Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Mine have just started eating full (non crushed) 2mm pellets - can't see the SP going onto 4mm for another month or so

Barra sure do grow fast

Your 4mm pellets would be much bigger than my 4mm pellets Les, because yours are round and mine are not.

Ah!...its the footprint thing

Yep - but mine are still much bigger than yours I expect

I expect rapid growth from here if I can work out how to optimise feeding.

Determined to keep the feed up to the fingerlings this time around and see what type of growth I can get this year...now that my system has some maturity in it

Must check the nitrate level in the nursery since there are no plants taking out the nutes. At least I'll know what the barra can handle

just wondering how the barra are going, what your water temps are like? How quick are they growing?
cod fish

They are going okay CF. They are still in the nursery setup. Major variation in size, with biggest ones probably 10cm. It is the body width not the length that makes the difference though - with quite a lot of growth (but would much prefer to have started with them at this size. Quite a lot of them are still quite small and are probably at risk of becoming food to the larger ones if I forget a feed.

I did have a heater in the nursery, but took that out a few weeks ago and have still maintained temps of 25 plus most of the time due to the temps in shed being fairly high in the day and also the pump would be adding some heat to the tank.

I'll move them out into a big tank soon. May just harvest all my perch and throw them into that system. If so - that would be around Xmas or new year. At that point I'll count them to see how many I have left. Have had not deaths since the early days, but may have lost some through getting eaten by others.

I did have one small drama a week ago which I will post about when I get a chance, but I got to it quick enough to cause no long term damage.

PS - I would never buy any fish (especially Barra) under 50mm again. If I ever grow barra again (which I may not due to being higher maintenance fish) then I'll only do it if I can get a 10cm advanced fingerling.

...the more effort you put in to growing them...the better they taste on the plate

vb, interesting that you say they are a high maintenance fish, someone actually tried growing barra in a shed near here, spent $4 million (I think) setting it up and closed down within a year as the fish kept dying on him. We hooked the power up for him and he invited us in for a tour. Unfortunately I was on holidays on the arranged day but the others told me it stunk to high hell and there was dead fish everywhere. I'd be guessing his filtration was a bit suss, if only he'd heard of AP, he could've had better filtration and a second source of income to pay back that $4 mill
cod fish

That is interesting. I'm having no trouble keeping them alive - just a pain in the arse not being able to leave them for a day or 2 without food to go away or something. Silvers would have no problem with this - particularly once in big tank because they would just algae graze.

If my big tank was under cover - I'd get a feeder like Les' as soon as I transferred the fish to the big tank.

Those people near you must have been incompetent.

Have you not got an auto feeder VB? You can get them off ebay for next nothing....

I have one like this...
http://cgi.ebay.com.au/Pro-Aqua-Compute ... dZViewItem

Nice Tim, how much feed can they hold at any one time?

Not much, but for small fish it will be enough for a week. You could always rip the guts out and attach a more powerful motor... cue Rotisserie motor... Attached to a small bucket with a lit attach a fin on the inside to distribute food on each rotation.