hi guys this is Jonathan from Melbourne aquaponics! In this video I would like to
talk about a very famous fish in Australia which is the silverperch.
Silverperch are very famous in Australia because they are native fish
they are very well adapted to the environment. I don't think you can find
this kind of fish in any other country but if it's the case please leave us a
comment and let us know about it. Silver perch is a very nice fish to have in
Aquaponics and very well adapted for beginners because it's a very Hardy fish
so it can handle a lot of mistakes
it's very well adapted to to the Austrian temperature it can handle very
high temperature
silver perch can also handle a very low concentration of oxygen for a little
while so if you have a problem in you fish tank most of the times the silver
perch are going to survive. You may lose the other fish but the silver perch are
very Hardy and they can handle a very low oxygen concentration.
It's also a social fish so it can... it can be mixed with other fish or other sizes
of silver perch and most of the time it doesn't cause any trouble.
Obviously you need to feed your fish properly right, if you don't feed them
enough they become very territorial and they want to fight for
the food so as long as you feed them correctly you don't have too many
troubles and you can mix different size. it's also a fish that resists to quite
high nitrite and ammonia concentration into the water so if you start
aquaponics it's probably a good fish to start with because it's going to be able
to resist to to a little pike of pollution into your water.
another very interesting point of silver brush is that when they get bigger they
accept vegetables or green food so if you grow lettuce
or those kind of things you can feed them directly with it and you can also
feed them with duckweed so here for example I'm growing some duck weed into
this tank here, I can feed my silver perch with it obviously it's not the
only food I gonna give to my silver perch, that is just a complement but it
gives them a lot of vitamins, a lot of good things because it's fresh. When they
are small, when they are fingerlings they don't eat any veggies but it's
only when they get a bit bigger when they come around five hundred to one kilo
they start to eat a little bit of green and the bigger they are and the more
they accept this kind of food
so for the one of you would like to have big fish in aquaponics, silver perch is
actually a fish that can grow big. They can grow up to eight kilo it's not extreme
but I mean still a reasonable size but it takes a lot of time
on the negative point I would say that silver perch are a slow-growing fish so
they take two and a half to three years to reach the plate size for the biggest and
obviously as a you know you always got some discrepancy into the fish tank and
the smallest of you batch are gonna maybe take four to four and a half years
before being able to reach the plate size so it's really one of the negative
point of silver perch is that they take quite a long time to grow.
from my point-of-view silver perch are not the best eating fish, they are OK to eat,
the flesh is white and it's nice it's clean, but it doesn't have a lot of flavor
so you will have to add some herbs and a lot of vegetables around to make a
nice sauce to make it really enjoyable and tasty but actually that's quite a
good point because some people don't really like the fish test so this fish
is perfect for this kind of person.
In winter the temperature drops to eight degrees so in the natural
environment the silver perch are going to go on the bottom of the dam. They
are not going to move, they're going to live on their reserves so the fish must
not be stressed during winter right because they don't eat during winter. The
metabolism is only going to try to survive but there is not enough energy
to fight against any disease or any stress that's why into the natural
environment the fish goes into the depth in the mud and doesn't move so much. In
aquaponics, as the tanks are very small so we must make sure that we don't
stress the fish. In the winter we don't want them to to use their reserves and then
to fall sick because basically if you stress your fish during winter what
is going to happen is that all the barriers they have to fight against the
disease, so you know the nice mucus and all this energy that they
stock, they're going to use it because they're going to stress and then after
a while, they are going to be very very weak and as soon as a disease comes the fish
is going to get it so that's only the negative point of silverperch is that
during winter we must make sure that we don't stress them. So stress is: stressing
them by fishing the fish, you know doing anything into the fish tank
or banging on the tank you know if you got kids around make sure they don't
Bang on the fish tank during during winter because it can be a
disaster so obviously there are few techniques to make sure the fish are
going through winter without any trouble so first put some salt into your water.
3 grams per liters is going to decrease the quantity of fungus that are going
to be able to attack the fish. it's also going to minimize the osmosis so it's
going to help the fish to feel better into the water. You can also if you've
got the possibility, if you have a very small fish tank, you can also put a
little heater into the water to just increase the water by 2 or 3 degrees and
in this case once you are above 10 degrees the fish are much better. 12
degrees it's even a better temperature for the silver perch.
But when you are below 8 degrees or 8 degrees it's quite low and you
must really make sure you don't stress the fish or make sure they got a
place to hide during winter and leave them alone.
Another interesting fact about silverperch is that into the water you always
got a few dominant fish but they do not really fight very much but still, there
you got some dominant fish and they groin, so they make this specific noise
into the water with their throat and that's how they signal to the other fish that
they are into their territory and they must stay away.
so I hope you enjoyed this video I hope you understand that silver perch is
really the beginner's of fish in Australia and it's going to allow a lot
of beginners to start in aquaponics and to make some little mistakes without
losing the fish. So I really advise and recommend this fish for all
beginners and for all people who want to start aquaponics in Australia. Thank you,
see you in the next video. bye bye!