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Southern Cal looking for fish

Riverside/San Diego County looking for legal tilapia, catfish, trout ,crappie,perch or ?? for small commercial size system for our own family use and have no interest in selling fish. They will be in greenhouse....heating and cooling not a issue since we have excess power from large solar system. Wouldn't mind having mixed species if they don't eat each other or have them in separate tanks. The fish tanks are 300 gals and we have two of them. We are growing worms and duckweed and possibly crickets if we have more carnivorous species. I would like the fish to be certifiable if that is an option.....If DFG wants to look into what we are doing , I want to be able to show them where the fish are from. I don't mind paying for consultation on species other than tilapia if there is someone out there in our area that has advice/knowledge/experience on how to get the most out of our two tanks. We have 400 sq feet of grow space with gravel beds. I can pick up if you are south of LA.

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Permalink Reply by Jeffrey Ihara on November 30, 2014 at 10:00pm

I have had pretty good success with bullhead catfish. They are hard to kill, tolerant of both cold and low O2, and easy to collect from local ponds and lakes. I caught mine out of a small park lake in Oceanside--some worms and a barbless hook and I had a bucketful in less than half an hour. For free. I started with 17 5" bullies in a 275 gallon IBC tote in June 2013. They were harvestable size in 2014 (and delicious)--but as they reached maturity they also became aggressive and started to chew on the weakest fish. They are down to six fish now, but my system is small, and they would have needed thinning anyway. I'll probably start over with little cats next spring.

I would not recommend using the supplier out in Alpine. I am absolutely sure that channel cats I bought from them infected my system with ich.

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Permalink Reply by Laurie Roberts on December 1, 2014 at 8:43am

thanks jeffrey......I like that idea

Jeffrey Ihara said:

I have had pretty good success with bullhead catfish. They are hard to kill, tolerant of both cold and low O2, and easy to collect from local ponds and lakes. I caught mine out of a small park lake in Oceanside--some worms and a barbless hook and I had a bucketful in less than half an hour. For free. I started with 17 5" bullies in a 275 gallon IBC tote in June 2013. They were harvestable size in 2014 (and delicious)--but as they reached maturity they also became aggressive and started to chew on the weakest fish. They are down to six fish now, but my system is small, and they would have needed thinning anyway. I'll probably start over with little cats next spring.

I would not recommend using the supplier out in Alpine. I am absolutely sure that channel cats I bought from them infected my system with ich.

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Permalink Reply by MikeH on December 5, 2014 at 5:49pm

Just an idea for you, but I added some crawdads to my sumps to have a little diversity for harvesting time along with fish. My sumps are only 26" tall. and have air stones in them too. they seem to be happy as only one have climbed out due to being alone in there.

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Permalink Reply by Jeffrey Ihara on December 5, 2014 at 9:23pm

Crawdads in the sump also help keep things clean in there, and like the bullheads they are easy to collect and free. Plus there's the entertainment of watching them fight over little specks of food--when there's plenty for every one to have its own share.

Mike said:

Just an idea for you, but I added some crawdads to my sumps to have a little diversity for harvesting time along with fish. My sumps are only 26" tall. and have air stones in them too. they seem to be happy as only one have climbed out due to being alone in there.