Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

TT are you adding anything except fish food?

Haven't up til this week Mon. The water temps have dropped to 16-17C so I have replaced their morning feed with mossie wrigglers to get some condition into them. They have dropped right off the tucker.
Ooops, 2 teaspoons of iron chelate dissolved in a watering can once a month and put a quarter of a banana in each bathtub to help with flowering, (potassium.)
Ya need to flick the tommie stems of a morning near where the flower petals are peeled right back, to get them to pollinate and fruit. These are grosse lisse and should be huge but I have them pretty close together and it is still an immature system, so they are the same size as smaller early season varieties. Taste good tho.
Have you got ur pH down to a level that helps growth now?

9 tommies picked weighing 900 grams, they are pretty small but pretty tasty.

yep, I should post some pics, but the USB port on my puter has crapped itself. No we have sound but no USB :confused:. Plant growth is really coming along, and fruit set is good. Phosphoric acid does the trick.

Love the plant pictures, please keep them coming TT. Everything is gray and brown and muddy around here this time of year.

By and large we have had a 'goldilocks' summer Dave, not too hot, not too cold, just right. It got warm in November and yes we had several days around 40C chrissy/new year. Since then it has been Indian Summer. Cloudy mornings, glorious afternoons mid 20C. Bit more rain would be good tho. We could get another couple months like this.

I am seriously thinking about Trout and leaving the broodies til after the hatchery course. I could manipulate the broody water temp and the light, then feed em up and spawn them mid winter (July) if I wanted too. With my setup the way it is, it seems I only get a couple months consistently in the 20-26 C range. With temps now at 16-17C I could prolly throw trout in now and be ok. Might wait a bit longer, we could still get some real hot days.

well the trout idea got short shrift today. Was in Seymour on business, looked at the map and found myself only 45 minutes from Glenwater's. I swear the truck drove there by itself. John's mum and dad were waiting, having already been on the job there for nearly 12 hours. (They are in their late 60s early 70s.) Very friendly and helpful.
Half an hour later I had some new babies. Being the end of the season, I dare say they are the runts so we will see how we go. Don't really have any plans for them but if I can keep the water at a reasonable level over winter, should get a flying start in spring.
Pics 2moro, but basically the same size and presentation as Notable's.

Gee you are a brave man TT getting trout in Feb. Fingers crossed you dont get anymore of those 40c days you had earlier in the year.

that's why I got silvers, which I actually failed to mention in the post above.

new silver fingerling pics. I must say once again, an absolute credit to the producer, John, at Glenwaters. (No affiliation.)
These babies were stored 100 to the bag, overnight, after a reasonably turbulent 3 hour ride home in the back of the truck.
Not one doa this morning. Into the milkvat and onto the chow straight away, water temp 17C. Geez I love these fish.
Tail end of the season, so even tho these are the biggest of what was remaining, they are still on the small side but no matter. I will pump the food into them over the next 8 weeks and keep them warm over winter.

Given the small size of the fish, the pellets look way too big, (and silvers have little mouths anyway.) However, I learnt from last time that they will have a crack at them and the bigger ones will get them in their mouth. These fingerlings are 50mm max but knocked off a good handful of the pellets over half an hour b4 cleaning up the crumble off the tank base. Pellets are my remaining 3mm originally from Lindsay. Need to use the last of them b4 the organic stuff arrives.
Yes that is rust, prolly should have done something about it.

Nice to see that tank not going to waste TT. I shall be visiting John this weekend if he still has any left.

How is there rust in a stainless steel vat???

i reckon it is bc i put some salt in there originally, when I got the broodies. When I drained the tank to transfer the broodies to the big tank, some salt prolly dried and crusted on the base. Two months later and those few spots we see now, appeared.

having some trouble getting the milkvat to siphon to the big tank. I have 25mm pressure pipe joining the 2 tanks acsross the top. Had no issues with my previous batch.
I have an offcut table doily on one end to stop fish transfer between tanks. Apart from that, any ideas? I have sucked on one end of the pipe to get it flowing (gross) but then it stops a couple minutes later. I have raised the pipe so it is higher exit end so the water is flowing downhill to the bigtank, still cuts out siphoning.
Ideas?

either it has air pockets at some point or it is drawing in air.............