Trout in a 250gal system

ChelseaB

Hi! I'm not finding much information about trout farming specific to small-scale aquaponics. Is there anything special about trout compared to tilapia, apart from the cooler temperatures? I'm finally ready to build my 250-gallon system and I live in Northern California where it remains pretty temperate year round, even a bit chilly, and I'd like to avoid heaters.

I would also love tips about feeding -- I gather from research done at UC Sacramento that redworms can be a complete diet if there's enough of them, but I have not reached out in an email yet to a professor to confirm. I thought I'd see what others knew here first.

Thank you!

LowCarbTNPer

Trout are a very common fish in areas where the temps can support them. Not sure about the all redworm diet, I have no info on that; typically we use a commercial aquaculture fish food high in protein.

There are tons of Aussies on this forum and they'll grow trout in their cold season and other fish in the hot season.

Gunagulla

I think it would be better to feed your trout formulated pellets with redworms and/or other insects as part of their diet, rather than just redworms alone. My trout certainly get some worms, slaters (I breed them as trout food), slugs, snails, flies etc, but pellets are the main part of their diet. I'm not convinced that 1 species of worm could provide a balanced long term diet- it certainly isn't what they have in the wild.

It is possible to keep trout over summer even in a hot climate if you have a suitable water chiller, but in a cooler climate it should be easy to keep them over summer. I've harvested trout over 2kg (4.5lb) after 18 months in my current batch (recent pics in my big system thread), keeping them over summer is necessary if you want really big fish.

dlf_perth

>> I'm not finding much information about trout farming specific to small-scale aquaponics

did you try the search: 'trout' and 'IBC' returns 1847 posts....

>> There are tons of Aussies on this forum and they'll grow trout in their cold season and other fish in the hot season.

+1 great resource, just need to be a bit more broad minded in what you read and when ready ask questions.

not much difference between Perth and San Diego/LA, Sydney and San Francisco,
Victoria to some of the cooler areas....
all have members here seasonally growing trout in small AP systems.

rininger85

I ran 24 trout in a 330 gal IBC tank pretty well my first winter. I am planning on doing it again this winter. The biggest thing is trout like more dissolved O2 so I would keep an air bubbler in to keep O2 at saturation levels, and temperatures... different species of trout have different temperature ranges but the rainbows I grew had a threshold of about 70F being the high mark.

If you were planning to keep trout in the summer even in northern CAL I would want to keep them in the shade in a well ventilated area. weather.com says average low 54 average high 75 for Berkeley in the summer... so you might be able to keep them as long as the system is shaded and good ventilation... probably add fans, evaporative cooling etc.

Worst case bury your plumbing / fish tanks underground should provide a lot of cooling in the summer time to help keep temps down a bit.

ChelseaB

Thanks all!

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