Water Hyacinth

[DaveOponic]

Does anyone have water hyacinth either in their fish tanks or grown for fish food?

I have just discovered how much my fish love to eat the roots of this fast growing water weed. I have a small pond full of it and it keeps the water clear and clean along with the three sucker fish that have been minding the pond and eating any algae.

I decided to put a few pieces into my AP fish pond where I keep Koi, Tilapia and Sucker fish. Within two days I notice the fish no longer getting excited about pellets. When I checked the Hyacinth I found they had eaten nearly all the roots of every plant.

I just googled water Hyacinth and find it is a quite beneficial plant when kept in captivity and a noxious weed (?) when it escapes into waterways.

The plant is extremely tolerant towards, and of high capacity of uptaking heavy metals, such as Cd, Cr, Co, Ni, Pb and Hg etc, which could be utilized for the biocleaning of industrial wastewater [9], [10], [11], [12]. Not only the heavy metals, Eichhornia crassipes can also remove toxins, such as cyanide, a process which is environmentally beneficial in areas that have endured gold mining operationsWikipeadia

It looks like others are growing water hyacinth as a feed for Tilapia. It will sure cut down my food bill as the Japanese Koi pellets I buy here are not cheap.

[Jonathan Dyer]

Hi Dave,
I had some a few years ago it did quite well until I stopped growing it at the time my fish were too small to eat the entire plant so I gave it up for the time being but I might go back into it soon. I think it is declared as a nocuous weed in Western Australia and the only way to get some stock is by knowing people who have it.
I now grow azolla but find that my fish take a while to get through it perhaps not to there liking as much, they do eat it though.

[Cockatoo]

Does anyone have water hyacinth either in their fish tanks or grown for fish food?

I have just discovered how much my fish love to eat the roots of this fast growing water weed. I have a small pond full of it and it keeps the water clear and clean along with the three sucker fish that have been minding the pond and eating any algae.....

It looks like others are growing water hyacinth as a feed for Tilapia. It will sure cut down my food bill as the Japanese Koi pellets I buy here are not cheap.

Hi Dave, I have just returned from Vietnam where there are massive amounts of water hyacinth floating around. The Viets do use it for mulching gardens and I even saw some chooks eating it. They also make enclosures on the river banks to keep fish and grow the hyacinth above it - no doubt for food but here is Oz and in so many places it is a shocking pest weed that smothers all before it and is rightly outlawed. I had however suggested in another forum that because it is so moist and fleshy perhaps it could be binned and mixed with something like a few dead fish to start a black soldier fly production unit. There isn't any too near me for the experiment but maybe you could try and see if the plant could be converted into protein this way.
Cheers, George "Cockatoo"

[Jonty]

Dave,
I grow the hyacinth in my goldfish AP system. Each spring the fish lay the eggs on the roots and I move some of them to a small glass aquarium. Usually end up with about 50 young-ens. When I get a growth flush, the chooks get the benefit. Might try some in with the jades and silvers.