Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

The BOM is forecasting 36c for Adelaide over the Christmas period, this means that the Trout have to be harvested. We did harvest our first 2 fish last week and we cooked them whole in the oven with lemon and dill wrapped in foil, they were very nice, (never eaten fresh trout before). We have another 22 trout to deal with before Xmas. I was hoping that some of you experienced people could help me with a brine mixture e.g. (quantities of salt and brown sugar) how long to brine for. As I am not so good at filleting I was thinking of smoking the cleaned, unscaled fish whole minus the head. Any advice on this procedure would be welcome.

Following on from this, when the current fish have been taken out of the system, what do I have to do to keep the plants going until the next lot of fish go in? When you introduce new fingerling fish to you system how does it affect the vegetable growth, bearing in mind that the fish are so much smaller than the ones that have been taken out?

Hope someone can help with this.


Regards

Maureen

Hi Telmor,
Don't stress about not having fish in the system, there is organic matter and waste in the growbed that will continue to break down and slowly realese nutrients in to the system. Of course you can also add Seasol, seaweed concentrate to the system to give them a bit of a boost.
When you add the fish as you have an already established system you should be able to feed the fish as much as they will eat. Some plants will live months without adding anything to the system. We disconnected a growbed at one stage, no water and no fish, the rhubarb continued to grow So the moral of the story is, just relax and see what happens

Yep, I left several beds full of cabbages through into summer after I removed fish... and they continued to grow and survive... even just with some rainfall, and the ocassional watering by hose...

If you really have to... you can always through a bit of Seasol in once every couple of weeks, or month...

Or even the odd splash of humonia, or teaspoon of urea... if you want to bump the ammonia a bit every now and then...