Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

New plants in a grow bed usually take a little time to settle in anyway so the lag while the beds get established may not be apparent. Yes, many of us think there is great benefit to solids and "other" stuff that exists in grow beds.

In my book you are spot on

Well I got the 4 new beds up and running today. I filled them 3/4 with water and they're just sitting tonight. Looks like I'll need just a little more sump volume now. It's on the ragged edge of starving the pump.. I have some extra small tanks laying around. I'll put one of them next to my sump with a water bridge it should be live tomorrow. Pics to follow... I promise

Well I still don't have quite enough sump so I'm only cycling two of the new beds. One bright spot though - I have two females carrying eggs in their mouths. I think it's been four days for one of them and three for the other. With a little luck, I'll have some fry in a week or so.

Here's some pics of the additions:

Depending on your light conditions, you may get some algae on the inside walls of those translucent barrels.

There is a lot of light. I'm going to put some 50% shade cloth up next week. I'll keep an eye on it though.

Good news! I have about 3-4 dozen little baby Tilapia swimming in my aquarium this morning!!!! Thanks to Janet for all the good advice. I still have one more female that hasn't released her fry.

Now the question: How long before these mommies are ready to release eggs again. The males are pretty agressive and I don't want to subject the females to any more torture than I have to. I will cut the males upper lips off but they are still going to chase and try to bite.

But at least it looks as if putting one male in with two females was a good method. Would you be able to pick out that same male again? Do you have enough aquariums to keep all the fry from the next batch separate from this batch (as they will eat the smaller ones.) Then again, that is one way to provide high protein food to the young ones.

Hah! I'll try to find another way to provide some protein. Yes, I have enough aquariums and space to keep them separate. I'm expecting the second brood over the weekend so all my fry will basically be the same size. I'm going to start them in a 10 aquarium then move then into a larger one in a few weeks. I'm actually planning my next setup for the fish. When I put in the next growbed(the one we discussed yesterday, I'll need some additional fish capacity and since I have some new fish(!) I need to get things ready. So far I've tried about 4 different layouts and none of them work. Looks like maybe I'll have to allocate a little more space....

yea... happy birthday to you JazzPlayer.... many Happy Tilapia to you...

Well a lot has happened since I last updated. I'm completely reworking my fish tanks so I can have more capacity and also so I can isolate better by size and sex so there's been a lot of moving fish here and there as I got tanks in permanent positions. During the move I found about 2 dozen eggs moving in the bottom of my breeder tank. The second female that I had decided was NOT carrying eggs was and must have spit them as I was removing her from the tank.

We managed to recover most of the eggs and I think almost all of them are doing well now after a few days of dragging their sacs along. The sacs are now just partly visible and they're swimming in a school.

In addition today I had to move my fingerlings and after getting them out we found another couple dozen babies in the bottom of that tank. Apparently a couple of my fingerlings found enough privacy to produce.

So my little 10 gallon aquarium is pretty fun to watch!!!

I'll post pics tomorrow of the fish system. It's basically in two sections. The first section is 6 drums connected with water bridges. The last was has the pump to the grow beds. The five tanks will be used for fry and fingerlings, so I can isolate size and sex.

The second section is two tanks. #1 is 300 Gallon and overflows into #2, which is 100 gallon. It will overflow to Tank #6 of the first section which has the pump. These two tanks are for growout. Again, I'll post pics tomorrow. Too tired today......

I have two 55 gallon aquariums that I'm using as breeder tanks.

Sounds like you have been busy.

Yep I've been VERY busy.. It's funny, when I was 30 this project would have taken 2 days.....

So I've pretty much finished setting up all the tanks. Plumbing is finished, fish are moved and now I've started building another GB. This one is about 1M X 5+M. It's going to be built using TCLynx's monster GB as a model. Same design. My pond liner came in yesterday so no more excuses.

Here's the pics I promised:

More pics:

Looking good