I very often receive the question “What is the best fish for aquaponics?”. It’s a very good question but as you can imagine it depends on a number of factors. Aside from the environmental conditions such as: “fish tank size”, “temperature”, “…” I very often ask “What is your goal?”. Have you considered ornamental aquaponics fish?
What are you trying to achieve?
It really depends. Are you trying to grow as many fish as possible in order to feed your family? Or are you growing ornamental fish to see them and enjoy the nice colors. Today I will talk of a fish offering an excellent flesh quality, an excellent growth and very nice colors. This fish is the golden trout!
golden trout, an ornamental aquaponics fish?
Golden trouts are actually the same species as the rainbow trouts Oncorhynchus mykiss. But a special selection allowed to obtain a yellow coloration.
The growth of this fish is amazing, it can reach plate size in 9 months!
The food conversion ratio is also amazing! Allowing to produce up to 1kg of fish with only 900g of dry fish food pellet. Note that the pellet have less than 14% moisture while a fish has over 75% moisture.
Golden trouts are also domesticated species. They are confident and will come to the surface and close to you when you feed them.
On a dark background the yellow will highly contrast and they will look amazing!
The downside is that the predator birds can spot the golden trouts very easily. Don’t stock a natural dam with this type of fish or they will quickly disappear.
Make sure your fish tank is large enough…
Golden trouts are also territorial fish. They can’t be stocked in low volumes. Minimum of 500 – 1000 Litres is required.
Finally, they are cold water fish. If the temperature reach 22C and above, they will struggle. In the South of Australia we are able to keep them for 9 months. We harvest them before the warm temperatures.
You will probably be interested to discover Jonathan’s six steps to build and manage an Aquaponics system. Click here to access for free! Thanks and good reading 🙂
