AP system if you only plan to feed the fish duckweed and worms grown right in that same aquaponics system unless you are adding some other input into the system and then you really blur the lines of aquaponics.

Common carp.

carp are better suited to warmer waters

Yeah I'm sorry I kinda skipped the cold water part.
But hey, they'll survive very well. Plus he says they're just for biomass or not to eat in the short term. As TCL said they are very hardy/adaptable to temperature (TCL said Koi but they are somewhat the same fish..)

Agreed tojo, they are very hardy. I used carp to cycle when I very first started out which I aquired from a Dam.

I kinda wished I had of hung onto some just to keep the FT nice and clean as they are fantastic bottom feeders.