Black crappie
Pomoxis nigromaculatus
Also known asCalico bass · Speckled perch · Speck · Crappie
Water parameters
Minimum tank: 300 L per individual at harvest size.
Feed and growth
- Feed protein
- 40% target
- Daily feed (warm)
- 1.30% of body weight
- Daily feed (cool)
- 0.70% of body weight
- Max density
- 35 g per litre
A 400 g adult eats about 5.2 g of feed per day at optimum. 10 fish at adult size: ~52 g daily.
Legality
Rules vary by jurisdiction and change over time. Verify with your local fisheries or wildlife authority before stocking.
| Jurisdiction | Status | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| California | permit required | verified 2026-05-13 |
| New South Wales | prohibited | Non-native fish biosecurity restriction verified 2026-05-13 |
Unlisted jurisdictions default to "check local regulations".
Origin and habitat
Pomoxis nigromaculatus is a North American panfish native to the eastern and central United States and into southern Canada, from the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence south through the Mississippi basin to the Gulf, and along the Atlantic coast from Virginia to Florida. It favors lakes, reservoirs, and slow rivers with clear to lightly stained water and plenty of submerged cover, fallen timber, brush, and weed beds. Adults commonly run 20–30 cm and 200–500 g, with the largest fish reaching about 49 cm and close to 2.7 kg, and the oldest living to around fifteen years. It schools and hunts, taking insects, larvae, and crustaceans when small and shifting to small fish such as shad and minnows as it grows. The flesh is white, flaky, and mild, rated among the finest of freshwater panfish, and crappie angling is hugely popular across the American South and Midwest. The fish also goes by calico bass, speckled perch, speck, and other regional names.
Climate and outdoor ponds
- Climate
- temperate (handles seasonal swings)
- USDA zones
- 3–10 (winter low around -40°C or warmer)
- Heating needed
- no
- Cooling needed
- no
Care notes
A cool-to-warm panfish for growers who care more about eating quality than tonnage. It grows best around 18–24°C and tolerates roughly 5–30°C. Growth is slow by farm standards, with harvest near 150–300 g in eighteen to twenty-four months, and feed conversion on a high-protein pellet of 40 to 45 percent is poor, somewhere around 2.0 to 2.5, well behind catfish or tilapia. That combination makes crappie marginal for production-focused systems, but the exceptional flesh quality earns it a place in personal-consumption setups. The big catch is feeding: crappie do not take prepared food readily and must be trained to pellets as small fingerlings, under about 5 cm; fish that grow up on live food are very hard to convert, so it pays to buy feed-trained stock from a hatchery that weans them. Keep density low, around 5 to 10 g/L, since crappie handle crowding poorly and turn aggressive and stunted when packed in. Cannibalism between size classes is a constant worry, so grade often and keep sizes apart. The fish is legal in most US states without a permit, but fingerlings can be hard to buy commercially; state wildlife agencies sometimes have surplus from sport-fish stocking.