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View Full Version : Party in my fish tank.



Waterboy
07-12-2013, 11:25 AM
Just wondering if anyone else ended up with the same setup as me. I initially was going to just have Catfish and Crappie in my 8 ft tank. And breed crawfish and minnows in a separate tanks for fish food.
Well, the crawfish eat their babies and fight all the time in a smaller tank. And the larger minnows die instead of breeding in a small tank. So, they all kinnda ended up in my big fish tank, along with a few Perch I caught in my trap. I lost a few catfish due to fighting the crawfish for hiding spots, but all in all seem to be coexisting fine. I am hoping this way if any minnows, or crawfish have babies, my crappie will get to eat them first! Thats the plan anyway, but it seems to change by the hour these days.
Anyone else has this many different species in one tank??

keith_r
07-12-2013, 12:27 PM
i've got nile tilapia, blue tilapia, yellow perch, bluegill and crayfish in my 8' tank.. i use marmokreb self cloning crayfish, and breed them in 55 gallon tanks.. i've put about 40 larger crayfish into the pool to reproduce there, and hundreds of smaller ones that were eaten..
i have minnows in other tanks, whenever i put any in the pool, they don't last long..i put 100 minnows in last week and they were gone overnight..
i'm going to try guppies to see if i can get them to reproduce better than the fathead minnows, i had 3 hatches of rosy reds, but they grow real slow..i've read that crappie are.... difficult to feed train..

Waterboy
07-12-2013, 01:29 PM
Sweet, so I am not the only one. The minnows I have are too big for my fingerlings to eat, but it wont be long. I have some Rosys in another tank, and I just bought a male and female swordtail guppie in my daughters tank hoping they make lots of babies. I live in the south so crawfish in every ditch, if not for that I would try the marble, I hear they are asexual and reproduce alot.

15mules
07-13-2013, 12:35 PM
That sure is some diversity you have in you fish tank. Being you live in La. and they are legal there, have you considered trying a few little alligators?? They are cold blooded, just like fish and they do create waste (also known as fertilizer in the AP world) Just a thought??
Truthfully, I actually have word from someone I trust, that there is someone experimenting with this with in one of the southern states. They have coined the phrase "GatorPonics" to describe it.

Roger L.
07-13-2013, 01:04 PM
Sounds like a good way to lose a finger!

15mules
07-13-2013, 01:39 PM
Roger,
That is why you reassure your wife it is perfectly safe !!, Just before you hand her the feed bucket !!!!

JCO
07-13-2013, 09:38 PM
Humor, in whatever form...you gotta' love the relief of tension a good laugh gives you :mrgreen:

eddiemigue
07-13-2013, 10:28 PM
Interesting polyculture ideas. Anyone have some recommendations for a scavenger to help keep the bottom of my blue tilapia tank clean. I have an SLO that pulls most of the solids, but still have to periodically vacuum the bottom edges. It'd be nice to have some critters that can coexist happily with the tilapia, if they either supplement the tilapia food, or provide food for the family (prawns or the like) that would be a nice plus.

Roger L.
07-14-2013, 06:07 AM
I'm to smart to have a wife 15mules. Seriously though, what and how would you handle the gator when he got big enough to start eating the fish? That is how gators end up in sewer systems.

JCO
07-14-2013, 09:10 AM
Roger!!!!! you raise the gators for the nitrates instead of fish :lol: :mrgreen:

15mules
07-14-2013, 09:58 AM
Yes, That is correct, you replace the fish with the gators. I know for those not from Louisiana raising alligators, seems like a novel idea, but the fact is there have been people raising alligators for their meat and for their skins as a business for a long time. This is only combining the two together. The problem with alligator farms have always been the fluctuation for the price of the skins, this is really where the money is in them. The produce from the aquaponics, would hopefully help stabilize the income in years when the skins were not so high.
Here is the concept. locate your AP business close to a animal processing factory of some kind, (chicken farm, beef, pork processing plant, etc. ) buy the waste meat products, fairly cheap to feed to the gators, and hook the gator tank up to your AP system, just like you would a fish tank.
Now for the hobby AP gardener, just buy some small gators and when they get to big to handle turn them lose and get some more. The game and fish would probably welcome this as in the wild the alligator survival rate for baby alligators is pretty small.

keith_r
07-15-2013, 05:50 AM
i'd probably avoid gators in aquaculture.. pretty dirty critters, and sending that kind of waste through an ap system could pass salmonella on to you or your family....
for a backyarder to "grow and release" any kind of game into the wild is completely irresponsible..
releasing a gator that is not afraid of people is just plain nuts..
that's a problem with all kinds of things that are considered "invasive species" - people get tired of the exotic pet they bought and think it's ok to release it..... big head carp have the capability to destroy whole ecosystems... snakehead's are another...

15mules
07-15-2013, 07:25 AM
Kieth,
Alligators cannot pass any more disease on than a fish could, they are both cold blooded animals. You would need to cook the foods you were feeding them to insure you were not getting any thing in that way, but that is the only difference, but it also is a cheap food source. Alligators in Louisiana are not an invasive species and every year the La. game and fish department personnel go out into the marsh and raid as many gator mounds as they can to bring the eggs into captivity to hatch and raise to a point they can be re-released. This is how they have managed to get the gator numbers back up in the southern states.
Look this is a simple discussion, in most instances to simply pass time, but it is a very viable system, probably not right for the average backyard AP person, with no experience dealing with alligators. What I will say is in the right environment, (southern states) where alligators are legal, and to someone familiar with their handling, this could be a beneficial setup. I would not be surprised if on a commercial scale you could not develop a partnership with the G&F to accept hatchlings, use them to a certain size, at which time they could come get them and return them to the wild, and provide you more hatchlings.
Concerning invasive species, I certainly would not advocate putting gators in your system in Ohio then turning them lose there where they are not native, although they would most certainly die the first winter, but I do agree with you on the invasive species problem.