Comment

Comment by Larry Reinhardt on January 25, 2012 at 5:31am

When I had my Koi farm I kept channel cats and I agree they are a fine choice. Last spring my son netted me a couple hundred brown bullheads from a near by lake. Now after nearly a year I'm seeing they are an easy keeper requiring less food and space than the channel cats but of course their size isn't as great either. At less than a year old a good number of them are 10" to 11" good eating as fingerlings but I will wait and start harvesting them at 3 lb size. Since I like to raise fish I may take a trio out of my big tank and spawn them in a 225 gallon pool I have.

Comment by Larry Reinhardt on January 25, 2012 at 5:13am

Potassium permanganate will take care of Columnaris just add enough to turn the water a light purple - to dark and the fish are dead. Since its effectiveness is based upon the amount of organics in the system trying to treat on a measured basis is difficult thats why I do it by water color. It goes inert in a few hours and doesn't harm the plants that I have and is used in survival kits to purify drinking water. I use this along with salt at one pound per 100 gallons of water. If you catch Columnaris  early it can be completely gone in a day if it has started eating the flesh it can take a couple weeks to heal. In serious outbreaks I also add Nitrofurazone as an antibiotic. Aquatic Eco Systems sells potassium permanganate in 5 lb jug which is enough for several years unless you are treating large volumes of water.

Comment by TCLynx on January 15, 2012 at 6:12pm

3 ppt of salt should still be safe for channel catfish or bluegill and is safe for all but the more salt sensitive plants (strawberries won't like it.)  Over time even the sodium will get used by plants as long as you are not continually adding salt and the salt levels will come back down.

Comment by TCLynx on January 15, 2012 at 5:05pm

Well I don't know how food safe the melafix is but it's your food so I will let you make your own decisions.

I've never "started from scratch" in my big system even when I've removed a bunch of sick fish, the others usually recovered with minimizing the stress, and keeping the water quality high.  Be careful not to over feed and the temperature range between 65-79 F seems to be kinda a dangerous area since people tend to over feed in this range and apparently the bacteria is also especially active in this temp range.

Comment by TCLynx on January 15, 2012 at 3:29pm

Randall, I'm not sure if salt will kill off the bacteria responsible for Columnaris disease.  I believe it is one of those diseases that tends to be present almost everywhere and the fish only get sick when the water quality deteriorates or they are injured and open to the disease getting at them.

I've had outbreaks though they were mild ones and what I usually did was stop feeding and make sure the water quality as as good as possible, perhaps salt a little bit and keep the fish from stressing.  (I have found that if I go netting around in the tank more than once a week, I am likely to have fish get sick and die.)

Now I don't know if Melafix is safe for a food system.  In general we recommend avoiding most all aquarium medications since they are not approved for food fish and I'm sure they have never been tested for food plants.

Comment by TCLynx on October 27, 2011 at 5:25pm

Interesting.  I had a fair bit of duckweed in one of my systems for a while but most of it has vanished from that system but it was not in the tank with my catfish or any other fish so I can't blame the fish for eating it.

Comment by Barbara Mumpower on October 27, 2011 at 4:22pm

I have some catfish that will eat almost anything that floats, that includes duckweed.  I had it in the pool and would take some out everyday to feed my chickens.  The pool was covered with duckweed, I took a bucket full out everyday.  Then one day there was less duckweed, I put some in a wading pool just in case.  Glad I did, within three days they had eaten it all, even the tiny stuff.

Comment by TCLynx on October 16, 2011 at 6:08pm

Do some searching around your area for fish farms that supply fish for farm ponds.  Most have a minimum order but in general for the same price you could simply ask them to put less fish in the bag.  (The place I get fish from has a minimum order of like $30 which would be 100 of the smaller fish or 50 larger ones but I expect if you asked to pay $30 for 20 fish they would probably still sell them to you.)

 

Or there may be some fish farms that will deliver or ship.  You might try Dunns

Dunns Fish Farm

 

 

Comment by rj woodard on October 16, 2011 at 5:19pm

Does anyone know where I can pick up or order just a few channel cat fingerlings? I am located in central Kansas.  I only have room for 15-20 (given growth room.)  Thanks!

Comment by TCLynx on June 27, 2011 at 8:41am

No, I don't think Channel Catfish will really eat much in the way of duckweed.  They prefer small crustations, bugs, and other live/dead feeds.

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