Growing common perch fish

Perch from the Regsa genus is considered a trash fish in Russia, but in developed countries (USA, Canada, Australia) perch is bred, and perch can be grown in a recirculation system. In the USA and other countries, its fillet is valued several times higher than carp fillet. Therefore, if it is possible to export perch fillets, perch breeding can be a very profitable business. Let's look at how you can grow perch in a pond and many other questions.

Content

• What kind of perches are bred in the pond?
• Where are the perch found?
• What does a common perch look like?
• What does perch eat?
• How does perch grow?
• Benefits of Growing Perch
• How does perch spawn?
• Perch development
• How to breed perch in a pond
• Growing perch in pools and trays
• What to feed perches in the pond
• Growing perch in a pond in polyculture
• Growing perch in a lake as a monoculture
• Population density of perch in the pond

 

What kind of perches are bred in the pond?

In the USA, yellow or American perch is bred - Regsa flavescens, in our country there is a similar species of perch - Regsa fluviatilis, and in Lake Balkhash and in some other reservoirs of Central Asia there is an endemic - the Balkhash perch Regsa schrencki, listed in the International Red Book.
According to many ichthyologists, the American perch is a subspecies of the common perch. Their main distinguishing feature is the number of scales in the lateral line: the American has 74-88, and the common one has 58-68.

From the point of view of fish farming, in terms of nutritional value and growth rate, ordinary perch, or river perch, is not inferior to American perch. At the same time, river perch grows to large sizes, reaching 45 cm in length (American - 30 cm); ripens in the 3rd-4th year, but in bulk ripens later, in the 4th-6th year.

Where is river perch found?

River perch or common perch is a freshwater fish that can be found everywhere. The common perch lives throughout Europe and most of Northern Asia, not found only in the Far East. Perch is especially common in lakes; perch can live in mountain reservoirs rising to heights of up to 1000 m above sea level. Perch does not like to live in rivers where there is a very fast current. Perch is also found in slightly saline coastal areas of the sea.

An important factor for fish farmers is the ability of perch to live in forest and peat lakes, since perch tolerates high acidity of water well. This makes it possible to grow perch in many lakes in Belarus, Ukraine, the Baltic states, Poland, and Russia.

What does a common perch look like?

What does a common perch look like? River perch or otherwise ordinary perch is easily recognized by 5-9 transverse dark stripes on its sides. The back of the perch is dark green, the sides are greenish-yellow, and the belly is yellowish. However, the color of the perch depends on the reservoir; if the soil at the bottom is light, then the perch has a lighter color; in dark reservoirs, the perch itself is darker.

The first dorsal fin of the perch is grayish with a black spot at its rear; the second dorsal fin is greenish in color. The pectoral fins of the perch are yellowish. The ventral, anal and caudal fins are red.

 

What does perch eat?

What do perch eat and what to feed perch in the pond? If there is little food in the reservoir, then the perch grows slowly. Individuals were caught at the age of 10 years, 15 cm long and weighing 300 grams.

But what does perch eat?

What kind of food for perch in the pond? Perch is a predator that feeds all year round. In different bodies of water, the nutrition of perch has its own characteristics, which depend on the availability of food supply and on the growth of the fish. The feeding spectrum of perch changes throughout the life of the perch. Fingerlings of perch feed on zooplankton - bosmina, cyclops, diaptomus and small aerial insects. Subsequently, benthos begins to play an important role in the nutrition of perch - with a predominance of chironomids and oligochaetes. At the same age, the perch begins to eat eggs and juveniles of different types of fish (vendice, smelt, juvenile perch, ruffe, roach, bleak, less often whitefish, gobies, small burbot, stickleback and many others), becoming a predator.

If the reservoir has a very poor ichthyofauna, then the perch feeds exclusively on fish, readily eating its young. If there are no small fish in the perch’s habitat that it can catch, it switches to consuming benthos. It is believed that perch is not an active predator and, if there is a sufficient amount of zooplankton and benthic organisms in the reservoir, will not have a significant impact on the survival of introduced objects.

We'll look at what to feed perch in the pond below.

How does perch grow?

How does perch grow, how big can perch grow? In nature, the length of an ordinary perch can reach up to 50 cm and weight up to 1.5 kg. A perch measuring 45 cm and weighing 2 kg, which was 23 years old, was caught in the Karelian lakes. Sometimes fishermen show specimens of perch that reach a weight of 4–4.8 kg. But these perches are extremely old. But these are perches in nature, and how quickly does perch grow in a pond? The marketable weight is 100-120 g, in countries where perch is considered a dietary fish, it reaches 3rd year of life.

To understand how quickly perch grows in a pond, you can look at the following table

Table - Growth rate of common perch

Growth rate	Age, years
	1+	2+	3+	4+	5+
Length, cm	6-9	9-14	11-18	18-22	20-28
Weight, g	3-10	30-50	80-120	140-180	160-200

Thus, the fish farmer should expect that he will receive marketable products when growing perch in a pond only in the third year of work, and very large specimens of perch will most likely only be in his hopes. In pools with intensive feeding, the growth rate of perch is higher and the perch will reach a marketable weight of 126 grams at 20-21 months. Why is perch of interest to fish farmers?
Benefits of Growing Perch

There are both pros and cons for the fish farmer when growing perch.

The advantages of breeding perch include the following:

• High-quality perch meat is valued on the market; in some European countries, perch fillet is more expensive than trout and salmon.
• Perch is a very unpretentious fish that can be grown in peat and forest lakes, where pike perch and many other fish cannot survive, perch lives quite confidently.
• In small reservoirs and reservoirs of the temperate zone, it is one of the most common species of commercial value.
• Perch can act as a bioreclamation agent by eating small and trash fish in reservoirs where pike or pike perch cannot be used.
• Perch can be grown in pasture aquaculture, both in monoculture and polyculture, in lakes, intensively grown in ponds, in RAS and pools.
• It is possible to grow common perch in all six fish-breeding zones; in Kazakhstan it is also possible to grow Balkhash perch.

 

Growing perch also has a number of disadvantages:

• The perch itself may turn out to be a trash fish, so if they plan to stock the lake with juvenile eels, then it is advisable to catch the perch. The perch is its competitor in nutrition, however, for the adult eel, the perch itself is food. The situation is similar in reservoirs, where there are quite a lot of perch and it is often a commercial species, however, the perch grows slowly, consumes a lot of food, taking it away from valuable fish species, and is itself a predator that eats eggs and juveniles of valuable fish species.
• When growing perch in ponds, it grows quite slowly, especially in comparison with other predatory fish.
• There is a risk of perch becoming infected with helminths by the time it reaches marketable weight, which neutralizes its value.

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How does perch spawn?

 

When does perch spawn? Perch spawns earlier or simultaneously with pike when the water warms up to 5-10°C, as a rule, perch spawning takes place in March-April, the peak spawning temperature for perch is at 10-20°C in May.

Perch development

The embryonic development of perch lasts 13-14 days, the size of the hatching larvae is 1.8-2 mm. The yolk sac completely dissolves on the 10th day at a temperature of 15°C. The fertility of perch is not very high, from 12 to 300 thousand eggs; on average, the working fertility of perch is 30 thousand eggs. Not very high fertility is compensated by its numbers in the reservoir.

How to breed perch in a pond

Obtaining perch offspring is not difficult. Breeders with a length of more than 20 cm caught in the fall are placed at a planting density of 100-300 pcs. on 0.1 hectares in a wintering pond, where they overwinter well along with carp. If aeration is provided in winter huts, planting density can be increased. For better ripening through the ice holes where the aerator is installed, perch producers must be fed with earthworms. If they have not been prepared in advance or are not cultivated on the farm, then in the fall 1-2 thousand small trash fish (buck, gudgeon, etc.) are released into the pond. In spring, harvesting spawners on rivers and lakes is difficult, since they can begin spawning when the shore is still covered with ice.
Spawning takes place in a regular carp spawning tank. For this you need a substrate - reed roots, spruce branches of coniferous trees, willow branches, etc. The caviar is bottom, sticky. 3-6 females and 3-4 males are planted in a spawning area of 0.01 hectares. The yield from caviar is 80%. The larvae switch to mixed feeding after 7 days, and to active feeding after 14-15 days.

Growing perch in pools and trays

Caught larvae can be reared using intensive technology in pools or trays at a temperature of 20-30°C, using a trout farming scheme.

What to feed perches in the pond

What to feed perch at home?

Food for perch can include minced fish from low-value fish, worms and crustaceans, and insect larvae. There are few materials on feeding common perch; there is a described experience of feeding Balkhash perch. It was indicated that perch are good at eating food that moves, such as fish fry, but ignored food that simply lay on the bottom (worms, etc.). Large perches could be accustomed to artificial food balls made from fishmeal and cereal flour, but the perches preferred food balls that sank or rolled along the bottom. The perch just had little interest in the balls of food lying on the bottom.

When feeding Balkhash perch larvae, it is advisable give it ciliates and cladoceran nauplii, but it is necessary to start feeding the perch on time, otherwise there will be a large loss of perch larvae. Only later can you switch to feeding Artemia salina nauplii.

In fish farming, granulated feed used for trout, sturgeon or channel catfish is used to feed perch in ponds. In some cases, tilapia feed is used; perch actively consumes them, but at the same time lags behind in growth. Recently, the development of specialized food for perch has begun.

 

Growing perch in a pond in polyculture

The extensive method of growing perch is simpler, it does not require costs: juvenile perch are grown in a polyculture with two-year-old carp. Breeders and replacements of perch are kept in breeding and replacement ponds along with carp and silver carp. The planting density of perch with two-year-old carp without bighead carp is 10-20 thousand pieces/ha, with bighead carp, a competitor in feeding on zooplankton, is 3-5 thousand pieces/ha. Fingerlings weighing 6 g overwinter in carp wintering ponds, where feeding is carried out, or, if they are raised in a monoculture, in the same ponds.

Other predators, such as catfish, bester and pike, cannot be grown in a polyculture with perch.

In the absence of food for carp, polyculture is recommended in the southern regions: silver carp + grass carp + pike perch + perch.

Growing perch in a lake as a monoculture

Where can you grow perch? To grow perch in monoculture, you can use an overgrown lake or ravine pond, where fish productivity for carp will be low. In the 2nd year, the average weight of perch will be about 40 g. It, like fingerlings, can be raised with two-year-old carp and silver carp.

What to feed perch in a pond? To feed perch, it is necessary to have 2-3 carp nests per 1 hectare in the pond, the larvae of which will serve as food for the perch.

You can grow perch in a home pond dug at your dacha. In such a pond you can breed crucian carp, of which there will be a lot, but it is very small, and it will be the main food for the perch.

Population density of perch in the pond

The planting density of perch in the 2nd year, depending on feed, is 1-5 thousand pieces/ha; Wintering in the second year is the same as for fingerlings. But with higher densities, feeding is required once a week.
Three-year-old perch are grown at a stocking density of 1-3 thousand pieces/ha with peaceful fish of the same weight - 40 g. The perch reaches a marketable weight of at least 100 g in August, then you can begin selling it, catching it selectively using a seine. With this technology, the planting density of perch can be increased to 5 thousand pieces/ha. After catching, other individuals begin to grow more actively, and the marketable mass reaches 100%. The perch feeds on trash fish or fry of carp and silver crucian carp, the spawners of which are specially released into the feeding pond.

How many perch can you grow in a pond? Theoretically, the natural fish productivity of perch monoculture in different fish-breeding zones ranges from 47 kg/ha in the first fish-breeding zone, 80 kg/ha in 2, 107 kg/ha - 3, 127 kg/ha - 4, 147 kg/ha - 5, 161 kg/ha in fish breeding zone 6, for comparison this is approximately half the fish productivity of crucian carp.