Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Nice fish you have there southern trout!

I was speaking to one of the owners of the hatchery up in Tumut (east coast here) and they actually bought all their eggs (and spawn?) in from somewhere... might have something to do with the floods knocking their stock about though.

nice fish ST...

Digging up the past a bit here... are the fish you guys can generally buy normal diploids or are they sterile triploids? All the rainbows we get here are sterile triploids so we couldn't breed them even if we wanted to.

Troutman, have you ever tried breeding browns instead?

You do realize that Troutman breeds trout and supplies many of us with our fingerlings each year?

No... I did not realise this... why would I? I don't see that it is relevant to my question either? I see he knows a lot about them. I see he knows about breeding them. So I'm asking what he knows about breeding browns? Nothing more sinister.

Hi Shane. This one may interest you -

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=11605

Shanes post is a couple of years old now Dunder, there is a good chance he is no longer around.

There is minimal breeding of Browns done here as they do not perform as well in the warmer water temps.

A seniors moment!!

Re trout eggs though... IFS Tasmania is the place to buy them from.

2012 price is $120 postage (AU) up to 100,000 eggs.
$60 + GST per 1000 eggs. These are eyed brown trout eggs. Rainbow also available.

IFS contact for eggs sales -
Brett Mawbey -
Brett.Mawbey@ifs.tas.gov.au

The fly fishing club I belong to used to, many years ago, catch and strip their own mature trout. These days, we buy the eggs from IFS and hatch them at the club's hatchery, near Millbrook Reservoir in the Adelaide hills.

We are not allowed to buy brown trout eggs or even keep brown trout down here. I applied for a permit to keep brown trout two years back and was turned down. I have spoken with Brett Mawbey and Tim Farrell before and brown trout are considered to be, in their words, the 'fish of the people' and so cannot be owned privately. My understanding is farm dams can be stocked with browns but only because people can ask to have access to them to fish on (though I don't know why they would eat muddy dam fish when clean river fish are as common and easy to catch as they are). We can only get sterile triploid rainbow eggs. Brown trout are everywhere in the local streams though I rarely see many big ones (you know... skinny water, skinny fish... biggest I've caught in my local stream is only about 40cm long. I'm sure there are bigger ones there.. but they didn't get big by being stupid ). We can also buy sterile 'tiger trout' which are a cross between browns and brook trout.

tiger trout: http://piplon.org/Images/Fishes/Tiger-Trout.jpg

These are what I was going to opt for when I can start my big tank as I reckon I can keep the temp. down in 18,000(ish) litres pretty well where I have it and can hook up a simulated gravel-run to hatch the eggs in.

Hi TasV

You don't need to to simulate anything to hatch the eggs. They just need to be in 'normal' aquarium water (well aerated/clean). A bit higher PH is better than neutral but neutral is OK.

The eggs and newly hatched alevin need to be kept in the dark, they have no UV protection, until approx 14 days old (after hatching).

The temperature needs to be below 14 degrees. I have hatched them at 10 degrees in 2010 and 13 degrees in 2011, in a home aquarium. The higher the temperature, the higher the likelihood of fungal attack/growth.
I placed 'seed shrimp' (Ostracods) in my aquarium, to eat the fungus and have had no problems.

This site will give you the basic instructions -
http://www.troutintheclassroom.org/teac ... nformation

You could also check this past post for more info. I have placed some photos of my setup on this post.
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=11605

Many of the brown trout, on the mainland, come from IFS. I know the Ballarat hatchery also gets a batch regularly.
SAFFA has a permit to stock them in SA rivers and creeks.

In the past the WA Trout assn has brought in eggs from Tassie but the resulting fish just cant handle the water temps here in the summer and most of them die. The local domestic strain of Rainbow has adapted over the years to handle warmer water temps and i know that many years ago the SA flyfishers sourced WA stock in hope that they would get better survival in some of the waters.

Sorry TasV - did not mean to offend - I just thought you hadn't put 2 and 2 together with your question.

As far as I am aware Brown Trout aren't suited to AP in Perth/WA as they are a slower grower - perhaps too slow unless you can run them all year round.