Anyone else raising fish for food??? Now with pictures of the Harvest!

[Magnum Man]

I found my biggest fish the other day, it went over the wall, probably quite a while ago, & into the Duckweed tank... that may be a good reason ( besides the heat ) that all the duckweed went away... I have extra tote tanks like the fish are in... I think I'm going to take 2 or 3 of them, add an air stone for circulation, & just use those for growing duckweed next year...

I was also thinking, I have 2- 30 gallon tanks, in the house built in, with my others... they were single fish tanks before, as they are harder to work on ( they are under the built in 45 gallons ) I think I could grow Mosquito fish to put in the duckweed tanks, to keep the mozzies down outside next summer, & could also propagate the Giant Duckweed, that I and the fish liked so much, in one of the 30 gallon tanks, if I got it going this fall, with just a sponge filter for filter & circulation...

I really cant tell if someone is following along, if no one sticks a smilie or comments... thanks for your comment

BTW... that line is a piece of plexiglass, that I had cut to separate the male & females I choose, until breeding time, it will be held in with some suction cups, a couple big rocks on the bottom, & the pair of filters, that are on each side in the back...

 

[Colin_T]

I wouldn't bother keeping Gambusia to control mozzie larvae, they don't do a good job and aren't worth anything. If you kept a different fish and they breed, you could sell the offspring and get a little bit of money to help pay for that part of the hobby.

If you get platies, guppies, Endlers or swordtails, they will eat more mozzie larvae (might not be needed) and you could sell the surplus. The drawback to adding any fish (especially common livebearers) to the ponds would be the possible introduction of gill flukes and or intestinal worms. However, if you treat the fish for these while they are in quarantine, you would then have clean stock to work with.

Duckweed doesn't need much water to grow. I used large shallow containers with 2-4 inches of water in for most floating plants. You can add some normal garden fertiliser (assuming there's no fish in the tank) to help the plants grow.

 

[Magnum Man]

I’m currently using mosquito fish as feeders for my bichirs but a common platy could be used as well… when I had the tanks going before, I had tried using Molly’s as feeders for sea horses

 

[Colin_T]

How did the baby mollies go with the seahorses?

 

[Magnum Man]

I kept them in brackish, so when netted into the salt water sea horse tank, they didn’t go into salt shock… the sea horses gobbled them up, but didn’t seem to like or see well, the black babies… the other colors were more favored… guessing I’ve always had bad water… wished I had RO back then… I killed a lot of seahorses trying, but they lasted twice as long, when they got Molly’s offered, but a pair of 4 inch seahorses, could run a 55 gallon breeding tank out of small enough babies in no time

 

[Colin_T]

Hard water with a high GH should not affect a marine tank. If anything it would replace or add to the minerals that were used by any corals, macro algae, coralline algae or crustaceans.

 

[Magnum Man]

Some nice tomatoes coming off the plant in the tilapia vegetable tank… cucumbers are pretty much done, probably got about half a bushel of cucumbers total… 3 kinds of peppers, and the tomatoes still producing

 

[Alice B]

Mozambique tilapia are the only ones legal for outdoor uncovered ponds in North Texas, because they die at 55 degrees they can't become invasive if a bird carries one to a lake and drops it. Unfortunately there isn't enough to filet on an a mature Mozambique. I kept them summer 2013, moved to green house in fall, it got too cold, stuffed all survivors in a 55 gallon tank and sold on Craigslist in spring. I think I ate 4, I had hundreds. I thought I got all out of the pond until it got too cold and the hiding ones died. I had an old air driven deep undergravel filter in the 55 and I did not lose a single fish in that tank over the winter.

 

[Magnum Man]

So I had a stroke about a year ago... I'm pretty functional yet, but my short term memory suffers a bit, & if I get too busy doing other stuff, I forget things like leaving the fill water on... I've done it once refilling aquariums ( fortunately the tank was in the basement, & only 4-5 feet from a floor drain, & I was inn the middle of fish chores, when I got interrupted, so the water was only on like 20 minutes )... but as of this last weekend, I've done the same thing on the Tilapia tanks twice... once before the fish came... I was topping off the water, while the filters were running... that time the water was on for like 8 hours... I have to watch out doing that, if I run my house water heater out of hot water, the tanks could get cold enough to kill the fish... this weekend, the water got left on, while we went to church... so not all day, but a couple hours... water over flows into the yard, no problem, but the tanks got down to mid 60's... they have been pretty steady at 87 to 88 degrees, with the heaters in the tanks... but I got nice clear tank water...

this gave me a good chance to fully see all the fish... there are many, that are about 8 inches right now, but about half are still at about 6 inches... I'm still planning on running them as long as the weather permits... but now have an assembly of fillet knives & a couple folding fish cleaning tables for processing at harvest...

just about ready to sex a few for the holding & breeding tanks... probably in the next couple weeks

 

[Alice B]

You must not have chlorine in your water. If I'd done that I'd have had all dead fish, mostly dead fish

 

[Magnum Man]

live in the country, have very hard well water... so they get house softener softened water... the extra sodium has not been a problem for the Tilapia... it's been bad for my other aquarium fish, & required the install of an RO unit for the aquariums

 

[Magnum Man]

Did a 50% water change today, and tried an experiment… with the water half down, I tried netting a few fish… caught 3, 1 in each try ( maybe same fish caught 3 times, as they were all Females, about 6 inches long… pretty easy to see 2 vent holes on 6 inch fish… I put them back for now… not surprised that there are plenty of females… I’m sure the grade that grow the fastest, and are closer to the same size, probably has a greater percentage of males…

My tank heaters are along the back wall, and about 1/2 way down… so that’s where I drop the water level to, so I don’t have to unplug the heaters…. Will probably unplug it when I’m sexing for the breeder tanks, so I can drop the water level to about a foot deep, so I can better select my breeding stock

 

[Magnum Man]

Wish the fish were consistently bigger… may get 1st frost this weekend… cold and windy today… tanks are holding 80 degrees though… I think it could be colder, if it wasn’t so windy

 

[Colin_T]

put Bubblewrap on 90% of the surface of the ponds to help insulate them. It will extend the growing period a bit.

 

[Magnum Man]

Yup… season is ending cold ( 37 degrees ) windy and rainy this morning the outer tank in the row, to the northwest was 78 degrees this morning ( set point on the heater is 88 ) it’s unusually cold this weekend… water was 10 degrees colder than normal, and the fish in that tank were slow to eat… bubble wrap may be in order