Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Out of interest, do those test results look reasonable to anyone?
I'm hoping it means the various bacteria colonies are all present and somewhere into cycling but since the nitrite and amm readings are still registering that I'm still muddling along.

My assumption is that those readings should both drop but nitrate should increase over the next day or two?
And that the sign I'm largely cycled will be when I can add additional amm and see nitrate rise again but not nitrite? Or at most a temporary appearance of measurable nitrite?
Time to study this nitrogen cycle properly, haven't payed more than vague attention to it to be honest.
Pretty happy with that pH too I must say.

You need your hands free to interpret the test results properly.

Well a few days in and the bream I've tried to convert to freshwater seems to be doing alright.
She's (?) over 30cm but hasn't been eating yet so I bought 5, 1 inch long goldfish and caught a heap of feeder fish to add to the FT.
The goldies have seem to have stuff all survival instincts and I'm pretty sure some will vanish overnight. Hope so at least.
The bream seems to be sizing them up but didn't hit any while I was there.
I also threw in two large mussels I pulled out of a dam too, wasn't planning to but they were there so I grabbed 'em.
Having one fish in there seems to be making it more like a pet, I don't want that to happen... It's already well and truly plate sized.

Not much to report but I feel like chucking in my two cents.
My cycling bream is still kicking and the little feeder goldfish are disappearing slowly so it must be eating.
There are not many plants in the GB since I'm selling off or otherwise disposing of the clutter around the place and I should be able to move my system into the sun soon. The current location is terrible for lack of sunlight.
Might pack the bed full with lettuce and Asian greens for the short term to soak up nitrates.
Mainly I have some bonsai plants (in progress) sitting in the bed wicking in their pots to save me having to water them and also some scrawny basil plants as well.
Bought a bunch of gudgeon feeders and tiny goldfish today and added them to the FT to ensure the bream has plenty of prey to feed on.
Having a hard time catching a couple more bream to school up with the current one.
I've been working down the Gold Coast ( ) a bit lately on sites on the Nerang river and canals, so many huge bream down there at the moment. Big schools of big fish, guessing the people who live in the McMansions don't fish much? Feeling jealous...
Not a fan of the place but the waterways down there are really lovely.

Hey Bodgy, would be great to see this legendary bream.

What are "gudgeon feeders"?

Regards, Martin.

Hard to get a pic in the IBC but I'll try. Should have taken one when I caught it.
The gudgeons are a little native fish, Firetailed Gudgeons that I bought from a breeder.
I'll chase up a pic of the gudgeons, I've had them in my native aquariums over the years. Not my favourite feeder (sentimental reasons) but they're available.
http://australianmuseum.net.au/Firetail ... ris-galii/
The one in this pic I found is kinda scrawny.

I have a video of the bream in a tub but for some reason can't connect my phone to my pc via bluetooth.

I'll try it again when I'm sober.

It's not the clearest video and geez was it was painful to transfer to my pc...


Filmed this while getting it gradually acclimatised to fresh water.
Really does seem to enjoy playing in the bubbles though.
It would sit over the airstone and huff away blowing bubbles out of it's gills and mouth, then move back and forth so the stream ran over it's belly.
Added aeration to the FT just in case it continued to enjoy it.

Not quite sure why the vid on the museum site I linked to begins with a Red Belly Black snake?
A property I hunted on was riddled with them but they never tried to kill me so I didn't mind them. Had them cruise past within a metre more than once without a care in the world. (For them that is ).
Pretty chilled out for deadly snakes I found.
Much rather stumble across one of those than an Eastern Brown or a Taipan.
Browns will follow, stalk and chase you and I had a Taipan make several dummy strikes for my face once when I was bent over cleaning sprinklers in a friend's lychee orchard. Quite an intimidating little sucker, especially since I was a fair hike from the hospital. And it looked me square in the eye which was kinda off-putting. Reckon I just about made a world record reverse long jump that time...
Another friend's Father was bitten (for the second time...) by a Brown a few days ago, his typically laconic quote was "I had to shake the **** off my leg"... Luckily he's just fine.
So yeah, much prefer the placid Black snakes...

Lol.

Bodgy thanks for the all the info and vids on the bream and gudgeons. I did like your snake stories, very funny. I had a couple of snake encounters when we stayed on the farm when I was 11-12.

We had a shop next to the house and the one night after supper we all decided to go to the shop for a sweet each. I was up front with the torch and had everyone behind me single file walking on the slasto paving path. As I stepped onto the first step to go onto the verandah of the shop I looked up with the torch for the first time. Directly in front of me was a Rinkals (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rinkals) but because it was on the verandah it was at eye level to me (and it was big). I screamed (like a girl) and jumped backwards and as a result my whole family went down like a row of dominoes, with the dog yelping at the back as she too was knocked down. By the time I was up again the snake was gone, never to be seen again which made it a little more scary than if we had seen it again. We always knew it was there but didn't know when it would make an appearance.

I used to keep snakes as pets, the one afternoon I got home from school my mom told me some school kids said they had seen a snake in the basement of the museum (she was the curator) but it was probably a lizard or something. I went to check it out and as I stepped into the basement a 6ft black mamba (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_mamba) sailed past right in front of me. Knowing snakes well I just went cold, a black mamba is the only snake that can see you and recognise you as an animal when you're standing still (most snakes have pretty bad eyesight), it is also the fastest snake in the world so it can literally hunt you down if it wants to. I ran to my mom in a panic and was in a state saying "It's a black mamba! It's a black mamba." In a moment that clearly demonstrates how much cooler people were in those days my mom replied simply: "Well go and kill it." I went and chopped it's head off with a spade. Eight hours later I stuck a twig in it's mouth and it bit down, if that was my finger I would have been dead. I knew the stories of Zulu people and other tribes taking snake heads to Sangomas (witch doctors) for muti (medicine) and dying after being bitten when trying to pull the snake head out of their pocket. I tested that theory and found it was true.

Regards, Martin.

Two gone and a third murdered... The shock and horror of it! It wasn't Pierre was it? If he's one of the missing maybe a search party might be in order. We must not give up hope...... Well maybe we should.

Sorry for your losses Damn birds..... That's why I always rooted for the pigs in Angry Birds. Bad birds.

Dohhh hadn't realized there were several pages. Good to hear Pierre made it ok. Enjoy your posts, interesting the set ups you make.

Loving your thread Bodgy. I'm so glad Pierre is still kicking

Snakes and lizards leave me cold. I grew up on 12 acres of bush and we had a few too many for my liking. Enough to scare me into shaking out my gumboots before putting them on, but not enough for me to ever get used to the idea of them being around.

Your Mum sounds like mine, Martin. She has dispatched of more than a few tiger snakes (very territorial ones at that) and the odd dugite with various garden implements over the years.

Any plans to find some friends for the Bream this weekend Bodgy?

Hi katmac, you obviously have a great mom!

I remember coming home from school one day with a 4ft Puff Adder hanging over the verandah balustrade. My mom had gone outside and nearly stepped on it. She went back inside fetched the rifle and walked up to it and shot it through the centre of the head from about 5ft away. She couldn't understand why I was impressed with this. Lol.

Check out the video in the behaviour section. They are very thick sluggish snakes but there are also one of the fastest striking snakes in the world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitis_arietans

Regards, Martin.