Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I have 10 silver perches. I am keeping them for the last 3 or so years in Canberra. They are mid sized and don't grow as fast.

I bought 2 kois thinking that during winter when SP is not producing much ammonia, they can continue running the system. They were in the same tank as SP but they completely disappeared.

I had another large koi in the sump and when I transferred silvers to sump (when the trout arrived), she died too. This koi survived through a lot of difficulties and was the commando of my system. May be she got jealous of SP.

So here I am thinking may be SP cunningly killing other fish

I know you can keep Tandanus cat fish with SP but Tandanus has a weapon at the back that they can protect themselves against the vicious silvers.

What is your experience to house SP with other fishes.

As you say, they get on OK with catfish. My SP have shared a tank with jade perch for extended periods with no problems... and with significant size differences (SPs bigger than some JPs and vice versa).

I've also mixed Murray cod with SP for extended periods. The SP were a lot bigger than the MC to start with. I moved the MC to another tank when they got big enough to bully the SP... MC have very big mouths!

I've had some systems where Perch were happy to cohabit with other fish, but then some systems they have been aggressive.

if you add SP fingerlings to a tank that already has goldfish/koi I think they are OK.
Is common to have SP with a Koi/Goldfish 'mentor and can help calm young fish.
Guess they become territorial other way around.


Maybe its a silver - red/white thing

+1

Thanks for the insights guys. They are alone at the moment and looks like they will stay that way.

I tried sp's and koi also and had the same result, even with small perch. I've read of trout and perch sharing a tank here but I'm with you and keep them separated.
Just means you need more tanks....

I had similar sized silver perch and goldfish cohabiting in a 6' aquarium. They were all very happy for months and then I found a goldfish dead, then another and another. I rescued the remaining couple of goldfish before they suffered a similar fate to the others.

On another occasion I introduced a few silver perch to the same aquarium, heated now, at a time when I had a few surviving barramundi in it. Once again they were all just fine and dandy for many weeks - until they weren't. The two largest fish were a barra and a silver, both around 12-13cm in length. Within 12 hours of me first seeing the barra being chased by the silver perch the barra was dead.

I presently have 18 large silver perch in my big tank with hundreds of much smaller rainbow trout but don't expect any issues to arise.

I also have silver perch and goldfish of all sizes cohabiting large ponds but never see any dead fish.

I suspect it's a territorial issue and, given a reasonable volume of water to occupy, the different species are more inclined to get along with each other.