I have mentioned in random threads i have been trying to spawn bluegill indoors in my 100 gallon aquarium since january.
I thought i had 1 "male" and 3 "females" in the tank but a week ago i saw the largest "female" trying to make a second nest and seemed to be courting the "2nd largest female"... So i removed the "male" from the aquarium and sure enough the "largest female" moved into the big/main nest (there's only really room for 1 nest) and a week later i have bluegill eggs.
A couple of takeaways. Before i knew the "largest female" was in fact male, there was a lot of reason for me to think it was female. It generally had lighter colors. A significantly smaller and (to me) rounded ear tab. I witnessed it dancing with the "male" in the nest on multiple occasions but never resulted in any eggs.
I find it interesting that the female didnt spawn with any male, The dominant one has been available since january. She waited for the opportunity to spawn with this specific male?
from here on out the "largest female" will now be referred to as the male.
The eggs do not look like i thought they would. In fact, yesterday i thought i had some sort of mold infection in the tank because it was just a translucent jellylike haze. But today, i can see some actual gnat sized creatures hopping around, especially when the male fans the eggs and kind of stirs them up. There's also some shiny spherical objects which i am not sure what they are.
Anyways. I think there are thousands of blue gill in this picture. I will update as they grow and this progresses.
The water is way too clear to produce fry food. Without proper fry foods at the correct timing most all if not all fry will die after they absorb the final yolk deposit. If adults are left in the tank they will probably eat all the fry before they are 1" long. Great video footage.
I have already taken all of the BG out of the tank except the male. I will take him out once the fry start to swim.
I have no filtration in this indoor tank. It's circulated by air stones. I have a bag of substrate hanging in the far corner (under an air stone) for extra surface area. I vacuum the tank every few weeks at which time I do a 50-70% water change with my 1500 gallon outdoor aquaponics system. I just did this a week ago when i removed the original "male". The glass also gets bad brown algae buildup but i brush it off with a magnet brush every few days. The brushing causes the water to get cloudy for a a day then it all settles out. I dont remove the particles so they must still be in there somewhere. I didnt show the terra cotta pots but they are mostly covered with brown algae. I think there's more microbial life than at first glance.
I *did* have a good algae bloom in my outdoor 800 gallon ferrocement tank but my tilapia fry (look more like fingerlings now) took less than a week to filter most of it out. It still has a greenish tint so i added a couple of gallons to the indoor tank today to try to get some algae reproduction started.
I also have a clogging problem in one of my grow beds where the water stands above the substrate.. it has developed a thick moss covering along with snails and little tiny jumping insects. I scooped a couple of cups of that mess and added it to the aquarium as well. I dont expect the fry to be able to eat the insects, snails or moss right away, but there's a whole tiny ecosystem happening there.
With my tilapia fry i have kept hundreds alive in a 55 gallon aquariums off of pulverized fish food and algae wafers (the algae waffer breaks down and starts to come apart in very tiny pieces and they seem to be able to eat it) Granted the tilapia fry are probably 4 or 5 times bigger than these little guys so that doesnt mean i dont share your food concern.
Do you think they will eat yeast, like beer or bread yest? That's my plan b and might as well be a part of my plan a. Diversity is probably going to win here.
It has also occured to me.... the following products are intended for marine animals but they are tiny nutrients, does anyone think they would be helpful harmful to this freshwater aquarium?
I already have some SFBB frozen glass worms and brine shrimp for when they get a little bigger.
I am also considering buying a dapnia culture off ebay. I should have it going on all cylinders by the time that niche of food is needed. They are just so damned expensive and i have never been able to keep a culture going indefinitely.
Yah judging by the size of what i am seeing right now, even the smallest daphnia species is the same size or bigger than these larva.
I had been assuming the fry would be swimming after the egg sac was absorbed (like tilapia) but i read a little and it looks to not be the case. They actually filter feed in a larva state for a while. I havent really found a great resource that talks specifically about what each state does and how long it lasts but i am sure it's out there and i will find it.
In the meantime i hydrated 1/8 ounce of bread yeast and added it to the tank. It's a little cloudier than i meant for it to be, but i expect the yeast to stay suspended and i figure yeast is a better food source than nothing.
It's a lot more difficult to see now but it looks like there's more "shiny spheres" today than there were yeasterday.
get a couple of buckets of your ft water and put them in the sun, you'll have green water in no time.. for my minnow hatches, i just drained a liter out of the buckets and put it in the tank..then put a liter back from the ft into the bucket..i fed 2 55 gallon tanks daily with 2 buckets of green water.. when it started getting cold, i moved my buckets into the basement, added a few (i use kitty litter buckets), so i have 4, under a 4' flourescent light.. 2 of the buckets had the algae die off, but i restarted with what was still going.. after i got the greenwater started, i set up three 5 gallon tanks, seeded with ft water, added green water, they bloomed so i added a rotifer/copepod culture (and later gammarus) easy to suck some bugs and green water out with a turkey baster and feed to the fry... now all my glass tanks are full of marmokreb crayfish..
Yeast cells are too small for BG yolk fry to eat. Rotifers and cladoceran Crustracea eat yeast sized particles. BG fry first start eating larger algae cells and rotifers for about a week then switch to zooplankton - Cyclopoda and Cladocera.
djstauder, I think they are too little, i have been trying to think of a way to really show their size. Just know that in my picture you see gravel but you are looking at thousands of eggs/sack fry. I have to stare at it when several egg fry are moving AND at the right angle to see the an individual. They are about the thickness of a head hair and maybe 4-5 times longer than wide.
These larva havent even started swimming yet so i am not sure they are even at the stage in development that this picture shows.
keith, absolutely. I have started 12 mason jars with water from the 800 gallon tank. Just leaving them in the sun. The water already has a light green tint. I figure i can use two a day and do ~6 day cycle. I am just afraid it's going to be too late by the time the algae gets going good enough to make a difference.
Bill,
Thanks, I will stop murky-ing the water with yeast then. Tomorrow should be the third day so from what i have read they should finish absorbing their egg sack and start swimming? There's a fair amount of brown algae, will they peck it off the walls or should i brush it so the particles are suspended? When they get big enough to switch to zooplankton will i be able to switch them to grinded feed pellets? or should i be starting cultures now?
I'll keep doing small water changes with my outdoor systems 1500gallons and 800gallons to try and get by by until my algae blooms.
You've got me itching to try and spawn gills in a tank now next year. I think I can feed them with zooplankton I can feed green water to in another tank. Bill and I went to a seminar where a supplier out in California has the things needed to get them started.
I produce bluegill fry in a pond now but it's very labor intensive, lacks control, predator issues, and I end up with a lot less than originally hatched.
thanks for the feed back.. now only if i can keep them alive. I am trying to think of a way maybe to keep 100 alive cause in reality that is all i really need. I plant to grow them some to 2 years some to 3 year and some to 4 years. I expect at the two+ year mark i will be feading ~100 lbs of fish which is about the max i want to spend on feed lol.
What a BG swarm. This should really show folks just what we mean when we say prolific. You could have as many as 30,000 of them from this spawn. Nice work and great pics.
Yeast cells are too small for BG yolk fry to eat. Rotifers and cladoceran Crustracea eat yeast sized particles. BG fry first start eating larger algae cells and rotifers for about a week then switch to zooplankton - Cyclopoda and Cladocera.
Don't know if this makes sense, but if rotifers eat yeast cells, and the yolk fry eat rotifers, would it still be good to add yeast to feed the rotifers so they do well, and in turn help the yolk fry?
Much the same concept as I've read on here about grinding up feed to help the fry in your pond, which then feeds the bigger fish.
I think the algae is ingested as incidental items along with primary food such as large protozoa and rotifers. They can grow quickly so they do not stay eating each size item for very long. Some fry species have a difficult time inflating the air bladder if conditions are not correct thus mortality can be very high at this time period.
I removed the male this morning so now there is only fry in the aquarium. His job was done.
There's a few dead fry carcasses floating around but it looks in the numbers of a few dozen, not yet a mass dieoff.
I have a 600 gph pump in my outdoor 800 gallon tank with vinyl tubing running through my doggie door to the 100 gallon tank.
The elevation is that i can pump the tank aquarium full of pondlike water from the outdoor tank, then when i turn the pump off the water from the aquarium will siphon back to the outdoor tank.
inevitable i will be losing hundred maybe thousands of fry in the water changes but the main school is swimming against the current and i think this may be the only way to save a significant number.
My mason jars for algae cultures are still light green but noticeable darker than the first day. I may be able to start using them tomorrow.
It looks like all the fry are dead. definitely all of the ones in the fish tank. i was holding out hope that some had worked their way into one of my 300 gallon outdoor ibc tanks but after a week i expect them to be big enough to see them and i dont.
I would try it again. Just figure out what went wrong.
A former neighbor of mine use to raise supplemental Brook and RBT for a local fish farm that Cecil and esshup knows.
He said he didn't mind raising them in his pond's, but hated the hatchery phase. Too easy for him to screw something up, and he said he wasn't cut out for the job. He no longer raises fish.
Do you have any idea what went wrong? Do you think it had to do with food supply? Size, variety, ability to digest? It is a great experiment and sure is fun to watch. You had me thinking about how I can do it in my garage with Koi.
I guess one must fail a few times to succeed at all. Good luck!
Bcotton, in my mind you are successful. You gave it a good shot, and WE ALL have learned from it. Next time, whoever may try it, will benefit from this. Thanks for taking us on this experiment, and hope you have a greater success next time.
I would have a culture of green water available to feed your fry with. Make sure you have a lot of it too. After a couple weeks, you can begin feeding newly hatched brine shrimp.
What good is the green water (phytoplankton) if it doesn't have zooplankton?
JKB,
Hatching trout eggs and feeding swim up fry is not rocket science. We did it in college and I can assure you if some of my classmates that never graduated can do it anyone can.
Yeah Cecil, He just didn't like messing with the eggs and all. Picking out the dead ones and fussin over the whole scheme of things involved, without any real income for time spent. He wasn't paid jack squat for his effort. It was a financial thing, like being screwed!
I see. Many times it's not worth it being a wholesaler. Or raising animals is not everyone's thing. I'm seriously considering hatching triploid eggs this fall though if I can swing a chiller.
I just sold my extra fingerling perch for just under $400.00. Not in the fish supply business, but might as well sell what I can't use. More than made up for the feed, utilities, etc. Still held back a couple hundred for two high schools of the largest fish, as the buyer wanted a consistent size, and there were some that were significantly larger.
Just asked for a quote of 6 more cubic feet of MB3 media from WMT as I'm going with all moving bed filters in the schools. That leaves me with three unused RBC's though.
I may use the RBC's for my trout tanks when I set up the pole building or sell them.
Yes, i think it was lack of food. I did finally get an algae bloom started in a 300 gallon ibc but it was too late. I can also see the tiny zooplankton swimming around so i think it would have been sufficient if i had it a week earlier.
I drained the outdoor ibc today and there were maybe a dozen fry at the bottom. They are now about the size tilapia fry are when they are born. i wasnt able to catch them. but they may be in a rubbermade tote where i emptied the bottom off the ibc, i will check again once the water settles and i can see better.
Theres no doubt i will try again i just havent decided if it will be this year.
On a recommendation from another site i am going to try to use Spirulina Powder as a starter fry food. I dont think i will be able to generate large algae blooms with all these
Also next time i wont take the parents out of the tank. Since i only need 100ish, i will just siphon out water and capture a couple hundred to place in another tank. Less should be less food competition and easier to keep alive.
Yes, i think it was lack of food. I did finally get an algae bloom started in a 300 gallon ibc but it was too late. I can also see the tiny zooplankton swimming around so i think it would have been sufficient if i had it a week earlier.
Not enough food at the right time soon after the hatching of yoy is also a big killer in natural outside waters. It is often noted in studies.
Yes, i think it was lack of food. I did finally get an algae bloom started in a 300 gallon ibc but it was too late. I can also see the tiny zooplankton swimming around so i think it would have been sufficient if i had it a week earlier.
Not enough food at the right time soon after the hatching of yoy is also a big killer in natural outside waters. It is often noted in studies.
It also happens to those of us that produce yellow perch in ponds in early spring. It's tough to get an algae bloom going to feed the zooplankton in cold water, and if you get a cold snap things can go awry.
Additionally as Bill Cody will tell you, not only do you need the zooplankton there at the right time, you also need the right sizes for the mouth gape.
A zooplankton bloom progresses typically from smaller individuals to larger individuals. Ideally you want the bulk of the zooplankton to be smaller sizes (early stages) when the fry are 2-4 days off the yolk sac stage.
In 2014 i have a couple of goals to build off of last years bluegill spawn
1) keep the larva alive and grow them into feed trained juveniles 2) cross RESxBG or BGxRES
I have set up some Bg and RES in my 100 gallon aquarium, set the light to 16 hours on 8 off and added an aquarium heater to bring the water up to and maintain it at 78 degres. it would usually stay at about 70. I will probably post some pictures so i can get you guys to help verify i have male BG;s and female res.. or i may need to swap some fish around to make better breeding pairs.
meanwhile, in my 60 gallon aquarium where i am keeping only feed trained res, one of the res males built a nest and today i noticed some eggs/larva in his nest.
The big male RES is the one closest to the nest and kind of facing me, I think the other 5 or 6 fish are all female res but i am not sure. He seems to always face me like i am a threat.
The nest
a closeup of the eggs. they are moving and jumping around but not swimming.
as for keeping the larva alive this time i have a multi-pronged approach where i keep some in different tanks and try different approaches. 1) I am moving some aquaponics water into a 100 gallon stock tank outside. Hopefully it has time to algae bloom a little before the larva start swimming. 2) I acquired some spirulina powder. I plan to try to get them to eat this. 3) i bought a mixture of daphnia, fairyshrimp and clamshrimp eggs a few months ago. I am going to get that culture started today so i can add zooplanton.
moving pictures showing same stuff as above with my hick voice talking
add 150 gallons of aquaponics fish tank water into an ibc add some acidic rain to lower ph (fish tank water is about ph 8.2) wait 3 days. equals the beginnings of an algae bloom...
i ordered some rock phosphate to feed it, it will be here tomorrow. If i knew the bloom would be so far along today i wouldnt have bothered.
I nee dto move it to a different container, when i do, I will add some aeration. (We dont want the larva/fry to suffocate at night when the algaee is using 02 and making CO2.)
I expect there will be some naturally occurring zooplankton that already existed in small amounts in aquaponics system but i will seed it with some of the zooplankton mix i mentioned earlier once they start hatching.
once it goes green, it really goes green! one small suggestion, get a few clear "juice" type bottles, fill those up with some of the green water and put someplace out of the way but in the sun.. i used for emergency backup starter cultures..
Walleyes For Tomorrow runs portable fish hatcheries where they take over for mother nature. They strip the fish, incubate the eggs, and release the fry.
The system uses continually circulating water from the lake. The fry are kept inside the jars with a filter setup, but once released they flow out through a trough to a vat that also has a filter. They are carefully collected into coolers then taken out to the middle of the lake to be released.
In your case you could probably hold them in another tank if you could circulate "blooming" water.
Keith, I have had little success keeping algae alive in jars. If i can do this in 3 days i dont really see the point.
Hesperus, That's really interesting and there may be parts of this that i can learn and use but i am not sure i completely understand the details that make this method work.
1) what type,size of filter do they use that allows the right size of plankton in but doesnt let the fry out? 2) do they change the filter as the fry grow and need different sizes of food? 3) how big do they grow the fry out before release?
My plan is to a) move some of the algae water into a different ibc (250gallon tank). b) Then add more fish tank water to feed the algae bloom and bring it up to about half full (125 gallons). c) Once the fry are swimming i will siphon half of the fish tank into the ibc (~30 gallons). This will do both feed the algae bloom with more nitrates and move a fair number of fry to the ibc. d) Then every few days add about 10-15 gallons aquaponics water and maybe some rock phosphate to feed the bloom and keep it going. e) in a couple of weeks when the ibc is about 90% water capacity (~225-230gallons) i will have to start doing partial water changes to add new fish tank water. Maybe 10% every few days?
"e" is going to be the tricky part. I dont feel like i need constant circulation, just a little water swap here and there to keep the bloom fed. The fry will still be super tiny and i am not certain how i will keep all of the fry in the tank. Maybe i can get away with just adding a little rock phosphate until the fry are a little bigger?
I will have to keep them in this non circulating tank until they are big enough to not slip through my plumbing in the indoor hatchery system, so they probably need to be about an inch long. The openings in the "drains" at the bottom of my barrel tanks are miter saw cuts. They are about 2" long but only about 1/16" or 1/8" wide.
They release the fry shortly after hatching. This way they have the egg sack to feed on initially. The socks are such that the fry cannot pass.
If you want details I'm sure I can get them in fact I think they did an instructional video. They have several of these "walleye wagon" portable hatcheries and numerous chapter organizations so instruction was key.
i'd use (and have used in my minnow spawning/marmokreb breeding tanks) sponge filters... safe for fry, but you'll end up having to feed the tank your green water more often... maintenance is squeezing out the filter every couple/few weeks in some clean water - non chlorinated one thing i did notice with my rosy red fry was how there would always be several tiny little minnow hanging around the snails (that i got from duckweed i bought).. i know i read something somewhere about the snail waste, and now i'm thinking it was something i read about gamarus (scuds).. anyways, yeah.. sponge filter, just hook up to an air line you can regulate
I moved all of the red ears out of the tank except the male last week.
The red ear fry started swimming early friday morning 5/30. I tried to take pictures of them but i just cant get the camera to focus on them in the 60 gallon aquarium. The 100 gallon aquarium i had the bluegill fry in has the back painted black which helped a lot.
The one thing i though was weird is that it seemed like all the fry left the nest but then i saw more eggs over on the far side of the tank in a much smaller nest. I didnt notice the other nest before. I dont know if the male could have moved the eggs or if that was just another nest from a different male and female i didnt notice before.
an additional point of interest is that once the male found the other eggs, he guarded that nest too and would fan the other nest's eggs
I have siphoned off 70% of the aquarium water to the green water tank 3 times now. Each time i refilled the aquarium with fresh water from my outdoor aquaponics system. Each time it siphoned thousands of fry into the green water tank but the 60 gallon aquarium still has wall to wall red ear fry. I read on this forum where people say that red ears wont take over a pond like blue gill but if that is the case it's not because they produce less eggs. at least that is my humble small sample size of experience.
I have an aerator in the greenwater ibc and the algae bloom is still healthy. This is my best chance of having fry grow large enough to eat commercial feed.
I add a teaspoon of spirulina powder to the 60 gallon tank 2-3 times a day. I dont know if the fry can even eat the spirulina but if they cant the fish tank fry will be dead in the next couple of days. If i still see fry swimming around by thursday or friday i will assume they are eating and i will move the male out of the tank and continue to try to grow the aquarium fry.
The fry are about two weeks old now. I am pretty sure they were all dead by now last year. It's hard to count them because they are small and spread out and sometimes hiding but I see approx 100-200 still alive in the 60 gallon aquarium. There may be/should be a few hundred still alive in the greenwater tank too. They are 3-4x the size from the newborn. I would say they are about the size of newborn tilapia which are able to eat powdered commercial food, so i have started crushing up a couple of pellets to see if they will try to eat it. If they are i cant tell. I have to be careful because it's hard to vacuum with so many tiny fish and I have to worry about fouling the water more than it already is.
My daphnia, fairyshrimp and clamshrimp hatch attempt seems to have failed so i dont have bigger zooplankton to feed them. They are going to have to eat chunks of algae or powdered food to sustain themselves in the interim if they are going to survive.
These pictures are from last friday so they are about 4 days old.
The green water was still very green.. But now the green water is clearing up. I started a second ibc about a week after the first so i should still have green water for a few more days. From my understanding you cant keep green water going indefinitely. Oddly enough The algae produce an enzyme that will inhibit algae growth. I will end up discharging this water into my aquaponics system as evaporation and transpiration calls for top-ups. I *think* i will have to collect new rain water or treat some municipal water to start a new one.
I dont know if these are some kind of mayflies or mosquitoes or what, but they think they can land on the water but they find that the air stone causes no surface tension and instead of landing, they dive and they drown.
It's possible to see the fry now but still cant get a good picture. The spots i circled show dark spots which are mostly fry.
I am optimistic i will get 100 or so to live this time. I am still learning a lot and there's a few changes i will make to my process the next time i get a spawn.
Have you looked into the "instant algae" aquaculture feed for oysters. Not sure if it would work but maybe? I wonder if it might be able to get you at least through one stage.
I was not aware of the company and those product should absolutely work.
For the record the algae is not the product i need i need the rotifers and zooplankton. The algae is the food for the food.
However, I am trying to develop protocols for success in a more DIY type environment. Buying those products would add cost up fast and the fish i am reproducing arent expensive fish to buy.
Yeah one of the downsides I have found to keeping large numbers of fry in a tank when you feed them artificial feed is you have to feed them often, which easily dirties up the water due to it's fine size. And of course feeding fry up to 8 times a day produces a lot of waste that is also fine.
Fortunately my new circular cone bottom tank, in conjunction with a external stand pipe, and my clarifier tank seem to do a good job of cleaning the water. I also use a sock type foam filter on my pump to clean the water further. (I have to clean the foam twice a day.) You probably do that too?
The feed I've been using from Allied Aqua has really helped me keep the water swimming pool clean once I graduate to the floating pellets. Even though it's tilapia feed it's still 50 percent protein just above the crumble size and floats. This is not the case with Aquamax. I find once my bluegill take the sinking they have no problem coming up for the floating feed once they are large enough. I also keep the water at 80 F. which makes them along with the tilapia in the same tank feed like pirhana. I think mixing in tilapia with my bluegill makes them more aggressive feeders.
The cone bottom tank was free from one of the schools I supply a system and fish to is worth it's weight in gold for feed training fry.
are you catching your fry from your ponds or have you started doing something like this?
no, I have no filtration setup right now. To keep green water I am just siphoning off 10-20% water from the top of the aquarium to the green water tank then i pump green water back in.. I do this twice a day about 12 hours apart. This could result in fry being siphoned into the green water tank which for this run i am accepting as ok but not my long term plan.
I dont have a good strategy defined for tank cleaning. I have only vacuumed the tank once so far. I use an aquarium vacuum/siphon and i siphon to a 5 gallon bucket.. i fill it no more than 2gallons full and let it settle overnight then i pour the water back into the tank to try to save any fry that may have been siphoned up
In my next go around i plan to remove all of the bottom substrate and the ornaments so the sediment can be vacuumed easier.
I have an idea of siphoning through a ceramic air stone in the future. I have an extra and i think i can use it to help do water changes without fry escaping. That doesnt help me with tank cleanup though.
These guys are so small i dont think a sock or many filters that i could put on a pump that are fine enough to keep from removing fry. Some of the algae particles are bigger than the fish
Are you catching your fry from your ponds or have you started doing something like this?
You're light years ahead of me by hatching inside and using the greenwater approach. Since I have two 1/10th acre ponds at my disposal, I place my broodfish and let them hatch in the ponds. Then when they are about a inch to an inch and a half I seine them out and then bring them inside. The downside is it can be tricky to get a bloom going, or OTOH it can get out of hand and cause oxygen issues.
Originally Posted By: bcotton
no, I have no filtration setup right now. To keep green water I am just siphoning off 10-20% water from the top of the aquarium to the green water tank then i pump green water back in.. I do this twice a day about 12 hours apart. This could result in fry being siphoned into the green water tank which for this run i am accepting as ok but not my long term plan.
Understood. I can see how filtering the greenwater would not be feasible.
Originally Posted By: bcotton
I don't have a good strategy defined for tank cleaning. I have only vacuumed the tank once so far. I use an aquarium vacuum/siphon and i siphon to a 5 gallon bucket.. i fill it no more than 2gallons full and let it settle overnight then i pour the water back into the tank to try to save any fry that may have been siphoned up.
Originally Posted By: bcotton
In my next go around i plan to remove all of the bottom substrate and the ornaments so the sediment can be vacuumed easier.
Makes sense. Even the koi site I frequent frowns on rocks on the bottom of koi ponds for that reason.
Originally Posted By: bcotton
I have an idea of siphoning through a ceramic air stone in the future. I have an extra and i think i can use it to help do water changes without fry escaping. That doesn't help me with tank cleanup though.
What about some kind of foam filter that you have several clean ones available and you just keep changing them out? Or would the fry be small enough to get inside the foam?
Originally Posted By: bcotton
These guys are so small i dont think a sock or many filters that i could put on a pump that are fine enough to keep from removing fry. Some of the algae particles are bigger than the fish.
Wow! That's small! Glad I don't have to deal with that!
The red ear fry are about three weeks old. Still have between 100-200 alive. They are impossible to truly count because there are alot of them, they are still very difficult to see. The algae blooms have died off. I still do partial water changes to keep the water clean and fresh, but I feel pretty confident that they are eating and growing on crushed/powdered aquamax 400 fish food.
They dont eat at the surface or off the ground so it looks like they only eat as he particles fall.
Shot a 2 min video. The fry are still mostly translucent but they are big enough for the video to pick them up. There's also about two dozen tilapia fry in the aquarium. I saw them swimming at the top of my aquaponics tank yesterday and rescued a few.
-edit- i tried watching the video through the forum youtube window and it wasnt good enough. You will probably need to click the fullscreen button to get a good view
i have been vacuuming the tank and putting the waste water in the outside "algae" tanks.
Between the nutrients from the waste water and/or a little acidic rain water the algae bloom has started up again. So i have to consider that it wasnt "spent" just starved for nutrients.
This seems like a good thing because i have been reading the SRAC articles and it looks like these fish can filter feed on these microscopic zooplankton until they are 1.5-2inches long. I assumed they moved up in zooplankton size more quickly but maybe not.
So i am still feeding powder but also water changes with the alge tank is adding algae and zooplankton. I'll take more pictures when they get closer to .5-1" in length which is still probably a couple of weeks away.
at one point this summer i added 200-300 tilapia fry to the aquarium for holding. They were about the same size as the red ear so i didnt think they would eat each other but it turned out to be tragic for the red ear as far as food competition. I lost most of the red ear but a few survived. I have about 20 that are eating crushed up commercial feed and this will probably be my last report in 2014. Since they are eating crushed up commercial feed i consider it trivial that i will get them to eat complete pellets form the surface when they are older. I will move these guys outside into my aquaponics system as soon as they are big enough to 1) eat pellets and 2) not get eaten by the other res, bluegill and feed trained hybrid crappie.
I look forward to next year to hopefully trying to reproduce the feed trained black crappie i have in my garage.
I liked using the 55 gallon aquarium so i could monitor growth and progress easily but going forward i wont be using aquariums for fry growout. I will be putting them straight into a large outdoor algae bloom in a minimu of IBC tank and maybe bigger fish tanks.
In the video i kept saying algae and implying the fry were eating algae but the algae bloom is really food for the zooplankton which the fry eat. But visibly it's just algae bloom water when i use it.
I dont think i ramble too much in the video, all good information (imho)
