Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi everyone,

I thought some of my fellow AP nuts would be intrested and prob a bit sad at the deaths of more fish in victoria.

The fish have been dying at lake Mokoan near Benalla. As part of the decomissioning of the shallow lake it has been left to dry up and return to it's origional swamp land. The DPI have removed some fish but they have left many behind as they said it was not viable to remove the remaining native fish.

The lake as it was when I took these photos last week.


This dead cod was 80cm, note the foot as size comparison


These four dead cod were grouped together in a small depression and died together. They were all around the 80cm mark.


I thought I would post these pics as I know some of you will be intrested and I'm not sure if it made the news anywhere else.

God bless froggo.

Bloody hell! Silver's are endangered and Cod aren't far behind as I see it!
Returning the lake to swampland is probably good for the environment, but surely as it drained these fish could have been caught, even if only by hand.
They could at least have been caught and butchered, not left to waste!
*Grumble grumble*

Looks like good swampland now. Cracks an all.

It will take some time to recover... I wonder whether they bothered to remove the drains put in place to keep the non-lake swamp dry...

what a shame, would have thought the lake would have been good for the invironment!

those fish look as if they were fileted?

Hi everyone,

the land was a natural basin/swamp before someone had the bright idea to turn it into a vast shallow lake.

There was a natural creek that diverted broken river water into the swamp at times of high flow and or flood. The same creek also drained water back into the broken river from the swamp which also collected runoff from the surrounding hills.

The lake was stocked with fish and was well used by locals and tourists. The purpose of the lake was for irrigation.

I think the area being put back to swampland is the best idea as the lake was bad for the broken river downstream of the outlet . The clean broken river water going in the lake was turned into a white/grey silt laden mess by the windswept shallow lake before being returned to the river for irrigation when required.

This water degraded the Broken river, Broken creek and the Goulburn.

I feel for the people who were encouraged to invest in their farms/businesses due to the lake being built, only to have it taken away from them later and throw their future into doubt.

The fish left to die a bad death baking in hot shallow water got lots of people agro.

If any of us took a under size or out of season native fish and were caught we would be fined but it's alright for them to let the fish die because it's uneconomical to save all of them.

The smell of rotting fish is not good but the many birds of prey in the area are having a feast not to mention the foxes.

that's my lot,

God bless froggo

No, shallow lakes are very succeptable to evaporation, so it's a waste of water, also swamps support more native life and provide better filtering of water and put back many essential salts and things we now lack in our tap water. This is why spring water tastes better (besides not having chemicals)
Add to that what Froggo explained, and shallow man made lakes are bad. Just as bad as draining swamps.

fair enough Kuda, was just a thought, I like the idea of being able to fish in places where there were never fish befor.

hi grunta,

it's quite possible that someone filleted the fish when they came across them. Lots of people fillet dead carp and freeze it to use as cray and yabby bait.

One bloke I ran into fillets the dead carp to feed his cats. Anyway thats what he told me

I now use the carp fillets as extra feed for my sp's.

God bless froggo.

Hi froggo, that's cool, beets things them going to wast, just left to rot.

i am thinking about trying to get my hands on some more Murry Cod and feeding them carp that i can catch out of a friends dam, the last cod i had died because i over fed it.

God bless you