Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi there,
I have 50 Silvers in a 2000 litre tank. I introduced them in November of last year as 3 cm fish and 10x 8 cm fish.

They have always looked really healthy and fed well. The food I used early days was a floating food and the fish always fed eagerly from the surface.

6-8 weeks ago I changed across to a semi floating native food and as some of the fish were still border line for the 4 mm pellets I would crush up some of the food.

From that day on the fish haven't taken off the surface nor come above the bottom 40 cm of the tank.

Is this an issue?
They seem to be feeding well at the bottom but I'm getting to the stage I can just add the whole pellets without crushing any but the fish never come to the surface to take the food they just take the slowly defending pellets at the bottom.
I'm worried that the larger fish will dominate the feeding at this slow pace and the smaller fish will struggle.

Ph is about 7

Any thoughts

Cheers

Quigs

Once they get used to sinking food they are reluctant to rise for floating food. The only option is to force them to rise by using a floating feed and removing any they haven't eaten after 10 minutes. Eventually they will rise when they become hungry enough.

One problem you may run into using method at this time of year is the water temp. They may be starting to go off their feed anyway, no matter the feed type. Their feeding usually starts dropping off at around 13C.

Thanks for the reply
I was wondering about the temp. It's currently at about 15 c

Thanks for the advice. I'll slowly reduce the amount of crush I add and will stick to the semi floating and see how we go.

Thanks

yep, feeding has already dropped off even here in Adelaide where we have had a very mild Autumn so far. Instead of charging the floating feed I use, it may take them up to 1/2 an hour to clean up the reduced amount they are being fed.

Yeah, my silvers slowed right down on the feed as soon as the water temp dropped past 16C - they're still happily eating bunches of greens I hang in the tank, but they don't want more than a tiny amount of pellets, about 1/8 what they were eating in summer. I have found they'll take more if I feed the pellets in the late afternoon, after their water has warmed up from the 13-14C it drops to overnight.

We feed them floating pellets and they come up with a loud splash. They don't take as much anymore as said before now the temperature has dropped significantly.

I had a similar problem with sy2 trout as they'd only had sinking pellets, then went up a size to floating pellets.
After cleaning the tank floor of uneaten food and occasionally missing a meal they became hungry enough to grab the floating pellets.