Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

G'day everyone, quick question for you experienced aquaponic'ers.

Was discussing with a friend setting up a system, and apparently fish that aren't fighting a current all day long tend to have a very mushy texture, bordering on mashed potato, in his experience. Is this really the case, or am I being snowed? The system I would be looking at setting up (Perth metro area) would be the standard IBC type, rather than a round tank type. I'm presuming that a round tank could use a directed flow to set up a gentle whirlpool type effect to exercise the fish, but doubt that would work in an IBC

Any input would be appreciated

Matt

Hey Matt.....

You friend is quoting out of context, and doesn't really know what he's talking about, but I've heard it many times before.. "fish that aren't fighting a current all day long"? Barra in the wild are an ambush predator, they sit and wait in hiding for most of the day, so are many other fish including trout, they just sit still for hours on end under logs or rocks, waiting for something to swim by.

Go for it, build your system and grow a crop of trout over winter, then smoke some of the trout and feed it to your friend....

And Murray Cod... and Golden Perch...

And silver perch flesh out of an AP system is nice and firm..

round tanks are better for creating whirl pools which gathers solids to the middle where they can easily be removed by a drain or a slo. It's not so much for exercising your fish...

If you want a IBC to 'rotate' you need to direct the water diagonally so the water almost bounces from wall to wall. It does definitely help with moving solids around where they can get sucked away. I had lots of solids issues in my ibc tank and then I changed my water to diagonal and my solids issues cleared up. Direct it from the middle of one wall to the middle of the next wall on as apposed to having it come straight in...