Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

"Im not keen on putting any metal in the FT"

You can get fibreglass flyscreen Charlie

________________
I was once young and stupid, i'm not so young now

Oh ok.

Ill keep it in mind and see how things go over the next few weeks anyway. The trout cant do too much damage to the SP as they are a lot smaller....by the time they are big enough they wont be able to get through at all. It seems there is only one that can slip through...he was back on the trout side again this morning.

You can get fibreglass fly screen as well as aluminium. However, bird netting might be better.

I dont want to use any fabric or thin netting as the fish will get caught up in it.

The stuff I have chosen is very rigid and the netting strands are quite thick....only time will tell.

you can get non metal fly screen as well

This is a vid I did a few nights ago after I found my biggest SP smashing the smaller yabbies. I went from about 30 down to 10 in just 2 days. I couldnt catch him in the act but as some might know yabbies are most active at night.

Those that think about adding yab's to you FT's...well....this is the kinda thing that goes on with bigger fish.

Small yabbies are an easy target and lets face it.....a tasty entree

Heres the carnage

And trout luv them even more....

Their days are numbered....

Saves me having to fish out the yabbies then

Charlie is that a venturi style aerator you can see in that vid?

I couldn't see anything ...well not the said action of the fish anyway.

Could you put a horizontal screen in to protect the yabbies? (obviously not when you have a vertical screen in too). I thought about this some years ago - a large mesh circle, supported on short PVC pipes to keep it off the floor of the tank.

sure is rsevs3, that pump was used only to circulate the FT water so solids move to the centre but I decided to incorporate it as a venturi aerator as well.



Yea not a good vid sorry Dr, I was watching them hammer the yabbies and tried to get it but the torch light doesnt do much justice through the camera unfortunately.



yea I have concidered this too. I would have to modify the centre so the pump could sit down on floor level to pick up the solids but Im sure it would work. Either way doesnt stop them murdering each other which is the bigger issue. The smaller yabbies in the vid are purely experimental, Im running tests on temp survival (usually winter is when they burrow down) and survival rates amoungst trout.
My larger long term yabbies live in yabbie ballsTM

I was wondering why my trout didnt eat yesterday and reflex's sent me to the shed to dig out my test kit. Which revealed nothing out of the ord, amm and rites 0.

O2 looked good

trout looked happy and chasing each other around -but- they all had massive stomach's....I mean really fat! like they had swallowed golf balls...

Upon furthur investigation....all yabbies - gone. Not one tiny piece of claw or leg or shell to be seen. 10-15 yabbies between 7 baby trout!!

Also I have the marron in a floating cage at the moment and looks like a lot of them have legs missing so they have been pecking away at them too..

No wonder they werent touching the floating feed the little buggers.

Time for a system expantion....new FT coming soon

Yep - yet Fisheries keep stocking them into streams in southern WA, then tell us we can't even have Aussie native species because they MIGHT cause an ecological problem !!

very destructive I would imagine chilli