Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi,

After killing my previous batch of fish by leaving the hose on all night..... I have just received a new bunch of baby silver perch fingerlings.

The thought that has just crossed my mind is "Will they get sucked up by my pump?" which is a laguna maxflow 9000.

The fingerlings are 40 to 60mm long.

If they will what should I be doing about it if anything?

My pump is in ft which pumps to gb and then drains back to ft.

Any help appreciated.

CT

Probably wont get sucked up... but might get sucked against...

Not the best time of year to be stocking small Silver Perch into a system.... why didn't you wait and go trout at the end of the month????

Have to go OS in a couple of weeks and didn't want to take the risk with the trout. Too expensive if the people looking after them stuff it up . Figered the silvers won't grow much but should be ready when the weather warms up.

Slip a stocking or pantyhose foot over the intake. Get the missus to donate one, don't just raid the drawer. Put the rest of the stocking aside for other uses like shellgrit or other materials you might need in there.

Or if it has the slotted cup over the intake. put some foam in there.

Yep... wont grow much through winter at all...even if we get a warm winter...

But they still probably (almost certainly)....wont make plate size by the end of next summer.... unless we get a really good one... and you can pump the feed into them....

You'll need to regularly remove either.. and clean them... otherwise your flow will drop considerably...

is regularly daily/weekly/monthly? do tyou think?
Sounds like it might be a good idea for a while though. Until they get a bit bigger.

Laguna's are a wierd oval shape. I think a stocking would block in no time. I put my small fingerlings in a floating basket. Get yourself a cheap linen basket and cut some pool noodles and cable tie to the sides to make it float, leave them in there till they are big enough to safely get around the tank.

Hmmm good idea, but far too late.

They are in and they aren't recoverable so guess that we will have to see what happens....

Stocking applied.
Not sure if it will help but it certainly makes me feel better.

I hada stocking over mine when I got the SP fingerlings in early Jan - I cleaned it once about 10 days later and after that the SP's were too big for the slots anyway. Then I used it again a week later when I added the catfish - again I got more than a week in before I needed to squeeze gunk off the stocking. And for my FT bottom was cruddy so I figure it was getting a high load of particulates.

Hopefully they grow enough in the next month. As I don't think it would be wize to leav it on while someone else is looking after my system for three weeks while I'm in the UK.

On a slightly different topic what did you feed your small silvers? i've just put some 6mm feed into a spice grinder. Not sure how fine to take it? Does it need to be like powder or crums? My other lot were a lot bigger when I got them and eating 3mm pellets

I got pellets with a swag of stuff I bought from a guy heading to live in Melbourne, but there were 2mm and 4mm pellets. Now I have some 4mm SP food I got from http://www.bignutrition.com.au/order-online/ and both SP's and cats seem to love it - I had some leftover 4mm stuff and after I'd had them on the BN pellets for a while I tried them on the original ones and they were not fussed; came up and nosed it about a bit and only later did they deign to eat it.

The BN stuff has the SP's striking at it hard enough to splash water and the cats come and browse along scooping it up. I'm thinking they vote for the BN pellets... 20kg cost me $82 delivered from Qld - given the prices on fish food locally I saved about $70...

I saw a rule somehwere that you should feed them half their mouth size, but even as little 30mm fingerlings they seemed to have no issues with the 4mm pellets - not sure if they left them till they softened and then nibbled at them or what but they were gone by next feed time.

I reckon the stocking would be a liability. If you think that the SPs would actually fit through the holes in the pump casing (I doubt it) or wouldn't be able to swim against the pump suction (I also doubt that) then why not use an onion bag or something similar that will not clog up in next to no time and reduce your intake?

A fine mesh would work well - but onion bags in Vic have bigger holes than around my pump. Something around the size of a screen door mesh would be fine.

It took over a week for the stocking over my pump (1500Lph) to get enough sludge on it that I bothered to clean it - I was worried about the clogging and checked probably 3 times the 1st couple of days and then daily for a couple then2 days later and on the next 2days checkup I cleaned it - I hadn't noticed any slow-down in the flow but better to be sure than sorry.

And as I mentioned, at the time I had quite a collection of crud on the bottom.