Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

How many fish would you like to breed per year??
Raising small fish can be very time consuming so you would have to ask yourself if its worth it.

Providing you can keep you water cool enough to get some adult fish thru the summer I cant see why you couldnt breed trout, its not that difficult and there is plenty on the net showing how its done.

Different story for Silver Perch though. They are in trouble in the wild as their environmental spawning trigger is getting less and less frequent and if it wasnt for the restocking thats been done they would probably be extinct. Every year I get plenty of people telling me that their Perch have bred in their tanks or dams but I would say that 99% of them are wrong. What they fail to realise is the huge variation in the growth rates of the fish, I have had fish here that have been plate size in 13 months of age (0.0001%) yet some of their brothers are still the size of my thumb nail !! When people see variations even half the size of this they incorrectly think the fish have breed. The challenge with breeding aust native fish is not in getting them to spawn as this is easily achieved with hormone injection but getting the small fragile larvae to survive. In my opinion this would never naturally occur in a aquaponics tank or even a swimming pool.

So, I hate to go off subject... However....
Do these thumb nail fish actually grow to size Troutman?
Are the fast growing fish selected for the breeding stocks?

Yeah they get there eventually, I am sure most people on here have seen the huge variation in size of their silvers as they grow them out. Some are ready to eat after 2years while others can take up to 4 years to reach edible size.


[/quote]Are the fast growing fish selected for the breeding stocks? [/quote]
All farms would be different in what they do with the fastest growing fish, as most breeders also grow fish out for the table I would imagine the majority of the quicker growers end up going back into their grow out ponds with a few kept over for brood stock. I keep a few for future breeders and the rest I grow on to sell off as yearlings.