Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I have 39 silver Perch in my tank, which I purchased as fingerlings a few months ago. Recently they have become very greedy in the warmer weather, after months of not eating much at all.

They are eating the surface quite readily, and if I feed them 3 times in one day, will easily decimate quite a lot of pellet food and appear quite fat for their small frame.

I think the aquaponics system can keep up, and there is no reduction in water quality, but I was wondering if anyone had any thought on how good this is for the fish?

Can they die from eating too much, like Koi Carp?

Do I need to put them into a Jenny Craig program?

Or will feeding them way more than they need just help with growing them to plate size faster? Im not so concerned how healthy their arteries will be after they reach 500 grams, but want to make sure they get there.

Have a look at the trout photos on here, some of them are positively obese... But no, obesity is not good for any animal really..

The silvers will definitely eat a lot more in the warmer months than the winter time.

Mine are also gutsing themselves and for a brief while I was indulging them - the 'eat them sooner' was on my mind. Then I figured I'd better do some water testing and found the 3x per day was beginning to show ammonia so I cut them back to 2x a day and my ammonia dropped back to 0.

Feed them up I say, just keep an eye on your ammonia and water temps as the water warms up.

Just wondering Yacky do you salt your system at all?. I have found salting helpful to keep the chances of fungal problems down as my systems warm back up and the feed rates start to increase rapidly.

Yeah, as EB said, trout tend to overeat more than most fish. I wouldn't worry about it with silver perch, but if it's keeping you awake at night, don't feed them any more than what they clean up in 5 minutes. You'll get a feel for that after timing it a few times.

Jade perch and golden perch tend to fat like trout do. If you have fish like that, simply grill them over an open grill and that removes most of the problem but still gives you nice, moist flesh !

Thanks all,

I'm not concerned with ammonia levels. The fish are still small, and when they get to a larger size, they will be eating a lot more than they are now even compared to their current feeding frenzy.

There is 1ppt salt in the water. Put in because the fish were flashing, and they stopped flashing overnight after adding salt. Or maybe thats because I stole their trenchcoats.