Carp or Catfish?

[akashh]

Hello everyone - I'm a big fan of aquaponics and have been following this and other websites for some time now. I live in south India and have somewhat successfully built an aquaponic system. However, sourcing fish is a problem here. We finally found a fish farm about 90 km away and drove there to buy our first batch of carp (the 5 indian varieties) which we have been growing over the last 6 months. Half of them jumped out over the first two days :-(
Anyway, we are now in the process of setting up a semi-large scale setup (12000 liter tank, 54 growbeds of 2x2 feet) and we are trying to decide what type of fish to raise.
The choices are:
Carp - 5 varieties native to India
African Catfish (very carnivorous but eats anything)
Maybe freshwater prawns?

What I'd like to know (although catfish is as was mentioned in several threads banned) what it really tastes like and whether people think it could be grown in aquaponics well. Our fish grew to about 15-20 cms over 6 months which is not very great, but that could be due to different factors. We plan to put about 1000 fish in the 12000 liter tank (5 m x 2.4 m).
And any suggestions on the african catfish?

If there is interest I could start a thread about our proposed system and would be happy to interact with you all and take suggestions.

Thanks
akash

[Murray]

Hi Akash,
Welcome.
It would be very interesting to see some photos of your pilot system.
Carp are banned in Australia but are a wonderful food fish depending on variety. They are grown and consumed all over the world, and they are grown out in tanks very well.

I guess you can only seek some local advice on which variety to grow, or experiment until you discover for yourself.

[dufflight]

You will have to look at your temps over the year and what market you are aiming at. The local fish farm here sends fingerlings all over the world so depending on what you are allowed to import there may be a market for fish not native to india.

[akashh]

Thanks for your feedback. I guess it will have to be carp. There is a type of tilapia here but it does not grow very well because the water temperature is too high apparently and so it reproduces too often. It does not get to much more than about 5 cms long.
I'll start a new thread under systems or something with some pics of what I'm planning on doing.

[dufflight]

If you sink your FT in the ground and cover them will this reduce the water temp enough to get them to grow bigger?

[akashh]

Not sure. This is what I heard from people, it's nothing I have verified myself. I guess there are various types of tilapia, the one that we have here is colorless and very nodescript. I have seen some around that do grow to larger sizes (1 foot or so) too. They also say that if you don't provide them with anything to attach their eggs to they will be unable to reproduce and thus grow larger. But again, no experience in this to back it up.

The carp varieties are native to India and thus probably a good bet to raise - there are 3 varieties: Rohu, mirgal, cata. The nice thing about them is that each type occupies different strata of the tank (bottom feeders, top feeders and something in the middle) - and they coexist happily. So I guess that's the way to go for me, I was just worried about taste :)