Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

From all the reading, it seems it takes a long while for a new system to get going strong as you are raising fingerlings that aren't putting out that much amonia to nitrite to nitrate as you see with a system a year old and well stocked fish - well could u use wild fish to jumpstart the system? (obviously nothing like bass / catfish / gar ) though i would think carp or maybe brim might be ok? and i guess to be safer add fingerlings to the sump or maybe put in a mesh divider in the FT

No reason why you can't...just remember wild fish may have nasties on them (parasites etc) and if you add different fish into the system it may affect them

We have some wild fish in our system (Just found out some may be Feral ).
Another down side to them was we also managed to introduce water snails and some leeches as well.

Give the wild fish a salt bath before you toss them in. I was given a small golden perch a while back that I threw in the pool and he's now plate size.

Cycling is to ensure waste produced by te fish is adequately dealt with so the fish don't die.

Cycling is considered to be 4ppm of ammonia converted to 0ppm ammonia and 0ppm nitrite in 24 hours.

Cycling doesnt take 1 year.

When people talk about mature systems I think it relates more to the plants. Some may also mean it in a wholistic sense.

You can use wild fish, but wild or tame it make little difference to cycling

all of the fish i have are wild.

i added some cat fingerlings to my tanks, then the fish started dieing off ?!!? i think i will just stick with fish from the ponds

SFC...try Dufflights idea..it should work for you

A mate went fishing the other day and caught 6 fish. Was only thinking that a small AP system would be good for keeping wild fish alive before eating them. Catch 10 fish and you can eat them over a couple of weeks or longer.