Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Mine had a fair bit if fat, I'll weigh it and see, it's currently in a pot waiting to be fed to the dog and ducks.

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Matt yours looked much better formed you expect to see a little fat but too much is just wasted food.

The industry standard is to weigh them live and then weigh after gilled and gutted (HOGG=Head on Gilled and Gutted) to calculate recovery.

Unfortunately prime safe has deterimined in their wisdom that while gutting a fish is "minimal processing" gilling them is "further processing" which requires extra license and extra auditing. Which makes it harder for someone getting started to meet the industry standard. Even gilling a sample of fish could land you in trouble if they were seen by an inspector.

Hi Stuart its the first time I've done trout and they looked ok from the top of the tank, but yeh there was a bit of fat in them but not too bad. I have cut the feed down for the remaining two tanks of trout though, as I agree fat reserves are just wasted feed.

Not the first but the biggest by weight so far. Had another yesterday which was slightly longer but ~50g lighter. Got about 15 left and gotta get them out as the weather is getting risky...



Edit: got to add, that's from ~8cm in May when I got them. First go at aquaponics and trout so very happy with my results

That's a great first effort, Ninegrain. Well done!

Had some people over for dinner last night.

After drinks the first things was to catch dinner.

They didn't know to stand clear so the net of about a dozen fish I put in a trug got them very wet.



Not huge fish by any means but very fleshy as distinct from fat.

Weights were live: 540, 490, 450, 370 HOG: 480, 420, 410, 330 Recovery: 89%, 86%, 89%, 91%

I was a bit nervous because the last fish I cooked was from the very last of last years stock. It tasted a bit muddy. These ones didn't but unfortunately I over cooked them a bit so they were ok but not brilliant.

Those are pretty fish, but I was hoping to see a video of the guests being splashed.

I pulled this one out mid October, weight 730g, name : Gordito.

Tomorrow's lunch is in brine now
Went 32cm.
I have some really small ones in the tank still. Will struggle to be an edible size.

Nice trout guys

Yay, after admiring everyone's trout I decided it's time for me to join the fun!

Turns out it was harder to get them out of the net than kill them, slippery little buggers!

The super fat one was Mr Vertical, the derpy swimming fish, and it's no surprise to see why he never swam properly, his swim bladder was inflated like a balloon. They are both pretty much 30cm long, they are some of the bigger fish in the tanks.

Anyway, onto the fun stuff, the photos!







After gutting Mr Vertical was 313grams, and the other 330grams. It's interesting to see that the visibly fatter fish ended up yielding less.

Generally that is because of the fat.

Just thought I'd put it up to double check, that inflated thingy is the swim bladder, yeah?




Yup! I've been trying to avoid stuffing them full of food because I don't want pointlessly obese fish, but Mr Vertical must have been particularly greedy, lol.

Yes it is the bladder. Sometimes after netting and handling a trout has difficulties to right itself(deflate the bladder and refill)
A common thing for catch and release fly fishermen.
You can " burp" them:) basically a gentle but firm stroke from vent forward. Takes a bit of practice but works well.

He (her/it) had issues with his swim bladder from the moment I got him, I named him Mr Vertical because he could never idle in the tank horizontally, he'd always end up standing head up. I didn't actually think he'd make it but he ended up thriving despite it (he could swim normally at speed). I decided to just leave him alone to do his thing, I don't think I'd be game enough trying to burp a fish anyway, lol.