Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Thanks for the info Martin, if I find any willows around here I'll give that a go for sure.
My issues were with the sun frying the seedlings on the media I think, heavy rain pounding their leaves and maybe small seeds getting flushed out with the water flow?
Seedlings I sprouted in the little tray/pots that they are often sold in never thrived for some reason.
Going great guns now though.

Just wondering if this deficiency looks familiar to anyone.
It usually starts on the end of the leaves, this pic shows it running down the sides of one.
The plants do great from transplanting, usually thriving until they've tripled in size. Then some species get this symptom and fairly rapidly keel over.

Thought I should mention, there isn't much of a discolouration in the green area of the leaf, the pic just looks that way.

cupping like that could be calcium.

Hey Bodgy, thought of you when I saw this somewhere on the internet.

Haha

Geez, once a picture of you starts getting made into memes it just never ends...


Thanks for your thoughts on calcium deficiency too Mattyoga.

One of the two bream left in the system has developed hole-in-the-head disease (or something similar) much the same as the previous fatality.
Nitrates are pretty high again and it's my main suspect in causing the fish to be vulnerable to it.
The last one has a lesion behind a pectoral (?) fin so I added a kilo and a half of salt hoping that would help it out. Since they're generally a salt water/brackish water fish that might help it recover if I'm lucky.
Not much growth at all in the one I culled, only a few cm probably. It was reasonably fat at least.
Will probably add another kilo or so of salt in a few hours to get me up to 2.5+ppt.
Thinking the bream experiment might end soon, one way or the other.
Slow growth and an apparent tendency to HITH in some situations makes them pretty unsuitable.

Well... That's it for the Yellowfin Bream trial.
The last (and largest) fish was looking distressed this afternoon so I decided to catch it out and cull it.
Will run fishless for a little bit until I get onto their replacements.
Since it was probably a protozoan parasite that was involved I'll keep the tank empty for a month to try and kill them off.
I seeded my growbed with filter mulm from a heavily stocked (but healthy) cichlid tank. Now I'm wondering if it was the source of the infection. Also wondering if the prawns I fed them with may have been another potential source? Guess it could have hitched a ride with the fish in the first place too.
Oh well, either way it's done with now and hopefully never shows up again. It sucked a bit.

Bummer Bodge. Hopefully your next stock of fish will flourish.

I think we all need to be really careful about anything we put in our systems. I used to put duck weed from the local pond in my system, but then had heaps of snails. I began to wonder what else it brought in. My fisho brother warned me about other parasites that might come too.I have not put in duckweed for about a year now, except for some that sprouted in my growbed?? My Big Silvers cleaned up the snail problem when I didn't feed them for a week.

Haven't been home a lot lately and I decided the shallots had gotten a bit overgrown...
Time for a prune.

nice harvest Bodge. Any plans for your fish yet? I am sure you could throw in some Silver or Jade Perch, you buggers over there have many choices. I don't know what I am going to stock over here as there doesn't seem to be many choices.