Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Spent the morning moving my ponds from one side of the grow-bed to the other. A major exercise of course:
1. Pump some water to a Muzza grow-bed that I am yet to put into commission
2. Rmove fish from pond and put into the grow-bed (their very temporary home)
3. Pump remaining water from ponds into the temporary home
4. Move ponds
5. Make required changes to plumbing (quite minor - cause my plumbing setup is very simple)
6. Pump some water back to ponds
7. Move fish back to pond
8. Pump remaining water back to pond

Needless to say fish were not very happy about having to be netted twice in one day. When stressed teh perch lose their dark colout and end up very pale. I am hoping they will recover from the ordeal and there will be no deaths.

It did give me the opportunity to see all my fish up close. The biggest ones are not a bad size. I didn't try to measure or weigh them. The biggest of the fish are Jade perch, despite the fact that they were a fifth the size of the silvers when I bought them. It will definitelly be jades for me when I make my next purchase.

Couple of pics below:

Yeah, they look a little stressed-out
They don't look like they're gasping for air or trying to get out, though; and almost half of them "appear" fine. Good luck. How's your back feeling?

I have a bad back - so made sure that no real lifting was involved. I removed all water to make the move.

The reaon I had to move the bloody things was that I have bought a rainwater tank for the shed and of course the only way to get the thing behind the shed was to roll it exactly where the ponds ang grow-bed are. Moving the gorw-bed was not an option (wasn't going to remove 580 litres of gravel).

They looked much more stressed by the time I moved them back - and of course they had to cope with that also. I reckon I'll be okay though. Will watch for any onset of fungus and will treat with salt if necessary.

Love the pics VB. Am looking forward to getting my silvers soon, even though I would love to do jades and they obviously outperform silvers, keeping them warm here over winter would be a nightmare. They look pretty fat, must be nearly time to barbeque one just to see how it tastes? Like today maybe so I know whether they are worth doing LOL

The plants in my system are starting to look really ratty. This is due to a combination of factors:

1. Insects
2. I think the full sun aspect is starting to take its toll
3. They are just too old. Things like silverbeet just get to a point where they need to be replaced.

I have now removed all the silverbeet, which I have only left there up until now to act a nitrate remover - haven't been eating it as it had gone to crap. I will really have to watch my feeding rate until there are some more plants in there. I still have some huge basil plants and big chickory plants in the system to keep things going.

Anyway one of the reasons for my post is to say that the copost worms are, without a doubt, breeding well in my grow-bed (flood and drain 10mm gravel bed). When I pull plants out I invariably see worms and am also seeing the worm eggs. I assume 1 worm egg converts to one worm. They just seem fairly big to just end up a tiny baby worm (or perhaps baby worms are not that tiny).

Hi VB,

If you can see worm capsules in your grow bed, you should be a happy camper.

Compost worm capsules contain an average of four worms......with a low end count of one and the highest reported number of 22 (according to Allan Murphy in "Organic Growing with Worms."

Gary

Yep - dfinitely have worm capsules GD - thanks for the infor re: number of worms in each.

I pulled this basil plant out of my system a couple of weeks ago because most of the plant had broken off a few weeks earlier under the weight of rain on its leaves and also I had a couple more basil plants in the system, providing more basil than I and the rest of the suburb could ever possibly eat.

Look at the size of the root ball.

Nice! Didn't want seed obviously. I suck at growing basil, they a big nitrate fan?

Now plant every inch you can!

Have more seed than I could possibly ever use AA. The part of the plant that is still attached in this photo represents about a quarter of what was there before it broke. The stuff that broke off had thousands of seeds, so I just let it all dry out and have thrown some into the bed.

I will plant out the spaces, but I don't think I am going to have as much success as I would like with the plants while the bed is still in full sun. The days have been stifling and although the plants do not wilt, having a constant source of water, they do not thrive like they were in September/October.

Put a new plant in the gorw-bed today. Need to get something taking out more of the nutes.

Now that my thread is in the 'formal' area I have completed a clean up and deleted a lot of stuff taht had nothing to do with the system.

Managed to get the thread down from 42 pages to 23 :-)

VB, I really have been meaning to ask... is that a pawpaw? How big is it? have you got it in a deeper growbed for stability?

It is indeed Jaymie - I have put it in a big hydro net pot filled with perlite - weighed down with a bit of gravel on top. I then burried it into my normal 300mm deep grow-bed so that it gets the flood and drain action. The reason I have put it in the pot is that I intend for this plant to grow in a satelite container (probably half or a bit more of a 200 litre drum) running either f&d with gravel or DWC - probably the first. Am not ready to put this satelite in yet, so will give it a start in the main bed but have a way to remove it without too much damage. Must make sure I don't leave it too long though.

About 2 weeks ago I burried a bit of watermellon shell in my grow-bed - with the intention that a couple of days later I would see if the worms had been attracted to it from other parts of the bed. Problem is I then forgot about it totally until tonight when I came across the slightes bit of residue from it when digging in the bed. WHile there was virtually no sign of the watermellon - there were at leat a dozen worms within a 10 or so square centimetre area where I had left the skin. I guess the experiment was successful.