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Would a 1600 gallon tank be big enough to raise bluegill in in my garage? If so could I heat it and get them to spawn over winter and in spring or is only once a year possible. The tank is round and is a total of 1600 gallons. If this will work how do you guys think I should set it up Heating, lighting, pea gravel for the bottom, filtration? Thanks for your input guys

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Yes, you absolutely can do it. Here's a thread on raising them in tanks as little as 150 gallons.

http://www.pondboss.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Main=1281&Number=13221#Post13221

I've spent the last two years on this, and with the excellent contributions of Theo Gallus have come up with some pretty remarkable growth rates. I WISH I had a 1600 gallon tank for this project. \:\) \:\)

That being said, I'd like to see how getting the bluegill to spawn may be achievable in your tank. I know there's some literature avaialable on bluegill culture. Perhaps Cecil, Dr. Dave, or Bill know how to access that information. I really hope that you end up trying this, because I'd like to learn more about indoor spawning. Maybe when my kids get older I can dedicate more of my outbuilding to raising bluegill, and spawning would definitely be great to watch.


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 Originally Posted By: Bruce Condello
Yes, you absolutely can do it. Here's a thread on raising them in tanks as little as 150 gallons.


Make that 100 gallons.


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Seems like the answer is yes John. And you'll probably be just fine with BG. But if you start garage raising RES then make sure ya hide the car keys.


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I understand the answer is yes, I can breed them in the tank ,but how many pairs will breed in this enclosure? What temp do I need to keep it at for breeding and will they breed more than once a year if I make the temp right? If they will, how do you cycle the temperatures so they don't get all screwed up? I have hybrid bg in my 2 acre pond ,but I don't believe they are keeping up with predation as my bass and cc's are looking thing. I really just want to breed and raise a ton of good food for my bass, crappie and cc's. I also have some large 50 gallon barrels that are plastic and I would like to breed some fatheads or gambusia if I can find them. I dont have a ton of money but if I can breed some forage quickly and cheaply I would love to do so. Thanks again

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looking thin

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First place to start AFTER reading and understanding Bruce's link to his and Theos fish raising set-up is to order Sunfish Culture Guide published by North Central Regional Aquacultural (NCRAC) Culture Guide Series 102. Available from Dr. Joe Morris, NCRAC, Dept of Natural Resource Ecology & Mgmt, 124 Science Hall II, Iowa State Univ, Ames IA 50011-3221. For a price of hard copy or CD, email joe at jemorris@iastate.edu.

The above publication is not a complete treatsie on raising bgill, but it is a good start for beginners. It does not deal with hardware or facilities of aquaculture equipment for a recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) of fish. This info has to be gleaned from other sources.

I have a couple basic suggestions.
1. Omit gravel on the bottom unless you are operating a large undergravel filter. For spawning substrate/nests use tubs with gravel. Gravel on bottom of the tank/pool with make it very difficult to clean out the large amount of debris/waste materials that accumulate and cause water quality deterioration issues. You want a clean bottomed tank for RAS methods.

2. You cannot have too much mechanical or biological filtration when raising fish indoors. Research and use a biological filter that is essentialy over kill for the size of tank that will hold your fish. Note this is highly dependant on the amount of fish biomass that you will be raising. Obviously rainsing 2 to 4 larger BG will require a lot less filtration than raising 40-100 BG. The system that Bruce and Theo have utilizes flow through technology with is completely different than traditional RAS methods. Bruce and Theo are essentially using raceway or flow through technology - very different methods of fish raising compared to RAS.

3. There is a publication by Steve Van Groder that teaches about homemade RAS systems. I cannot find my copy right now - misplaced it. Cecil has mentioned this in a couple of earlier posts. A search here may find it for you. Maybe Cecil will give us a reference of where to get this book. I will look for a link to this book on Amazon.

Last edited by Bill Cody; 09/08/07 04:36 PM.

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Thank you, I really like the idea of tubs of gravel instead of gravel bottom. 5 gallon bucket bottoms should work nice!

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Okay, now that I see what you goal is, I am not sure that your plan is going to be cost effective or practical. But if it is just a hobby then it will serve yor purpose. Doing your plan is going to take a fair amount of time and effort and several hundred dollars at least, to produce any significient quantities of small fish (BG, gams or FHM) indoors. In the end it will be CHEAPER IN TIME AND MONEY to just buy small BG or FHM and feed them to your fish. Been there done that. Bruce and Theo can testify to the amount of time it takes to mess with RAS fish. Plus when you have gone to all the time and expense to raise a "big" lot of fish in RAS and as the biomass gets large and it is near release (stocking) point, one power outage for 5-10 minutes can kill all your fish due to the high biomass and oxygen demand of the system especially one that is of the RAS type that has been overloaded due to the fish being larger sized than hatchlings. All can be lost it 10-20 minutes without emergency electricity backup.

For added bass, CC or sprotfish production, why don't you either raise the BG in your pond or just feed (or train) your fish pellets? OR just build a second small 0.10 ac pond for just raising BG or FHM for live food. In the end that will be much easier, more productive (more small fish produced) and long term cheaper than a RAS system. I have been down all these roads before.

Last edited by Bill Cody; 09/08/07 04:56 PM.

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Five gallon bucket bottoms will probably NOT be large enough for a BG nest if adults are 7"-8". Nest diameter should be close to 16"-20" diameter. Generally the nest diameter is twice the length of the fish.

Last edited by Bill Cody; 09/08/07 06:21 PM.

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Thank you, I really like the idea of tubs of gravel instead of gravel bottom. 5 gallon bucket bottoms should work nice!

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If one figures the cost of materials AND time involved in a project like you are talking about, one could easily work just 8 to 10 hours overtime or 10-20 hours extra work and have enough money to buy lots and lots of pounds of forage fish.


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I see, I was just curious if it would work and I appreciate your input. How about 50 -150 gallon tubs for raising minnows. I have a lot of these type of tubs or tanks at my disposal. I would just like to keep the breeding circle going so I don't have to be buying minnows constantly and having to wait weeks for them to arrive. How is anderson minnow farm and what do gamb's usually cost per pound? Are they pretty quick with delivery?

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I do not have any experience with getting fish directly from Anderson Fish Farm. Someone else will have to help you with that.

I have some but not a lot of experience with raising minnows in tubs and tanks. Basically the more minnows or fish weight (includes growth in biomass) you put per gallon of water the more filtration that is needed to keep water quality good so fish are healthy enough to grow "rapidly" and stay healthy. First thing to become slowed with stress to fish is the growth rate. More stress equals slowed growth.

Before anyone can provide any specific ideas or suggestions to your minnow raising "system", we have to know if you plan to use a static water (RAS) or flow through system.

POSTSCRIPT.
Feeding fish to fish is a very inefficient and costly way to grow fish. Fish as forage items costs approximently $3.00-$6.00 per pound (As Chris mentions below they can be as high as $12.50/lb). Predators convert fish into body biomass (growth) at about a 10:1 ratio due to the high percentage of water in the forage fish body mass. A big amount of the energy is also spent chasing food items. Thus you do not get very much or a very good conversion ratio of using fish as food weight to produce fish body weight increase of predators. Catfish, panfish and omnivorous fish convert food at a slightly better ratio than predators. These non-predatory fish can also produce good weight gain on lower protein content foods i.e. 32% protein pellets such a Game fish chow). A 5:1 to 10:1 ratio is a fairly standard range of conversion ratio when using live fish as food.

However if fish (many panfish and bass) eat a high protein fish pellet, such as Aquamax 41% protein, the conversion ratio is close to or slightly below a 2:1 ratio. Author's NOTE: The conversion ratio can vary with the species of fish and availability of food items in the pond. Fish that feed lower on the food chain often have low conversion ratios with pellet foods. Pellet food conversion ratios have been found to be as low as 0.9:1 for koi in an open pond (KY Aquatic Farming Vol 20(2) 2007). Thus it is much better economically to feed the fish high protein fish pellets compared to feeding them fish or live food. High quality fish pellets cost about 50-60 cents per pound. Thus each $1.00-$1.20 produces close to a pound of fish biomass. You do the comparsion math.

ONE OF THE BASIC MISTAKES that pond owners make with feeding pelleted food to their pond fish is to allow the trend of fish biomass to INCREASE in terms of fish numbers instead of fish size. The most common results of this are seeing symptoms of feeding a lot of fish food while seeing little visible gain (growth) from all the food that has been fed. Without proper regulation of fish numbers of abundance, too much of the pelleted nutrition goes into MORE NUMBERS of smaller fish instead of noticable weight and length increases of fewer larger fish. To combat this problem one has to properly manage or perform harvest of select sizes within the fish community so food source items are channeled into fewer quality fish instead of more and more smaller or medium sized fish. As with numerous pond topics, proper and wise management is the key component to success.

There are pros and cons to feeding fish pellets vs using excusively fish as forage items, but this is one of the bacic pros. Getting fish to eat fish pellets or training them to eat pellets especially predator fish is whole new topic; maybe one for PBoss magazine. I will put that on my list.

Last edited by Bill Cody; 09/09/07 08:23 PM.

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 Originally Posted By: JohnK
How is anderson minnow farm and what do gamb's usually cost per pound? Are they pretty quick with delivery?


Gambusia were $100 for 500 fish back in the spring, and that is delivered. I think they are delivered in 2-3 days. I was able to go by and pick some up and they were $12.50 per pound, which was 1000 fish.

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Did you mean 10.00 or 100.00 for 500 gambusia?

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 Originally Posted By: JohnK
Did you mean 10.00 or 100.00 for 500 gambusia?


It is $100. I think the fast shipping and weight is why it costs so much.

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Small Scale Aquaculture.

http://www.altaqua.com/index.htm

Pretty neat little book. I have a number of books on RAS and Aquaculture.

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What did you copy and paste that from???

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To whom are you posing that question, Phil?


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I'm guessing maybe he means Chris' avatar ???


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I ordered Fathead minnows from Anderson's. They arrived in good condition 24 hours after I placed the order. When FedEx delivered them I didn't have to sign for them, which I was told I would have to do. Apparently the delivery was recorded as "left on porch" or something similar and within an hour of receiving them I got a call from Max at Anderson's. He said he had seen the notation on the delivery and wanted to be sure the fish weren't sitting unattended. Pretty good service from my one experience.

My $.02 on Gams: If they aren't native to your area please don't stock them. Many scientists consider them to be one of the top 100 most invasive species in the world. When they are introduced to an area as an exotic species the result is often that one or several native species suffer.
http://www.pondboss.com/forums/ubbthread...=true#Post17466

When I saw Chris' signature I thought about my distance casting with the 1/4 oz egg sinker. Wouldn't want to catch one of those in the head.



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 Originally Posted By: Phil in MI
What did you copy and paste that from???

I found that on the Texas Fishing Forum.

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This is awesome. I'm glad I found this post. I am trying to start an aquaponic operation and was considering BG as my source fish. I was going to try Tillapia because they are mouth brooders but if some grvel tubs in my 150 gal stock tank will do it, I think I'll give it a try.

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BG make excellent aquaponic fish. Tilapia will provide you with more pounds of harvested fish per gallon though. They also grow faster and convert feed much better.


12 ac pond in NW Missouri. 28' max depth at full pool. Fish Present: LMB, BG, RES, YP, CC, WB, HSB, WE, BCP, WCP, GSH.
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