Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Bugger about your barra

You keep guppies outside in an unheated tank? How do they go over winter?

Thanks Velvet
Guppies have no problems in larger tanks in winter, the lowest water temp I've recorded was 10*c in the smallest tank { bath tub } they seem to handle it ok.
GTK

Out of disaster comes success !
This morning I checked the system to find the sump almost empty. About 1200L of water gone. I looked around & could tell that the main FT had overflowed. After seeing the SLO had been dislodged, I found that a Silver Perch had become stuck in the out flow pipe. After a few unsuccessful attempts to grab its tail by hand to remove it from the pipe. I finally decided to use a pair of pliers to grab it. The fist attempt resulted in a chunk of its tail being torn out & the second managed to free it. So now there's a SP in the tank with a tail tag
While there wasn't much water in the sump tank, I decided to clean out some of the expanded clay that fallen to the bottom. Using a fine aquarium net to scoop the clay & gunk out. After few scoops I found a baby Yabbie

I removed a few of the PVC hides & found a large Yabbie with eggs ! Its fairly amazing as the yabbies have only been in the sump for a few months.


The thing is I wouldn't have known about them if the tank hadn't over flowed
GTK

Congrats! That's awesome

Gday
I decided to put the female Yabby that's in berry ( eggs ) in a separate IBC. It will allow me to separate the young & give them a better chance of survival.

The mother went into a mesh cage, what they call in the pearling industry a "Pyramid Panel". In pearling these panels are used to grow out oyster spat until they are large enough to handle, they allow plenty of water flow while still retaining the larger animal.

The panels retain the mother & the young will be able to escape to protection. I'll hang some shade cloth in the IBC & put some hides in the bottom for young.
Separating them will help to stop predation from the mother & other larger Yabbies also.

Will see if it works ?
GTK

Clever idea.

Out of curiosity, what ph do your tanks run at? Are you on town water?

My tanks PH around 8.0 @ the moment. I use water from a well in the back yard & the PH is around 8.2.
I try and use rain water when I can but we haven't seen any of that for a while !

I like the brood chamber GTK, be interested in seeing the progress.

Well the brood chamber seemed to work OK. Once I worked out how to keep the mum in there, yabbies are a lot stronger & more mobile than oyster spat, they managed to escape a couple of times. There's been two mums successfully brood in them so far & I found another smaller berry female in the sump today.

The "Pyramid Panels" had to be lifted every day to drop pellets into them to give them a feed, when dropping food from above it just ran of the panel & dropped to the bottom the yabby inside missed out on the feed. Lifting the panels also allowed me to check how the berry/young were going. Each time the panels were lifted very small young could be seen hanging onto the mesh of the panel, these were too soft/small to transfer so I just let them drop of @ there own pace. There's heaps of young in the IBC, I've read that yabbies can carry up to 300 eggs.
I've transferred 20 of the larger young into other parts of the system seems to be 4-5 times that many still in there. I wont know how many until I empty the tank, Ill let them grow out for a few weeks before doing that. It will be interesting to see how many survive.

The rest of the system is going well plenty of capsicum, chilly & basil. To use up the excess basil I made a heap of Pesto the other day, a good way to preserve it for later.

The capsicum seems to have a deficiency of some description, not sure if it's iron chelates or potassium any ideas ?
I haven't been able to acquiring any Tandanus catfish, been fishing for them a few times with no luck & Live fish are out of stock. The feeder fish have bred up (guppies, swordtails) so would like to get some predatory fish to eat them. May have to rethink this one !
Maybe some more Murray Cod ?
GTK

Scored the bonus punnet of black cherry tomatoes today. I was looking for some plants to put into a new DWC raft. Out of a 8 pack punnet I separated them into 38 individual plants !

BONUS

GTK

So I finally cleaned out the IBC that had the brooder (berry Yabby) in it to get it ready for the winter Trout.

I've been feeding them Marron pellets I bought for the local pet store. So the count on the juveniles wasn't that high about 50. 30 or so had already been transferred to other parts of the system as they were big enough & were becoming a threat to the smaller ones.

These I graded the larger ones went into the sump & the small ones went into the DWC tank. Most of the juveniles were around an inch long but some were as small as 1cm long.

I guess will see what the count is in 8 month time in summer.

GTK

Looks NICE!!!! I wish I could do an outdoor system instead of having to have it inside! Where do you all get those large fish tanks?? The ones I have found are spendy!

Thanks MNRookieAquaponics
Yes the poly tanks are quite pricy, but for the long term they are a grate investment as they are strong & wont rust or crack. I'm not sure where you would get them from in the USA but here in Aus they can be purchased from rural trading stores. The ones I have are from Rapid Plastics a West Australian company www.rapidplastics.com.au

I will dig around and see! Would love to do Yabbies in my system!!

3 months on and the black cherry tomatoes have taken over the DWC raft there roots have grown right through the foam, when the black cherry tomatoes are finished the raft will have to be thrown out also. I made a frame to support the trusses and to grow the plants more vertically giving them room to grow. It also takes the weight off the raft.

Starting to get some good results from the NFT now that the weather is cooling down.


Scored a corrugated steal tank from the tip shop yesterday. It has holes in the bottom but the sides are like bran new, so Ill have to line it with pond liner to make it into a deep grow bed for growing a Banana tree.

This new GB will be plumbed to catch the return water from two of the IBC FT's before it flows to the sump. There is about a 8" fall between the IBC FT and the sump so it should be easy to plumb together.
I'm adding more volume of grow media to the system as this time last week 20 Trout fingerlings (Thanks Troutman ) were added to the system, split between 2 IBC's and as they grow over winter I feel more filtration will be required.

The trout displayed some aggressive behaviour the second day but since then they have settled down & are feeding well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anXq_FTRgPQ&feature=em-upload_owner
This afternoon I fed them 30g of 3mm pellets & about half that in the morning. The system water temp has fallen over 2*c over the last 3 weeks to 17.5*c this morning & the silver perch have slowed down in there feeding so I may try to harvest some over the next couple of weeks while they are in good condition (as I'm fairly sure SP stop feeding altogether when the water temp reaches 16*c). It will be interesting to see the weights achieved since the last harvest.
GTK