any documentation on raising bluegill in tanks?

[Pat Chesney]

I have been looking for documentation on raising bluegill in my aquaponics system. I have a goal of sustainability and using tilapia in Texas is not very sustainable due to needing to heat the water to keep them alive during the winter months. Bluegill winter over in our climate in ponds just fine. There is a lot of information about raising tilapia but little on the bluegill.

[Chi Ma]

Found some pretty cool info on PondBoss.

http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=9...

[Pat Chesney]

Thanks.

[Larry Reinhardt]

Late summer I went to a nearby lake and caught 4 bream about 5 inches long. When I got my 3,000 gal fish tank in operation - early August I put these 4 into it with 200 catfish and a 100 tilapia which were also around 4 inches. Today I drained the tank to check on the tilapia after that cold snap and found a few dozen 2 to 3 inch bream swimming around. So obviously the bream spawned and protected the fry long enough that some survived the hungry catfish. Doesn't seem to me that they require to much husbandry to raise these guys.

[TCLynx]

I've heard that Bluegill can actually be really aggressive in tank culture and I know from experience that well fed catfish can be really lazy and won't go to much effort to eat tilapia fry so stands to reason that some bream could survive.

[Glenn Dennis]

Look at this web site http://www.ncrac.org/Topics/Cultureguide2002.htm

Its a culture guide on BG  North Central regional Aquaculture Center at MSU

[Keith Rowan]

some good bluegill info here:

http://extension.missouri.edu/p/G9473

and sunfish identification here:

http://www.hotspotoutdoors.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/2574177/1

[George]

Yes - today a floater with tail eaten off - first time this has happened.

TCLynx said:

I've heard that Bluegill can actually be really aggressive in tank culture

[TCLynx]

So far my year long experience with bluegill shows they do just fine in aquaponics systems.  With the early batch I had in a rather small (100 gallon) stock tank for quarantine on my porch, I was having regular deaths (I finally decided that set up was sick and have since removed it) but of the ones I've moved into bigger tanks, they have done very well with I think only two deaths out of 150 fish over the year and one of those deaths was a jumper right after moving the fish to the new farm.

So far the bluegill haven't been aggressive as far as I could tell unless they were the cause of the small goldfish dieing (but they were in a tank with catfish as well and the catfish were probably big enough to attempt eating the smallest goldfish which I'm gonna guess was the cause of the stress to them.)  The bluegill definitely didn't seem to bother the catfish and as far as I can tell the catfish were not bothering the bluegill.  The large goldfish and Koi in the tank are still doing fine.

[George]

I don't doubt it.  Maybe he insulted the others and they killed him.

TCLynx said:

So far my year long experience with bluegill shows they do just fine in aquaponics systems.