Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

The Sputnik has landed !



With the season getting cooler I had been looking into how I was going to keep the Barra warm over winter.
Thanks to gumtree I managed to pick up an insulated IBC, canister filter and a heater from a guy in Perth who over wintered Barra last year.
Now I just have to set it all up and weather proof it all.

Gday Danpirra123 I live in Beachlands. Nice to see someone else in Gero on the forum.

Hey guys i live in gero in wonthella area it would.be good to catch up and talk about systems i started my system in feb its running sweet


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Hey gtk i also have a system in geraldton would love to come have a look at your system one day

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Gday lica86
I'm in Perth ATM.
Trout pick up day tomorrow.
But your welcome to come around.
PM me and we can organise a time.

Picked up 50 trout fingerlings today, all survived the 4.5 hour trip back home.
Thanks Gavin

Started feeding an hour after the settling into the tank.


So I have been keeping an eye on the water temps in the Barra FT over the past month. Using a simple data logger bought from eBay
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/USB-Temperature-Data-Logger-Datalogger-Temp-Recorder-with-Sensor-16000-Points-/351231576696?ssPageName=ADME:X:RTQ:AU:1123
{I tied to make a data logger with Arduino, bought a heap of parts and a couple of books from eBay but it all got to difficult, will have to come back to that one !}
Anyway the min temp in the Barra FT still has not been under 18*c within there stress zone.
http://www.fergusonsprings.com/Aquaponi ... onics.html
The min temp for Geraldton town has not been under 15.0*c in the last month.
At a guess there'll be a week till the temp will become critical. But I've put a heater in the tank just to be on the safe side. I've made progress with the Barra tank build.
Filter in place, heater in place and cover made. Tested the canister filter & exchanged the water between the tanks.

Now need to weather proof the electrics then transfer the Barra. This should happen in the next few days. They have grown well over the last 7 months it will be nice to record the growth rates.

Nice one Graham, good to see they made it back ok. Surprising how far people will travel just to get some fish, just had a guy here this morning who drove all the way from Norseman to pick up a few Perch.

Gday Gavin
The trials of living in the country I guess. I didn't muck around putting the trout into the system so your guess would be better than mine what would be the average length and weight of the trout fingerlings this year ?


Recently temp history in Beachlands
Min 7.1° Max 23°


After last nights cold weather I checked the data logger & found that even with a heater in the Barra tank the AP water temp got down to 16.1*c. Luckily no deaths, so today I transferred them into the insulated tank.



Out of the 50 fingerlings that went into the tank 42 survived with an average length of 18cm.

Most of the mortalities happened in the first month due to cannibalism.

I'm very happy with these results.

Hi there gtk would be keen to catchup with u and talk more about aquaponics just all new to this, thanks

Gday All
A bit of an update of the system.
http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=8647&start=60
Yesterday Geraldton had a over night minimum temp of 4*c & in the morning I saw another Barra struggling on the bottom of the big tank, rolling from side to side, but when I put the net in to catch it, it came too & swam off to the nearest hide. Checking the tank in afternoon & no sign of it. But this morning it was doing the same thing, I managed to net & remove it, as it would soon die then maybe hard to locate later.

After down loading the data from the temp logger I was not surprised to see that the few Barra in the big thank are starting to peg out, as the water temp hasn't been over 16*c for the past two weeks & got down to 11.4*c last night.


With 50 Trout & 20 SP in the system I've been feeding around 140grm of 5mm pellets per day while the water parameters have not changed dramatically.
Ph 7.8
Ammonia 0.25
Nitrates 80
Nitrites 0
The amount of crud the Trout are making & collecting in the bottom of the tank is quite surprising. I have started removing all the unnecessary hides from the tank to allow better water/crud flow & removal via the SLO.

Two Trout mysteriously died last week, one of was found dead in rigger. The other was languishing on the bottom struggling to stay upright with very pail whitish skin & was removed to be on the safe side. Both looked in good condition & had grown 5-6cm since being placed in the tank.
The rest of the Trout are doing fine & feeding well. So not sure what happened to these two ?

Not sure if this is the case but sometimes you just get unexplained deaths. The water parameters are all fine and trout should be loving the water temps at the moment. I have had a few unexplained deaths over the last few seasons and I just put it down to a genetic disposition of the individual rather than and issue with the water parameters. I wouldn't be concerned at this stage unless you have an ongoing issue.

In regard to the build up of solids, I'm not sure why but trout are just a really messy fish! I am cleaning solids from the base of my tank at least fort nightly at the moment


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Cheers Bender
Not too worried
Well I'll just put it down to genetics. There's been no other problems since & hopefully it will stay that way.
I used a long handle net to scoop out & move some of the crud in the tank. Just wondering how you clean your tank ?
I was thinking of an air lift vacuum.
http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=22795
Thanks

Hiya GK, thanks for the update
It'll be interesting to see how the barramundi go thru winter, I'm tempted to try....
Yep the trout sure are messy, I've only got 15 in the small system and its getting messy, couldn't imagine doing too many more comfortably. The pift system can't keep the water clarity like the slo system can.

I use a length of hose tied to a broom handle to manoeuvre around then just siphon out all the crud into a bucket. I'm sure there is a better method that is more automated and less time consuming but I actually don't mind doing the job and I use the fish poo on my orchard


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You'd need a large enough pipe on the outflow but I wonder if a pulse of extra water would help clean the system? If you had a second pump on a timer to pump extra flow into the tank just to flush it out a bit is what I mean. I seem to recall someone around here doing that

Thanks for the ideas
Well I did a clean of the 3000L tank today. I moved or removed & scooped up all the crud that I could. then started to vacuum the bottom with a syphon. I've made various syphons before & made another one today with a cheep ebay hand pump.



Any way I removed & disturbed the a lot of crud up of the bottom. The water was a bit dark & hard to see into so I videoed vacuuming the bottom to see if it was making a difference & filmed some strange behaviour with one of the trout. not wanting to take any risk with the other fish I harvested it.

157g & 22 cm long. I did a bit of a dissection ( cleaned It ) & found 15 pellets in it's stomach.

Any way I'll stop feeding them for a few days & keep monitoring thing a bit more.
The reading after the cleaning Ph 7.8
Ammonia 0.5
nitrites 1
nitrates ~120