Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

dunno, will let you know! Meant to be VERY nice. there are some links under buy/sell/trade topic

Had a freshwater catfish for dinner tonight... cooked them whole (head and guts removed) use some scissors to cut off the fins. In foil and a little bit of butter and oil. It is very easy to eat, all the bones are along its backbone and the meat pretty much splits in half along its length so all the bones are exposed. As for taste it could have been a little bit fresher and it did have a distinct muddy taste which will be absent in aquaponics grown fish, but it was a very soft and good tasting fish. If you have ever had Cobler from the ocean, it was a lot like that.

Fireant, I wouldnt hold out much hope of Perch breeding in your dam. As Steve said you need a summer flood which is something we dont often get here in southern WA. It is easy to get them to breed by giving them the HCG injection but the main difficulty is in raising the fry. Baby Silver Perch are extremely small and can only be raised on zooplankton for the first 6 - 8 weeks of their lives. Getting enough zooplankton and timing it so their population is exploding as the baby Perch are growing is not easy to achieve even for the experts.

Steve, how are the Tandanus going?? Are they feeding on the pelletts ok?

TimC where did you get the cobbler?? Not from the Moore River again?

yeh tandanus are feeding well, on crushed native and trout pellets. a few of them even seem to be taking duckweed from the surface after the lights go out.

Ok .. I guess my next question would be .. any suppliers in WA for the tandanus ?

Troutman, bought a couple from the Gosnells Markets. They had them marked as freshwater catfish but could well have been the tandanus. However without a head I couldn't be sure.

LOL ... Are they breaders ! ?

Nah, they just have an awesome fish market there... Eating not keeping fish.

handle them a bit and see if you get a shot of pain up your arm from the dorsal spike. intense pain is said to lst for hours. hmmmmm spikes.......

Oh yeah Steve... might just try that.... :p Are you nuts.

Steve, good to hear that the Tandanus are feeding well. How about posting a few pics as there seems to be a lot of people out there who are interested in these fish at the moment.

TimC, they could be the northern catfish. I think they harvest them from Lake Argyle if my memory serves me correctly.

Does anyone know if the Tandanus is available in Perth anywhere ?
Where did you get yours from Steve ?

Dont know of anyone selling Tandanus in WA, you could always go out and catch a few of your own in one of the rivers.
How big and how deep is your dam Fireant?
Just because a type of fish will breed in your dam dosent necesarliy mean its the best variety to put in there. Many fish that will breed in Dams tend to overpopulate them and you end up with heaps of stunted fish as a result. Personally I would stock it with either Trout (if its deep enough) or the Silver Perch even though you will have to buy more every few years to replace the ones that you eat.

fireant, i got mine from a livefish/ausyfish intermediary......long winded to explain. Livefish.com.au have them at a reasonable price for small quantities and will ship to WA

Trought man, let me fatten them up a tad, gimme another 3 weeks. They were positively TINY when i got them i was spoiled by the first batch of silvers i got, they were year old left overs from the rearing dam at ausyfish, they found them when they drained it for the next cycle.

next batch was the jades, which were about half the size.......now this batch of catfish were tiny. all were to quoted sizes, no problem there, just look small when you start off with big ones LOL

About 20m X 8m X 4m Deep .. roughly

I understand that having too many fish in the dam is not a good idea .. but I would like something that I don't have to play with too much .. if there are too many .. I intend thining them out ... using my teeth :-)

If there are way to many little ones of course ...... the cat likes fish also :-)

How would trout go do you think ? ...... I pump to the dam every day .. probably replace about 100mm of water every day .....