Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

my SP are smashing the 3mm pellets, some of them look to be 180mm long.

should I up the pellet size to 5mm?

is there a set ratio of pellet size to fish size?

some of the fish are still small (about 100mm) would I need to keep using the smaller pellets for them?

I just use 3mm pellets for all my fish now. I think the theory from an aquaculture point of view is that its more efficient to go up in pellet size with fish size, though I think you end up with bigger pellet waste & poos which can be harder to suck out the tank.

Its also quite funny watching 1kg silver perch sucking the little pellets off the surface as well and gives them a bit more exercise

This is my first year running Silvers and I was told by someone very experienced at keeping SP's that they only use 3mm, even for the larger fish. His reasoning was that there is far less waste on the floor of the tank when using the 3mm pellets as opposed to the 5mm. I couldn't see how that would be, so dismissed his reasoning and switched my SP's over from 3mm to 5mm pellets about a month back. I feed the same volume each feed as when I was feeding them 3mm... but there is definitely more waste on the floor of the FT???

The only conclusion I can come to is that the fish's digestive system processes the 3mm pellets more efficiently, or thoroughly... but I've got a heap of 5mm, so they're staying on it.

Ive read that size your pellet to the size of the fish's eye. Dont know how much truth is in it. SP have very small mouth's unlike trout.

I guess trout and barra probably handle the bigger pellets better as they have bigger mouths.

Is that where the saying "your eyes are bigger than your belly" comes from hey charlie!

Yea probably Bundy ha ha ha