Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

This is the highest I've had the water temps with trout in the FT, and they seem to be behaving normally, other than not eating much, although I didn't feed them anything for the last 2 days of 2016. The Hailea V-60 is clearly delivering plenty of Oxygen to the water to keep the dozen or so fish happy, at up to nearly 24C. They were all swimming around near the bottom as they usually do. I added 6 and 9kg of ice on 31/12 and 1/1 through the day in 3kg blocks, to keep the temperature rise low.

We put 4 rhubarb crowns in the outside GB today.

The tomatoes have started ripening, and the few we have eaten have been excellent, as have the strawberries, at least the ones not partly eaten by slugs. My wife removed the largest banana trunk this morning, as it was dead, but the rest of them are putting out new leaves. I'm not sure we'll ever see any fruit though, it just gets knocked back too much each winter.

The hot weather has sure pushed the water temps up, to over 24C today, but the trout appear to be ok. I've been adding ice during the hottest days (15kg yesterday), which has kept the max temps down a bit. I've not been feeding much at all, as they haven't been hungry.
I added a bit of water from my larger system early on the 10th, which dropped the temps a few tenths of a degree.
The hot weather looks like continuing for another week ;(

We harvested 11 trout last night (EDIT, 12, my wife cant count!), I think just leaving one that was about 250g plus the Murray Cod in there, which isn't much bigger (after 3 years!). I'll turn the air off and have a good look later, but I think they are all accounted for, after I put 141 in in April. I had zero losses for this batch
Largest 983g, average 677g, approx

Awesome!

Nice work Gordan.

Have you thought about giving sleepy cod a shot?

Here are the 11 trout (+ 1 other one accidentally included), ready for the freezer



The Unika vacuum sealer is being a bit of a PITA, as it almost always takes 2-6 attempts to seal a bag, and this process causes the thermal cut-out to activate, meaning lots of waiting for it to cool down ;( It is supposedly rated for 1 seal per 2 mins, but when it takes 4 or 5 goes to seal a bag...

We hoped it would be better than the Breville we had (which died) as far as reliably sealing bags go, but it isn't much better.

Charlie, I'll put some small trout fingerlings in with the MC next month, and see if that encourages it to grow a bit! I'm not really interested in attempting other fish, given how well the RT go.

Edit to my edit above - it turns out my wife can add up (well at least on this occasion ), as one of the
fish in the photo was already in the fridge, for dinner tonight. It's just that last night's lot were piled on top of it, and when I grabbed them for the group photo, I unknowingly grabbed it too.

That sucks about the vac sealer, for a supposedly better quality unit you would expect it to perform.

Maybe have a look at the magic vac range, I have an older model (10+ years ) and it is still going strong!

We'll persevere with it for now, I just don't have any money to keep throwing at it.

A violent storm blew a fair few tree limbs from trees around here on Friday afternoon, and took off the middle section of waterproof shade cloth from the greenhouse, but it's patched up for now. A bit of mud got into the ST and spread throughout the system, but has cleared enough to be able to see the bottom of the FT now.

Hot days and warm nights have kept the water temp fairly high, and briefly over 24C, but the trout seem ok, even if not eating much. On the afternoon of the 25th the air dew point was higher than the water temperature for a while (over 25C), so there would have been condensation from the atmosphere onto wet surfaces, and no evaporation to help with cooling.

A check of the greenhouse this morning and I discovered quite a bit was ready to pick!

The water has become too hot for the remaining trout, 2 died on the night of 1/2- the water temp kept rising well into the night up to 24.7C. I removed what I thought was the last (live) one yesterday and put it into the top system, as it was only swimming around quite slowly, although it had survived over 25C late on 2/2, but then late yesterday I found another dead one. The dog has been enjoying a few fish dinners...
There was a 4C difference in water temp for the transferred fish, so I hope it survived.

I think a wallaby or kangaroo may have been in, or nearly in, the FT on the night of 1/1 too, things were a bit disturbed, but it seems to have escaped.





A bit of excitement at Gunagulla aquaponics when a baby Eastern Brown Snake* struck me on the bare ankle while I was walking along the outside of the GH a couple of weeks ago, but we couldn't see any puncture marks, so didn't bother with a trip into town to the hospital.

*The eastern brown snake is considered to be the second most venomous terrestrial snake ... in the entire known Universe!

Once all the trout were out, I increased the daytime and decreased night time water pumping times, to about equal, as I no longer need to keep the water temp down. The super hot weather has made sure there was no chance of the water staying cool this month!
I've also cut the air pump ON time right back, to save energy needed for the big system, as there is just one Murray Cod in the FT now.




We are getting heaps of capsicums and a reasonable number of tomatoes, lots of strawberries, and I've been hand pollinating the apple cucumbers, as there dont appear to be any insects in the GH doing it, and now have a nice crop of them growing, the first should be ready later this week.

I think there are at least 10 green apple cucumbers in view ranging from small just pollinated to ready pick, I've been using a brush to do the pollination, as the first few female flowers just shrivelled up, meaning the right kind of insects for the job aren't in the greenhouse. I picked 6 to sell at the market tomorrow.




The vine is expanding very rapidly, and within weeks will fill the entire greenhouse!





This batch of turmeric has produced its first flower, so a few more months to go before harvesting




2 sorts of Turmeric in this GB, with some ginger at the far end

Niiiiiice!