Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Thanks for the tips, I will start to build it straight away. That way I will have it cycled by the time inland fisheries hopefully will have told me what species I can use. I'm trying for brown trout, but they only allow those if you have a public access dam. It's a bit hard trying to get them to understand the difference between a dam and aquaponics.

I'm going to site my fish tanks on the southern end of my house and the food growing on the nth where I'm, building a glass house attached. That way I can control the temp's easier. As the pipes will go under the house it will act like a cooler for the fish water.

Bet the water will be a constant 13c from under the house.

Perfect for trout and other cold water fish I hope.

I have been saying it for a long time it would be good to get the facts.
Can you test the ground temp?

Stormy, you do realise that running a completed system with no fish does not actually cycle it?

You need to have some fish or use an ammonia source before the nitrifying bacteria will come out to play. There is a good write up in the useful info section.

Yes I understand that, I have some aquariam fish which I will use to cycle it. Sorry I was referring to putting eating fish in it. The ground temp under the house yesterday was 8 deg, unlike in the past when you could be sure of temps for the winter, now they go from cold to hot in a day. It was warmer under the house yesterday than ouside, but today it is already 12 deg outside and warming up.

That would be surface temp, so I am to understand that your house is off the ground? as in not a concrete slab but timber floor with a void?

cool, sorry stormy. I just get the impression sometimes that people don't fully understand the term cycling All good.

Yep that's right, I have about 1m space under the house and it gets the sea breeze (gales). We live 100m above the sea so have a mild climate compared to a lot of Tas.

Steve, I didn't know what cycling was until I read through this very informative site, thanks.

uhuh! the surface ground temp is variable( top 300mm)
The deeper you go the warmer it is and more stable it becomes.

Yes steve still trying to get a resovle out of this old chestnut.

Hey Stormy
Why do you want to try Brown Trout?? You will get much faster growth rates with Rainbows and also they are much more easy to obtain there in Tas. That rule your IFC has with the brown Trout sure is a weird one. I guess they are trying to prevent the illegal translocation of Browns into the few trout free wilderness lakes that remain. Alternatively, why dont you try Atlantic Salmon??? You would probably be a first on here to give them a go.

Hi troutman, fisheries give away fingerling's each spring of brown trout and you have to by rainbows from commercial farms. I catch enough salmon where I live, as well as have a salmon farm in our bay. I'm just trying to reduce costs, but will probably end up with rainbows to avoid the hassles with red tape.

Gee thats alright if fisheries give away fingerlings. They dont do that over here, we have to pay for em! To avoid the red tape though you could easily go catch your own. When I was up at Liawenee in Dec there were thousands of brown trout fingerlings in the puddles of what was left of the canal there.
Are the Salmon that you catch escapees from the fish farms??

Troutman, the problem with taking fingerling's from lakes, is if you get caught, you lose all you gear, boat and probably your car and are fined. They frown on illegal size, taking of fish

The salmon we catch are mainly free range black backs, very oily and we bake them. We also catch a few escapees and their taste is vastly different to farm salmon, which are fed hormones and junk food. They go and catch the black backs when they are running, then turn them into fish feed. They do that with lots of fish down here, when they are schooling. Rather bizarre really to catch fish, then feed them to other fish for commercial purposes. The deep red colour of commercial salmon is caused by the dye in the food, wild ones have light pink flesh.

Yeah thats the irony of fish farming and feeding fish pellets in that it takes 1.5 to 2 kilos of wild caught fish to produce the fish meal to go into 1 kilo of pellets!!