Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

How are your trout coming along, Bunson?

It's been a while since my last update: 3 more fish suddenly died some months ago for no apparent reason? The remaining stock are growing very well, it's fast approaching harvest time for the first ones, just as soon as the weather starts getting good enough to take a trout and sit on the patio with my freshly smoked fish and a glass of wine.

I've been having some issues with long-hair algae clogging the pump, but I spent this weekend scraping the weed off the pond, then pumping hard and fast to clear the water of all the crap I stirred up; the fish survived this stressful disturbance and are feeding well, despite the weather.


Scott

Whats the latest, Scott? Where for out thou

Anyone know where Bunson has gone?

Still here... I read but rarely post now.

i have just returned from UK, to where I am in the process of "emigrating". AP system is still running, with barra, and the house-sitter. SWMBO has already moved to UK and starts work next week; she picks up our new car tomorrow, and will be going to look at a couple of rental houses on Friday.

What else is new?

I got into marathon and ultra-distance running... loving it!



Scott

Thanks for dropping in Scott, what do you get up to in the UK?

Just a holiday...

I'll be back in UK in time to acclimatise for the Paris Marathon at the beginning of April; hopefully by then I will have a UK visa in my hands so I can look for work, otherwise, sometime shortly after the Paris Marathon I will come back to Perth until the visa process in completed, at which time I can go back to SWMBO and UK and look for work (which will have to accommodate me running Prague Marathon, Perth Marathon, New York Marathon and Thames Path 100km Challenge!) I've got lots of things "in the air" at the moment!

Busy busy, nice one mate. Enjoy

That is one hell of a schedule, Bunson!

Good luck with the running events and, although your departure will be Australia's sad loss, I hope your transition to the UK goes smoothly.

Cheers for the positive thoughts :-)

Hope they have some good beer over there Bunson?

They've got some awesome ales! There are soooo many independent brewers making individual, unique brews that you can go to the same pub every night and never have the same beer twice. One thing I am definitely going to try is to learn how to make the classic Cornish or Kentish styled ales.

When I went to the UK a couple of months ago, after basically power-walking the Monopoly board with my head on a swivel, the Puddle Princess and I dropped in to one of the plethora of tiny pubs in the CBD. Keen to have my first warm, pommy beer, I asked the London 'suits' around me what they were drinking? I was shocked and disappointed to hear them answer 'Fosters'. I consequently sought the barman's advice, and we thoroughly enjoyed his recommended Cornish ale.

If you ever get the chance

Been a long while since I've posted so I thought I'd pop back and say hi.

My system is still tonking along nicely with respect to the veges. Bok choi/pak choi did well. Silverbeet was ok, but the spinach died off as soon as the temperatures started to fall overnight. I had awesome harvests of broccolini but now they have all bolted; I have left them in for the moment to attract bees to the tomatoes which have all started flowering and fruiting. I had some issues with grubs this winter, but they didn't eat everything so there was enough for me to eat and enough for them too, which made them easier to find and feed to the chooks. I've got some red cabbages which are progressing nicely, they're growing sooo much faster and better than those I planted at the same time in the dirt vege bed; it makes for interesting comparison about how well some things grow in AP vs dirt.

On the fish front: I've been running an experiment of sorts. I'm not sure how long I'll be in Perth as I'm still looking to move OS, but that's another story. At the "end" of summer I took out most of the barra. They were all reasonable size and quite tasty (although I still prefer trout to barra). The remainder I left in the 1000L unheated outdoors tank. Through May, the water temperatures were pretty constantly above 20C but since then we've had some really cold nights and cool days. I don't want to buy heaters etc, so I wrapped the FT in a single layer of some scrap air-cell insulation and applied a single layer to the mesh I use to cover the tank. The temperatures stayed pretty constant at about 18C, but if I removed the cover on sunny days the tank would heat up to about 20C or so before cooling again overnight. At the start of the really cold nights in June the tank temperature dropped to 13-14C and I lost one fish; another couple were swimming upside down. In order to get the water temp up, I drained off half the cold water and topped up the tank with bore water, which comes out of the ground at 21C. 500L @ 13C mixed with 500L @ 21C resulted with a temp of about 17C, then as it was a sunny day I left the cover for the sun to do the rest of the warming work. The fish which were upside down righted themselves and survive still. The next night was forecast to be cold too (2C) so I set the bore timer to pump in about 200L three times during the night. (It's a bit of a complicated explanation, but I manage to auto-magically syphon some of the water out of the FT onto the garden when the bore pump switches off so not much water is lost to overflow). The bore pump is new and very efficient, so it costs almost not-much to run a couple times on the coldest nights. The tank temp is pretty stable at 18C without paying for heating.

Of course, barra at these temperatures aren't very active and not feeding much, but then again, neither are silver perch over winter, I'm not sure how successful this will turn out to be but as soon as it starts warming up again, my over-wintered barra should be ready to take off again. That is of course, if I don't have to harvest them if I head off OS before summer arrives?


Scott