Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Getting caught up on posts, poor gold fish it must have been a heck of a wake up call for em. Good of you to repatraite(sp) em, and you have me wondering now about a goldfishes memmory. Nice Setup!

Heres some pics of the Marron that I ended up putting in the tanks today. There are 10 in all, 4 in one tank and 3 in the next. They are bigger than I wanted, as you can see in the second picture; they were all a similar size, a bit bigger than legal size (76mm from tip of the horn to end of carapace) at around 110mm to 130mm.




I got them from Golden Ponds in Baldivis, despite their web site saying they would sell them at any size, these were the smallest they would sell me. They went out the back to get them, and most of the ones in the display tank in the shop were considerably larger. All were eyeing my suspiciously, and I reckon these ones looked relieved to be going into a tank rather than a pot of boiling water.

They seem pretty happy in their new home, but I will be counting very closely tomorrow morning to make sure they haven't climbed out. I will need to arrange some sort of lid or netting for the top of the tanks to discourage any Houdini acts.

They're massive! And they'll get a lot bigger I hear! A fiend of my BIL has 9 in his pond and they are like log neck beer bottles LOL

I thought that for yabbies and marron you need to keep the ph a little higher, around 7.5-8.5?
http://www.pir.sa.gov.au/byteserve/aqua ... ron_fs.pdf

They do, King E

But its a struggle to please plants fish and now crustaetions

Steve

BRAINWAVE!

You could probably create localised conditions by putting all your carbonate (shells) into the yabbie tank. The yabbie tank would have a higher local PH than the whole system in general. (greater difference with lower flow.

Don't know about this next one, but its an extension on the theory,.....if you planted your seedlings in peat moss (acidic) then planted out into the gravel bed, there would be a localised area around some of the roots with a lower ph. Most of the gravel (bacteria) would be unaffected.

Steve

For now anyways... what happens around christmas could be another story

Checked yesterday before rehoming my yabbies and goldies, should be just right for them...

I had to grab my dolphin torch a minute ago and check them because I thought I was missing one. The "missing" one was hard to find, right at the back of the tank in the longest section of pipe.

The 3 rightmost tanks are setup similar to this, theres at least double the amount of pipe houses as there are marron. I'm still paranoid they are going to climb out so I will be making lids tomorrow, probably out of some spare chicken wire.



I totally agree about the shells affecting the ph of the tank they are situated in the most. When I checked the tanks the other day the first one I checked had the majority of the shells, it was noticable more alkaline than the tank on the left with the pump. My ph is fine though, so I will not add anything else for now, I did add some more aquarium gravel on the ground (there wasn't enough to cover all three tanks before) so the marron have something to pick at for detritus etc.

Thats King E, not Kinky

I've sorted out the enclosure for the tanks, it looks even more like Darth Vader's system now...



I have ironed out a couple of bugs too and now the system is running ultra reliably. Fixed the overflow issue on the rightmost tank by installing another pipe that joins the outermost tanks together. The end of the pipe is situated deep on the inside of the tubs. There is a joiner in the middle of the pipe which allows me to drain each set of two tanks independently (if I need to change half the water for example).

Water temps are 12deg C @ 9AM and 15deg C @ 5PM.

Not only does it look great, it also utilises space very well.

Those marron are about as big if not bigger than the size i am going to grow my yabbies to

Yep, the only thing I need to resolve now is the lack of light. I'm going to swap the last two panels of colourbond on my patio for laserlite, or something similar. You'll notice that all the plants are leaning towards the North, very much so in the afternoon.

Does laserlight let enough of the right sort of light through for the plants? Is there a particular product to use.

nice looking marron simmo,

can i ask what you paid for them at that size?

also do you plan to breed them up?

cheers

S77, i think it cuts out UV, but that won't stop your plants from growing, but it does cut out a bit of visible light too. Why not just go for the un-tinted clear poly carbonate sheets instead of the tinted laser light?

OK yeah sounds good, I wasn't sure what was available. The main factor is getting it in the same size and corrugation size as the colourbond sheets that are on there now, so I can fit them easily myself.

BF, I paid $35 per kilo and so $70 got me 10 x ~ 200g Marron. As they have just finished laying their eggs a lot of farmers have short supply of them ATM and as a result prices are up, they don't like to disturb them at all while the eggs are at a such a fragile stage. Also, you are much more likely to get males for the next month or so, as any berried females are returned to their ponds.

I checked about 5-6 of the 10 I got, it was hard to do it and avoid all those claws otherwise I would have checked them all, I only saw 1 female. I will put orange mesh bags into each tank just in case, but don't like my chances much.