Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Well, thanks to another persons post I got motivated and went to golden ponds and got some semi mature barra about 12 inches in length Qty 11, I put them into the spare 1000Litre tank, so now have 50 silver perch in tank one and 11 barra in tank two

However I noticed as they took them out of the tank there that they had large areas of white, Im assuming this is becuase there fairly stressed, is the patches of white indicative of stress.

What is the best process to help them destress, just leave them alone or is there like a tonic for the water I can use to relax them or so forth

Thanks for any info

And of course some photos

Sneak peak inside

Now Ive got a bad back getting this out and then around the back by myself

Climatising

Be free little fishies

Yep the white line along the head/back is a stress line...

Leave them alone... and don't feed them for 1-2 days.... cover/shade will help...

And don't go peeking under the cover every hour...

Now your asking too much, cant help myself, try and tell the kids that when they get home from school as well.

The things we have to do

I am going to get some barra myself as well... and was just wondering how the barra could get climatised through an esky... would take a while since the esky is built to create a controlled environment inside...

Any thoughts??? Would it be okay to take some tank water and mix it with the esky water and leave it for a while??

ivansng wrote: Any thoughts??? Would it be okay to take some tank water and mix it with the esky water and leave it for a while??

yep that's how I acclimatise my fish, just add a little of the water they are going in to a bit at a time, over a half hour period at least.

in my h p it is a much better way to acclimatise fish because the water temp is only one factor that can cause shock, PH is another, so by add a little of the water they will be living in they get used to the other parameters.

I did exactly that, I dumped the esky in and then opened the lid and allowed some of the pond water in, closed the lid left it for 20 minutes and then allowed some of the esky water out and more pond water to filter in, after an hour I let them out, they all settled nicely down on the bottom,

Nice way to slowly match ph and water temp and water quality, my fish even stressed, can move fast

Standard procedure... even with bagged fish...

With the bagged fish, I usually let it float for a while before opening the bag...

Anyway, thanks for the clarifications... One more thing... for the esky, I presume those white styrofoam esky boxes would be suitable to transport live fish as well?? Just don't have that big an esky and cannot justify spending over $100 plus to buy one... so was thinking of going to the local seafood shop and ask them for their biggest foam box (I presume frozen dead fish gets transported in foam boxes??) and pay a small price for the box??...

Where abouts in perth are you, when I picked up my silver perch they were little fingerlings so I used a 30litre plastic keg container, however the barras are big fellas and such a fragile fish, and after reading another persons misadventure with there transport "they lost 14 barras on the way home" I went with a decent travel size, for info that eskys not large I have another esky which is even bigger than that one by about another 50 percent

Well I wanted about 25 of the GP mid-size barra, and the guy told me that I needed a 60L esky with air... I will be using the OTTO dc air pump for air... but the esky... I have only got a 30L... small really... how many barra did you get? And how many litres was the esky you used??