Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi guys,

Well the Chilly Tank has been up and running since that start of Jan and has had trout in it for about 4 weeks now. The weather in Melbourne over the past month and half has been really hot. The chilly tank has been turning on once a day.
Took a quick temp check in my other system which is at 26.6C. Don't think the trout will survive in that!
Chilly tank at 20.8C
Just in case you are wondering I don't feed the trout the normal amount of feed when the temperatures are this high. Just feed them once every second day which keeps the water conditions very clean. Which means if anything goes wrong I have a little bit of time up my sleeve. Even at these temps the trout seem to stress a bit and do not hit the feed as hard.
Currently I have lost 6 trout during the time that I got them. But all of them have had some clearly visible defects when they arrived like missing fins, 3 were missing eyes or had some sort of eye bulging issue, and 2 had big scratch marks down the side of them. I think that the combination of the transport, the physical issues and high temps knocked them off.

Plant growth is awesome.

Here's a Picture and Video....

What he said!

Fabulous work... and not to push you too far, but wouldn't a second, then a third tank be in order to 'rotate your fish harvest'?

Or is the travel thing something you have to deal with on a regular basis?

Yeah, I think the travel thing will be on the back burner for a while.
Trout in Melbourne only need cooling for 2-3 months a year, so the large trout end up on the plate and the smaller ones get to see it through summer and to gain more weight.
These guys will end up in my 1000l GB system at the end of March. This system can handle the fish waste a lot better.
My Plan for this year is to build a Rocket Mass Heater in my hot house and keep the water temp between 14c-18. This temperature should keep the trout feeding pretty hard. If it is possible to keep the water temp this high I may start to keep silver perch again. (May even get some jades???) There is some well documented systems that have succeeded keeping jades down here. I'll probably stick to the native SP.

Anyhow here's the link to my rocket mass heater thread.

http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=15233#p371959

regards

Matt

Here's a lot more info. on freezer fish tanks.