Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Preferably dead...

We have been really lucky here at the shop, we've had very few problems with pests, until recently that is. Over the past few weeks we have noticed that we were losing fish...

The salad bar had floating foam covering the surface almost completely but when we took the foam out the other day there were no fish left. The trout have all gone from the space saver system as well.... Bit by bit slowly disappearing....

Then more recently we noticed them disappearing from the family system just outside the back door. Even with a net covering the top they were disappearing, and the fish were being killed in the water. We'd arrive in the morning to find 4-5 dead trout in the water, generally with damage on them..

This morning I carefully crept around the back with my camera..

There's the little bugger in the middle of the picture, a grey/brown colour, a night herron... He is standing in the middle of the 3000L tank on the net cover..under his weight it sags down into the water and he attacks the fish through the net....



He's damn hard to see though, very skittish bird and as soon as he spotted me about 30m away behind some bushes, he was off.

Wow

Well i was thinking it was thieves ... bag him and release him near someone elses area... not far from you on Warton Rd.

hahahahaha... You're evil.........

I am headed north.. could take it with me if you want...

The cheeky bugger. Time for a better fish tank lid eh
You are gonna have a lot of spring onion seeds soon

I said sling shot... not camera



Now this aint bad either

I still have MAGGIE in the cabinet.......will have to do it early tho cause she's a loud girl

Hmm... I think you can get a gadget like a water cannon/jet that they use to setup to keep dogs and cats off a certain area.... I suppose it detects motion so can be used on a bird as well.. I don't think it will like be sprayed with a jet of water and would likely not come back after a few tries...

Or get embi to make you one of the little girl scarecrows... (I think it was embi; sorry if I am wrong)...

or an air rifle...

That's a bugger Joel.... a Night Herron will keep coming back until the fish are all gone.... damn difficult to get rid of...

Yeah, I think he's gunna be nigh on impossible to catch, so flighty... And we have so many systems out the back it's very hard to set something up to scare it.. We will just have to get solid covers for every system, hopefully he will eventually give up if he can't catch anything.

EB you were saying that he sits on the net so it sags down... any way you could suspend a party popper from your shadcloth frames down to the nets covering the tanks, if hes hevy enogh he may set it off

hey joel

could you shape the net over a dome ..so the herron wont be able to reach the water??

Yeah it was us... Do you need me to send J.J. Scarecrow over Joel?

I like either the Magge option or the dome