Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I am interested in replacing my trout with 100 barra fingerlings which are about 20 to 30mm long. (Tiny in other words).
When I spoke to the woman at Golden Ponds and told her where I lived she was very concerned that I was about two hours away from Baldivis. She said that someone had bought some barra from them recently and only had to travel 45 minutes and had considerable losses by the time they got home. Apparently the fingerlings were aerated during the trip.
Has anyone (maybe OBO) had any experience in moving small barra successfully over a few hours? Are you able to provide me with any tips on how I might manage this.
I have an aerator which works through an invertor plugged into the car cigarette lighter and two air stones.

Regards
Graham

If they're bagged correctly and boxed in styofoam boxes... then they should be good for more than 2 hours... more like 12 hours... unless it's blazingly hot....

Ask them to do 25/bag/box...

I got 1000 x 60-80mm fingerlings... 70/bag... airfreighted from SA to Sydney... then picked up and brought down the South Coast....

Without a problem... from capture to release into the tanks.... at least 6-8 hours...

I've bought 50mm Silver Perch... 25 to the bag.... back from Grafton to Gerringong... on a 35+ day.... Over 10 hours...

When you say "bagged correctly", do you mean in plastic bags with oxygen?
Previously I have only moved fish in a large esky with airstones.

I got 101 about the same size all bagged in one box airfreight from Brisbane to Sydney then an hour be car home they got held of two flights before leaving Brisbane so total time blew out to 9.5 hours from catch to release and no losses.

Yep... standard hatchery transportation procedure....

Thanks Daryl and Rupe.
It sounds like the way to go is to have them bagged rather than in an esky.
My wife will be pleased. She is sick of having a damp back seat every time I get some fish.
Or should the bags be placed in an esky which also has water in it?

Graham, the ones that died were big ones not the tiny fingerlings. I was of the understanding that the tiney ones would not grow to a decent size in the short warm season available to us here and that is why people were after the larger (around 20cm) ones. After transporting the larger ones for school I would not do it again without using an IBC on a trailer with air.

Hi Mike
The instance that I was refering to was someone transporting small fingerlings from the same batch that I am interested in.
But you have given me pause for thought though. I was attracted by the price. $75 for 100, but I thought they would be a reasonable size by winter. I would be happy if they reached 30cms. The trout around that size are a reasonable meal.
Hmm have to think about this.

There is another recent thread somewhere that talks about grow out times. I was only aware of the guys from Pickering Brook who suffered losses coming back from Golden Ponds and thought they were the large ones, didn't read about small fingerling losses.

Thanks Mike. A bloke needs a secretary to find all this stuff. LOL.

Here is the size discussion

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=6425&p=209981#p209981

As you know I am no fish eating expert but I also thought that I read somewhere that trout has more edible meat on it per kg than barra so a 300grm barra might not be much chop.

If you order Barra in a restaurant... it'll probably only be 400gm

Thanks Mike and Rupe.
I think I'll try for 20 of the 10cm barra at $6 each and maybe get some small silver perch for another tank.

Lets see if this works, just made up a quick feed conversion table, someone might like to check the formulaes and make sure they are right.

If the barra fingerlings are 20 grams, you feed 1% and there is a 50% conversion they will be 49 grams after 160 days. Change the start weight, feed rate and conversion in the fisrt cell and it will recalculate the new end weight.

edit: Won't let me attach it as a xls file, how can I do that? Happy to email it to anyone who wants it in the mean time, just pm me your email address.

Just to add, a 200 gram fish at the above feed rate (1%) and conversion rate (50%) would end up at 450grm after 160 days.