Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hey, has anyone keep multiple species in their fish tanks?

I recently bought 15 silver perch fingerlings and 5 Tandus fingerlings.....

15 perch and 5 Tandus...does the term 'Custer' mean anything to you?!!!

Apparently the Tandus offended the perch population, diplomacy failed and negotiations broke down,
as such, i only have 15 perch.

SO, i am going to try it again, maybe it was just territory issues.

I want to begin populating my second fish tank, Are there any other species that will co-exist peacefully enough?

Regards

Oh... mine have worked fine. I have 30+ SP and 10 eel-tails - no casualties so far. Mind you they were of equivalent size - were yours too different in size or something?

Did the catfish 'disappear' (as in eaten entirely) or did you get floaters? If you got bodies maybe it wasn't the SP's that did it?

G'Day Mate,

they were all fingerlings!

definitely eaten, bits all over the bottom.

took me ages to work out what the hell they were!

I am definitely going back for more though.

Hm... that's a worry. But mine are still fine. Saw a number of the catfish yesterday cruising along the pump tube cleaning the growth. Also see them coming up for the food I'm giving them twice a day.

So, I don't know - from my site-cruising before I got the tandanus, I understood they would co-exist happily.

Now I'm paranoid...

Silvers must have been hungry.... how much have you been feeding them?

*grins* not sure about Porter but mine are fat and sassy - I got the SP's back on Jan 5th - biggest was maybe 3cms long. Now the smallest of them would be 7cms and the nbiggest is approaching 10 - and several are at least 1.5cm wide across the belly.

Maybe that's why?

I had the same understanding to Journeyman!

Hi Rupe, I feed morning and night usually, i feed them a sprinkle at a time until they stop showing an interest.

They are fat little things, going on 4-5cm tops?

How big are the catties?

Woah!! that's fast! what are you feeding them? mine are fat, but slow groing?

Not sure of the brand - I bought from a previous member heading for Melbourne. Little dark brown pellets that sink, some about twice the size that float and get puffy with water, and some larvae from a 200L barrel beside the tank - I figure if the insects are going to give me free food I will use it - each day I scoop them up and wash the net in the FT. SP's AND the catfish come swarming up to gobble them.

I'm trying to get some SP food from BigNutrition in Qld but they seem short on communication - tried both email and text msg. Just wanted to know the freight of a 20kg bag to Bendigo but no response so far... Grrr...

I was a bit gobsmacked at how fast they have grown. For the first week they hid down the back of the IBC but recently they come forward and rise to the food. So do the catfish. I added the SP's back then (early Jan) and the catfish a bit over a week back and been monitoring the water - no spikes, good values and healthy fish.

I've got 3 x air stones in there and I'm running a pump that (using the Bell siphon) runs for about 5 mins to fill the IBC GB enough to start the siphon and it drains in about the same time. There's algae in the tank and twice in the past 10 days I've used a broom to stir it up (& brush it towards the pump) to the point I can't see the bottom - within a day the water is clear again, although I still have crap on the bottom and the walls are still green.

I may have exaggerated - the largest is about as long as my fingers are wide and I just measured that - touch over 8cms...

Have you tried feed from Lauke... in Ballarat...

I put a single 6 inch silver perch in with 3 koi which were slightly bigger once - the silver perch kept trying to attack the koi. I thought it was unsual since perch seem so passive usually.

Any small fish that Ive put in with my big silvers get eaten or tails chomped until stressed and dead. I wouldnt have thought fingerlings would attack though

Hey Journeyman, did you read the last line of this???

"Can be a bit of an escape artist, so tanks should have close fitting, heavy, lids - catfish can fit through a remarkably small hole, so be warned!"

http://www.nativefish.asn.au/tandanus.html

that doesn't fill me with confidence! i know there were bits on the bottom but now i a wondering how many dropped over the edge! or into the pipes! or the filter!

Can't recall who it was but one of the threads talked about finding a trout that had escaped into the pipes and apparently grew large enough in there to block the system. Might be time to check your pipes?