Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Exactly we left a complete and running 4000 litre system in our last place
Got a call about a month later all the fish died
Kids had been bombing the fish with rocks bricks old toys ect
Now I believe the lot is dead and finished all plants including grape vine all gone

I do not understand why people wont just say I do not want that for my self. Take it with you or get rid of it.

Thank you for your comments, Boss. That's terrible news about the koi pond and fish; I've experienced similar disheartening destruction myself over the years, typically at rental places where I've lovingly installed goldfish ponds, but none quite so bad as that.

According to my records there are still 7 rainbow trout in my big tank. It's been a slow start to summer and water temps are down but, regardless, it's hard to believe there are trout coexisting with the barramundi and silver perch that I introduced into the big tank over the last three weeks. I may just write them off.
The MIA trout aside, this year was a good one for me in terms of trout production; I harvested 464 and had only 12 casualties, despite some serious dramas involving catastrophic pump failure and power shortages. The heaviest fish size was less than last year, 696g compared with 760g, but I'm not bothered by that if it means that many more actually make it to the table.

Here are the last trout that I caught, some using a scoop net and some using a baited hook.

My son helped me pull in a few silver perch from one of my ponds.

Five of them were females, heavy with roe. It seems a shame to kill them, really, but until I get organised with the knowledge and skill required to breed silver perch they will all meet the same fate.

Good work getting all those trout through to late Dec PLJ How many hours gutting and cleaning was that?

I've still got something over 250 to harvest yet, so I'd better get stuck into it, as a new batch of 400 fingerlings is due in a month.

Amazing fish PLJ. Those silvers are massive


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Looks like a good dinner coming to me. Winter is getting a late start up here so must be the same for you down there.

Australians if you don't mind me saying are one good looking lot, and so are your fish PLJ. That being said I'd love to see again a pic of your whole system. Is your AP the biggest one here? Does that cistern have historical relevance? I saw one here at a job I was doing some years back and it was a stage coach stop in the Wild West. Needless to say it had a very good feeling surrounding it. Although it was dry at the time, I was salivating over it.

Thanks Guna. There were many, many hours spent catching, killing, bleeding, gutting, cleaning and vacuum-sealing the trout but it was spread over about 10 weeks. I'm really glad that not only do trout not require scaling but they are relatively easy to gut. Also, 94 of them found homes in a freshly killed but still whole state.

I find it mind-blowing that not only do you still have 250 trout in your system but that you're getting another lot in late January - the hottest time of the year! Rainbows are bred around early July over here in the west, with fingerlings (or 'yearlings') available around late April/early May. It would seem your cycle is different to that.

G'day Ben, and thanks but silver perch often look larger that what they are, in my experience. Sometimes I catch one and swear it's a kilo fish, only to weigh it and find it might be only 800g or so. The largest of these was 1.2kg.

Donone, that's interesting that our late start to summer is mirrored in your hemisphere by a late start to winter. It will be interesting to see how the seasons pan out in both hemispheres over the next few months, and in particular if some form of 'catch-up' is possible.

I'll accept your compliment on behalf of my fellow Aussies, Boss; thank you. I'm generally very happy with the way my fish look when I pull them out, but that's partly due to the fact that my water is brown with tannins and I don't get to see them until they come out of the water.

I'm unsure of the status of my system in terms of its size. There was a thread started a few years back that identified the bigger AP systems on the forum. My fish tank was a 90,000L rainwater tank in a previous life but lay idle and unemployed for many years until I re-purposed it. I'm very glad that I did!

I added a sixth grow bed this season but, while filling it with water to test it for leaks, I instead decided to make use of it as a holding tank for trout that were caught but not required immediately. I plan to add at least another two grow beds this summer, as well as a dedicated holding tank closer to the fish tank.

I can only do it because I have the chiller, and the price of the fingerlings jumps up significantly at the end of Jan, then Feb, then again in March, so the chiller will eventually pay for itself in the reduced purchase cost of fingerlings. Normally I wouldnt be able to put any in until late April/early May.

The trout farm where I buy the fingerlings has mostly sold out by Feb anyway, unless you put an early order in, but I think the breeding cycle is similarly timed here.

Thanks for that explanation, Guna. I haven't spent much time on the forum in the last year or so but do recall reading about your chiller. It sounds like a good investment so I ought to read through your thread in detail.

Over the last few days I've been reading thur this thread, very interesting.

I wrote them off too soon! Unbelievably, the trout live on! Not only are they big and alive, and swimming around with the silver perch and the barramundi, but they are actively feeding in the middle of summer and are the first to hit the feed when I throw it in. (I wonder how many of the barra fingerlings have become trout dinner?)

This is all rather perplexing since any trout that hadn't been harvested went fins up due to high FT water temperature in the first week of November of the two previous years.