Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

It sounds like the fish may have been unwell to start with, I'd be asking for replacements.

No - the only bad reviews of them I've found have been pretty old, and I got my shrimp, gudgeons, and yabbies from them - they all arrived 100% alive and healthy and are doing well.



Yeah they were definitely sick. I think the problem is that they do most of their silver perch sales much earlier in the year, so these ones were sort of the tail end of the batch. I haven't heard back from them yet.

have they started picking up now ?

least you had the hospital tank / quarantine tank philosophy ready to go.
for those that don't it all happens in the system.

I'm not seeing any that are struggling to swim, so I think (fingers crossed, knock on wood) I shouldn't lose many more.

Er, no, I salt bathed them but I don't have a hospital/quarantine tank yet. Future additions will be quarantined for sure, but since I didn't already have perch in the system to possibly catch something from newbies I just put 'em in.

Bit of set back. Hope you can get some replacements, though hopefully in better condition!

Update to this one - yup, it's a problem with this batch of fish all right! Somebody on another forum bought silver perch from the same place, had them arrive the day after mine did, and had over 50% dead in the bag with more dying afterwards.

On the plus side, they've emailed me back and are processing a claim. I don't know yet whether they're planning to give me replacements or a refund or what; I'd be happy with either so long as any replacement fish are healthy!

Update update - they're replacing the casualties. Fingers crossed for healthy fish!

(edited to add: and yes, I will be seeing what I can set up as a quarantine tub!)

Cool Mel,

If yours came from a late season batch where are the replacements coming from?

Pete.

Just found this out from the guy on the other forum:

So as long as nobody gives them a snack before transport this time, replacements from the same batch will hopefully be OK. There was certainly a lot of poo in the bags with mine.

Aw shoot, I'm so sorry. I asked over on the Fishlore forum if there was anything that wasn't addicting about fish? Some responded "watching them get sick and die."

Well, I have a happier update today! No deaths in the last 24 hours, and the survivors have gotten over their transport/illness related shyness - they were all out and about this morning, swimming around the bottom of the tank and eating. I spent about fifteen minutes leaning on the edge of the tank watching them.

Glad to see them doing better. It is fun to watch them. Maybe I need to get out more.

Has been great to read the development of your system! Looks great so far!

Thanks! It's a ton of fun on this end too, making slow but steady progress. I should hopefully be posting an update soon; I've set up a quarantine tub for my replacement silver perch fingerlings that should hopefully be arriving this week, and the caterpillar wars have started.

...I found out something about myself today. When I've just spent twenty minutes finding and squishing tiny caterpillars and eggs on my broccoli, and a cabbage white flutters in right in front of my nose and starts laying more eggs, I can and will kill a butterfly.

Update time!

I moved my strawberries out of the aquaponics, because I'm running about 2ppt salt now and plan to keep it at that level indefinitely. They're going to stay in a little root pouch garden and seem to have taken the move well:


Caterpillar wars have started! Time to pick up some BT:



But the beneficial insects are moving in too, thank goodness. I have a zillion hoverflies in my hoop house; they pollinate any flowers they can find, lay eggs on the plants (and are welcome! their larvae are predators), then die. The peewees and sparrows think this is the best bug buffet ever and cheerfully pick up beakfuls of them to feed to their chicks:


And although I haven't seen any lacewings, they're clearly around:


I haven't managed to get any clear photos of the fish, but the sump yabbies are happy; I've spotted a couple of molts so they're definitely growing, they've done a wonderful job of cleaning the algae out, and every so often one sticks its head out of a pipe to say hi:

(that pic is from about a week ago, it's even cleaner now)