Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

that is one handy data set . . . wish mine were growing that fast

Wow, I wish we had recorded our growth rates! It is great to see it in chart and graph form....think we might do that next time.

We put our 30 trout fingerlings in on 7th April and have been taking them out over the last fortnight. Most were 500-600 grams, and 32-34 cm long.
We were feeding at 1.5% body weight (just making a guess at their weight rather than weighing them- too worried about damaging them, but not now based on this post!). This was based on having 30 fish, but we only have 20 now at the end of the season so it seems we may have been feeding at a ratio higher than 1.5%!!

Only thing we can think of is a) we have poachers (!!!) or b) some were cannibalised in the early months. We went away for two months and left the carers feeding them on minimum rations to avoid overfeeding issues-didn't think about the possibility of loosing a third of our stock!

Anyway, those still in there grew well!! And next time we will chart it....
dandm

My guess would be birds, due to recent experience and the sighting of a night heron standing on our bird net. Dead give away when the fish have bite marks and there is blood on the side of the tank!

aahhh, hadn't thought of birds Faye! Do you think that is possible in our pool though?? I presumed the fish had plenty of depth to get away from birds.
deb

Well the problem with trout is as Joel said it "They are silly" and as Faye said it "They are friendly". Trout tends to surface everytime they can see something about the water surface... thinking only "food" but not "danger"...

They are really nice sized fish. I dont think any of mine would go 500g, but I havent been feeding heavily because of my small system

Those birds are super smart and trout are super friendly, so yes. I saw our trout in the rectangle fish tank here on Friday morning, when I returned from the show in the evening I asked what had been done with the trout? I was told, they had to be there, I had another look and that bird had helped himself during the day. We net our tanks, particularly at night.

I find my trout put on between 50-75 grams per month. Cleaned the tank and while scooping the bottom caught 3. 23cm, 25cm and 28cm. All started @10cm/100gm in late July. I find they flip around a while in the net then freeze/play dead. Haven't killed any handling though.

Legal 'wild' size is about 30cm so I think next month i might thin out the tank a little...

Dont worry about legal size, 25cm is a good plate size for us, but you might have heartier apertites

I hear you - I'm happy with the size now - just a mental measure of what a non AQP trout lover would know to be a good fish....might take your advice and try something smoked in the webber soon

Hi Shayne, go nuts! No dramas if you want to include my data in your graph.

Unfortunately my trout have been in a sort of 'holding' pattern since the end of August. I've been away overseas for work alot and recently both my GF & I have been in NSW and Bali for wedding's. So the trout have been on feed rations for ~ 2 months now and it has affected their growth rates. Im a bit bummed because right when I should have been plumping them right up I've halved their feed.

So far I've harvested about 10 trout, biggest has been 380gm which is a decent size all things considered.

As far as FCR, I fed 19kg of feed to get 120 averaging about 180gm at last count. Thats the last average I took.

Just dug in two IBC's inplace of my 1KL BYAP tank as sumps, so now I have HEAPS of water to get my extra bed online and some fruit trees in half blue barrell's... will be cranking the feed now and will probably start harvesting 5-10 fish per week.