Ahoy! Different kind of set up, new here... lots of questions

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mrgrackle

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Nov 3, 2007
92
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austin, tx
Ahoy,

I just registered on here a couple days ago and I've been perusing the posts, pretty nice group of people here with lots of knowledge.

I'm in the process of setting up an aquaponics system. for those that don't know, aquaponics is basically an aquaculture and hydroponics hybrid. I've got a 300 gallon stock tank dug into the ground outdoors and I'm pumping the water into six 25 gallon grow beds filled with gravel. as I'm sure most of you here are aware, bacteria in the gravel will convert the ammonia into nitrite, then other bacteria convert the nitrite to nitrate and then all the plants I have in the gravel beds will suck up all the nutrients, leaving the water super clean. So you get yummy veggies and fish to eat.

I just took apart my first aquaponics 'test' system (there's a youtube video a friend of mine made, staring your's truely ... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiNLbu07MDA) and my 300 gallon tank system is about ready to go.

So, I've been checking out all sorts of fish and I think I'm going to go with the good old bluegill. I live in central texas and i figure a fish like tilapia (a popular aquaculture/aquaponics fish) is out of the question because I'm trying to keep it as low energy as possible and I don't want to have to heat an outdoor tank to keep the fish from dying. I am going to build a temporary greenhouse type enclosure for the short wintery spells we get here but I don't want fish that are going to croak when it gets a little chilly. So I figure natives are my best bet. Well the goal is actually bluegill/green sunfish hybrid because they're genetically 90% male, making them better suited for raising to eat. less energy spent on mating, faster growth from males and less problems with overcrowding due to breeding.

I've gone out and caugh myself some juvenials/fingerlings and I'm pretty sure they're either green sunfish or bluegill, they're about 1"-2", but I can't tell for certain. I figure as they get bigger I'll have a better idea. Maybe I could snap some pictures and you guys could help me sort it out for certain.

I've got a ton of questions but I'll keep it short for now :)

I'm not sure exactly what to feed these 5 green sunfish/bluegill. I read plenty stating that green sunfish and bluegill will both take pellet food... even at 1"? I've got pellets and I've got black soldier fly larvae (also sold as 'phoenix worms'). I think the larvae is probably still to big for them but I could cut them into smaller pieces.

What about feeding fry? Green sunfish and bluegill fry both feed on zooplankton... I assume brine shrimp would suite the bill but are there some alternatives I could use that I could culture in the same tank as the fry to reduce maintenance/energy input?
 
Bluegill fry feed on zooplanton in the wild, but you should be able to buy food that's specifically made for fry, or most fry (I'm assuming bluegill are similar) will eat flake food that's been ground to a fine powder. You can also make fry food yourself, but I don't personally have any recipes. If you search the website I know there's some on here.

For the 1 inchers, mini krill seems to work great, and you can also feed stuff like frozen bloodworms, white worms, tubifex, basically anything that will fit in their mouth. Pellet food is too big for them to swallow unless you try the tiny floating cichlid pellets, but I'm not sure they'd go to the top and eat it that young. It's still worth a try since even young sunfish aren't hard to get eating. They will also nibble on sinking carnivore pellets and stuff like that.
I try to stay away from brine shrimp for most fish since it's nutritionally deficient. The newly hatched brine is fine to feed, but I've never raised live brine shrimp so I haven't tried that.

You're aquaponics thing seems very interesting. I haven't seen anyone go quite to that extent using plants for waste removal yet, lol. What are the parameters in your goldfish tub? Does it keep everything at 0 or are the nitrates just fairly low?
I'm not sure how well the siphon thing is gonna work on your 300g, but I'll be interested to see the outcome.
You should post that stuff in the DIY section or Setup and Filtration section. You'd probably get a lot more suggestions and comments there.
 
in my goldfish barrel system i was using gravel as a growing medium. ph stabilized at 7.5, nitrite, nitrate and ammonia levels don't budge from 0 with the plants sucking it up as fast as it was being converted. plants actually became nutrient deficient once they started producing fruit. the bush beans put out a lot of flowers, a lot more then the bush beans i had planted in the garden, but the beans grew slowly. when i took the system apart my tomatoe plant had a few tiny tomatoes on it but where also growing slowly. i was just using a 55 gallon barrel with 2 goldfish and 2 crawfish, pumping the water into two 3' long 10" pvc pipes, filled with gravel and planted. water went through the pipe then right back into the barrel. I pumped the water through at 500 gallons per hour, happy fish. all i had to do was feed the fish, i test the water every couple weeks but it's always the same.
 
Just saying hello, so i may track your progress (and steal your idea), im thinking of a similar project (distant future) when i settle down.

Just FYI, lots of fish foods, and aquarium products say "NOT FOR USE WITH FISH FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION" im not sure why, there is prolly less crap in the fish food, than their is in McDonalds...
 
FisHaRNekEd;1250592; said:
Just saying hello, so i may track your progress (and steal your idea), im thinking of a similar project (distant future) when i settle down.

Just FYI, lots of fish foods, and aquarium products say "NOT FOR USE WITH FISH FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION" im not sure why, there is prolly less crap in the fish food, than their is in McDonalds...
Click to expand...

I'm not really sure why it says that either, maybe just to prevent lawsuits in CASE something happens? Some of the stuff that goes into livestock feed is pretty nasty, so I don't see why there'd be a problem with the fish food.

ph stabilized at 7.5, nitrite, nitrate and ammonia levels don't budge from 0 with the plants sucking it up as fast as it was being converted. plants actually became nutrient deficient once they started producing fruit
Click to expand...

Wow, I guess I didn't realize how fast they can suck up nutrients. I just water and fertilize my plants periodically and don't worry about much since they seem to grow good.
Maybe I'll try this out next summer :D. I seem to have a better knack for terrestrial plants than aquatic anyway.
 
Hi mrgrackle (great name) I'm blown away that someone from Austin is growing fruit hydroponically (grew up there, myself)... This a cool project, and you're givin me all types of ideas since I have most of those materials lying around anyway; just need to find the all-to-rare time for it.

It's getting a little late in the year, but for feeding fry, if you put out some buckets, you'll get mosquitoes, crane flies, and all types of other fly larva in there. From the bucket, just strain the water through an invert (brine shrimp) net and freeze. At times I've had big mosqito operations going without having a mosquito problem any worse than I would have had anyway-it might have even been better since they were concentrating on the buckets that I was robbing every couple of days.

Have you thought of raising catfish? Black Bullheads would be great in your system. A couple of channel cats would be good, too. They're also big poopers, which is good in your situation. When they get bigger you can feed them commercial food for food fish. I can go to the hatchery in San Marcos and get the brand name that the state uses if you want. It's probably the most economic way to go, and their goal is to raise up fish quickly for realease for sport, so it's ok for sure.

So you don't get a huge algae crop that will suck up nitrogen, you might want to consider shading your tub, and for the fishes mental well-being, I would put some type of cover and rocks in the tub (not gravel, but something to stick close to, and maybe under). This will also protect them from cats (it looks like you live in Hyde Park or one of the other older 'hoods full of strays), coons, and grackles. Don't be surprised if a heron finds your pond, too. My dad has a wooden heron out by his pond and has never had a problem with them...

Good luck, I hope this works out. You seem to have a good plan.
 
thanks for the info everyone...

fisharneked - thanks for the heads up on the fish food warning. Ultimately i'd like to not use any commercial fish food, to keep it on the cheap and organic. im not o.c.d. about it though and i did crush up some pond pellets i was feeding my goldfish and threw them in the tank with the sunfish.

rjmtx,
sorry bad choice of words... im not growing fruit hydroponically, I'm growing veggies hydroponically, well... technically tomatoes are fruit i guess... I'm in east austin and yeah we have a lot of cats around here but they never seem to mess with the fish. even when i had my goldfish in a shallow bathtub pond nobody every jumped in there with them :)

oh great idea about setting out buckets. i might just set out a bunch of shaded shallow trays with some leaf debris in there, should get a mighty crop of 'skeeters pretty quick.

Do bluegill not feed on algae at all? one of the nice things about aquaculture with tilapia is they filter algae from the water and eat it as well, so people actually fertilize the water with manure to cause algae blooms to feed the fish cheap.

I just bought some red wigglers today to start up some vermicomposting/worm production. I've also got a bucket outside I'm trying to get some black soldier flies to lay eggs in to start up black soldier fly composting/larva production. They get sold as phoenix worms but they're really just black soldier fly pupae.
 
I just bought a bug zapper, and it has "moisqueto attractant" that came with it, im not sure of the ingredients, pharmone, chemical..? but what if you could put this stuff right next to or over your pond?
its a liquid that comes in a small plastic tray, or maybe hang rotten bananas over your pond, Im just thinking of the laziest I mean "most effecient" way to get the bugs into the water without having to do much work.
I tried to let ghost shrimp breed in my tank, by puting hornwort plants inside of strawberry trays (the green plastic squares). the shrimp loved it in their safe little sanctuary, but it didnt last long, the cichlids broke in before it worked. but i could see this working with a real sort of burrier... this way the fish feed on the shrimp that leave the cage, and the females with eggs hopefully stay in the cage.
 
If you really want to get into bug collectin, and want to roam around some creeks, you can make a kick net out of two dowels and a piece of vinyl window screen. There are all different types of ways to collect macroinverts, but this way gets the least substrate. The bluegill will peck at the algae, but I don't think they'll be able to keep up with it, especially in a sunny spot. I worked at Amazonia for about 5 years until about 2 years ago, and heard disappearing fish stories from customers just about every week. It's mostly coons, but that's a shallow tub, and the cats will get a hankerin for fresh fish eventually. Man, I like this project...
 
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