Fish Garden

[politicalcenter]

Anyone else raising or trying to raise fish?

If so, would love to hear from you.

 

[HighStreetCoop]

What kind of fish? I've bred several types of tropical fish (and what a PITA that was!).

 

[RichnSteph]

We're planning on hybrid perch in our back yard pond.

 

[HighStreetCoop]

Ah, yeah, I've never done fish on that scale. We had koi that bred in a backyard pond, but we didn't really do anything to promote that. It just kinda happened, LOL!

 

[politicalcenter]

We're planning on hybrid perch in our back yard pond.

When you say perch do you mean bluegill?

I have about 150 in my indoor tank waiting to go outside as soon as I get my newly repaired pond filled and the weather breaks. I have a 1000 gallon pond attached to that one that has 300 channel catfish fingerlings in it. My ponds are above ground and really just recirculating systems. I love to grow fish...no weeds to pull.

 

[RichnSteph]

When you say perch do you mean bluegill?

I have about 150 in my indoor tank waiting to go outside as soon as I get my newly repaired pond filled and the weather breaks. I have a 1000 gallon pond attached to that one that has 300 channel catfish fingerlings in it. My ponds are above ground and really just recirculating systems. I love to grow fish...no weeds to pull.

Yup! Hybrid Bluegill. All I've read and been told is that they are hardy enough to survive our 850 gallon tank that is sunk in the ground out back. I've talked to the folks that sell them and they've stated that the fish will be .5lb in a couple months with good feeding and ready for harvest once they hit 1lb. We're recirculating the water from the tank into two aquaponics grow beds. No weeds for us to pull either. Yay!!!

 

[wyoDreamer]

I would really like to try this for myself. I like the couple of systems that people posted on this forum and am trying to figure out how to incorporate one into my greenhouse.
How deep of a container do you need for hybrid bluegill?
Is it better to have the fish high and gravity drain into the veg beds, then pumped back up into the fish tank, or have the veg beds high and pump the dirty water up into the planting beds and have them gravity drain back into the fish tank.
I have seen them both ways, but I am leaning toward the second option, tank low beds high. That way I know that if I develop a leak in the pumping system I won't drain my tank and overflow the beds. I also have the option to manually pump the water up into the beds if the pump goes out.

So many of the homes around here have backyard ponds and we want to build one for ourselves. I want one big enough for fish! ha,ha The NRCS tells me that I am going to need about 1 acre of open water to keep a sustainable fish population. I am thinking that if I add an aerator that it won't have to be quite that big. I need to get a map and see how big our pond area actually is.

 

[RichnSteph]

I would really like to try this for myself. I like the couple of systems that people posted on this forum and am trying to figure out how to incorporate one into my greenhouse.
How deep of a container do you need for hybrid bluegill?
Is it better to have the fish high and gravity drain into the veg beds, then pumped back up into the fish tank, or have the veg beds high and pump the dirty water up into the planting beds and have them gravity drain back into the fish tank.
I have seen them both ways, but I am leaning toward the second option, tank low beds high. That way I know that if I develop a leak in the pumping system I won't drain my tank and overflow the beds. I also have the option to manually pump the water up into the beds if the pump goes out.

So many of the homes around here have backyard ponds and we want to build one for ourselves. I want one big enough for fish! ha,ha The NRCS tells me that I am going to need about 1 acre of open water to keep a sustainable fish population. I am thinking that if I add an aerator that it won't have to be quite that big. I need to get a map and see how big our pond area actually is.

I'm guessing you're in Wyoming from your screen name so your location (and how cold the weather gets there in winter) will dictate how deep your pond/tank should be. Mine is only about 32" deep but then it was a storage container before it became my pond so I didn't really have a choice in the matter. I'm in South-ish Texas so my concern here is the heat in the summer, easily dealt with by installing a shade cloth. During the winter I've got little green houses in mind to go over the beds and water source to help maintain some heat.

I prefer the beds to be above the tank. I've got a pump set up that will run on a timer to fill the beds once an hour (about 15 minutes of run time), the beds will drain via a siphon (Affnan or Bell) back into the tank. We'll also put a large bubble stone in the tank to help with the oxygenation.

An entire acre of open water? The land we are on is an acre and I can't imaging trying to maintain something that size unless it's just a stock tank or pond. I know folks that have sustainable populations of tilapia in a 330 gallon plastic tote above ground. We're probably only going to have a couple dozen fish in there as we only eat fish once or twice a month. Our main focus is using the fish waste to feed the plants.

 

[wyoDreamer]

The acre estimate I believe is for a "natural" pond and you need that much open water so that the wind blowing across it will be able to help create currents to keep the water mixed. A smaller pond may stagnate and the fish will suffocate.
I like the set-up that had the fish pond dug into the ground with the garden bed built over it - but I am not sure how to get the fish out ...

Actually, I recently moved to Wisconsin, so a harsher winter environment (colder). But the summers here are more humid, so the water loss from a pond would not be as much of a problem as in the high mountain desert back in Wyoming.

The lake I grew up fishing on is only 7 acres open water, but it is 14 feet deep in places, so it doesn't get fish kill very often. The native bluegills were getting very small and complacent - that's the only word I can think of to use. You could have a dinner plate sized fish on the line and just reel it in, no fight in them at all. They threw in a batch of Hybrid Bluegills to help up the size. The fish are bigger now and the extra bonus is that they are fun to catch!

 

[politicalcenter]