Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

How's your weather/temperature been up your way lately? Warm days? Its still been very cold near me, Im just waiting for a warm afternoon and for the water to clear up a bit.

Yeah is warming up some. The big fish tank doesnt go below about 14C now and the silvers are feeding well.
They have stopped the flow down the river so hoping it will clear a bit here in town. Kids are still catching reddies and catfish with worms I have heard

Few interesting things of late. Yesterday was warm, water temps still below 20 though.
My larger RF was found belly up yesterday, no known reason, water tests all good.
Looks like he was very very freshly dead, since he was not smelly or off colour, so I decided to gut and clean him, what I found looked like a huge egg sack in him??
Does anyone know enough about RF to know if this could have been cause of death?
I have never seen this one eat, however the smaller one eats worms out of my fingers.
So maybe it starved to death?
If the sack was eggs, then under what conditions would she have layed and would it be possible to breed RF in a AP setup?

Also had some friends around for drinks last night and we decided to go out and get a few trout for a snack, they were quite impressed by the system and the smoked trout.

Decided to remove all trout from the first tank, the biggest was 400g! My biggest one so far and probably the biggest I will get this season. The smaller ones would take a while to catch up to that and will all be coming out later this month or early to mid Nov.
To my suprise there was only 3 left in this tank which explains why it was so hard to catch any in this tank.

Water temps were just under 20C today about 19.5 in the sump, 19 in the trout tank, found one of the runt trout that I had caught and placed in the sump dead today, he had the fungus and some sores on his side. The small RF was swimming around going balistic. He was hungry!

Dropped a couple of icecream containers of ice in the trout tank to try and cool it down a bit. Still warm tonight and another warm one tomorrow so will probably need to ice again tomorrow might even turn off the pump to the growbeds during the day tomorrow and turn on the back up air pump for the day. Lots of air!

I had 3 runt trout out of my 18 I had last year that I threw in the sump of the big system because it would be cooler for them. They all jumped out over the next few days. Silly buggers didnt want to grow

All is well, water temps hovered around 19 degrees for a few days, trout have not been overly hungry lately, I heard that 18-19 degrees was optimum temps for trout? Maybe mine are a bit spooked since almost every time I go out lately I have a net in my hand!

Everything seems to be growing well too. My strawberries are not doing as well as I would like, only one plant out of 20 is doing well yet is not flowering enough for my liking.

Went dipping with the net yesterday to pull out a couple of fish for some friends. Found it difficult to get any of a decent size, most of whats left in this tank are under 150gm.
With all the bigger ones dying while I was away.
I'm thinking they will be going out to the farm dam very soon maybe even this week.
I will drain the tank down and anything worth gutting and smoking will get done and the rest will go out to the dam. The system will then be left to survive alone while we are on our honeymoon, with one small redfin and about 30 or so yabbies.

I will put some vegitation in the yabbie tank before we go. But other than that the system will need to survive for about 3 weeks. I figure there will be enough nutrients to last for 3 weeks or should I dose with some aged pee before I go?

Hope all goes well?
Congrates about you wedding!
matt

Well all is well, now a married man, not sure if that will make the AP adventure easier or harder.
The growbeds need some work, all the cabbage is now removed since the catapillars were winning that battle, pulled some onion, and leaks. Really need to do some planting.
Tests are not showing much, either all showing nothing or only trace, I am hoping the system has not crashed.
Either way I will be getting 50 Murray Cod tomorrow to continue the AP adventure.
Bring it on!

Well picked up my new mates from Glenburn Native Fish Farm, 50 murray cod, they are tiny but all survived the trip home on friday. We were going away for the weekend so I thought it would be a good chance for them to settle in to their new home with out me excessively stressing them out.
Had a minor HSM on Sat morning just before we were leaving, I pump sounded like it was running dry so I rushed to the hose and started filling the sump while I tried to determine the problem, thought I was being smart by puting a stocking over the SLO to stop the little tackers changing tanks on me but in doing so I caused a blockage in the SLO and the tank was overflowing.
Don't think I lost any over the side they were all down the bottom hiding.
Well we went away and Happy New Year and all that, and got home today to find every this is still fine, water temps 25.5C! dropped them some feed crumble that I picked up from the fish farm, and they are very hungry so I dropped in some yabbie meat from the left over bait I had from the weekend, bits that were as big as them and they were fighting over them! Hungry little buggers.
Going out to feed em again might as well take advantage of this warm weather!

Aah hmmm, excuse me, don't forget to take the camera when you feed those fish bundybear

Sorry faye! Its hard to get a good one of em down the bottom of the tank, however I did take this one when releasing them from their delivery bag.

That's okay BB, you tried I know it isn't easy, I certainly haven't mastered that one, but it is on my list.

I really like the footage some people get with their underwater cameras. Next camera I buy will be capable of doing that.

Sent from my HTC Desire S using Tapatalk

Its called a tupperware container....seriously though, you should be able to get water tight electrical enclosures from Jaycar with clear windows on the front..Just stick your camera/phone in one of those and drop it in.

something like http://www.jaycar.com.au/productView.as ... ATID=986#1