Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I've looked for data on the internet, but all I can find is that the specific heat of butter is about half that of water. And since butter is made up of different fats, water, etc, it does not melt or harden all at the same time -- they speak of percentages of solids -- it gradually shifts from a solid to a liquid (or vice versa) over a 5 to 20 degree range of temperatures. And I have not found data for the latent heat of fusion for butter or margerine -- but parafin wax is about 200 J/g which is approximately 2/3 that of water.

So -- an elegant solution: a household material with a melting range close to the comfort temperatures of most fish and a fairly high latent heat.... Voila: PCM for regulating fish water temperatures.

And that is why chocolate bars and French silk pie feel cool to the touch -- because they actually do melt in your mouth and "drain" heat from your tongue.

I don't understand all the further concept on the physics and heat transfer, but if you use it, technically speaking, I wouldn't mind having a look and it would make it a bit more clear for me to understand.
I suppose that in Alaska heat is an important if not the most important thing so you must be right on your explanation.
And what is a french silk pie?
What i've read about using butter in the mail is around a photo film box full or it and 3-4 film boxs of eggs with half water half air.
In fact it would slowly lower the water temperature where the eggs are and slow there developpement process, like that they can receive nearly incubated eggs after 10 days in a plane from australia to europe. That's for rainbow eggs that usually incubate in 5 days because the fry use all the yolk in the egg before hatching and can start eating on th first day.

I suppose it could work on an tilapia aswell as they don't hatch before 3 or 4 days and resorb the yolk for 3-4 days after, you would just need to put a bit more water so that the larvae can swim and add pure O2, methyl blue and salt to protect from fungus.

I think that you could send you tilapia all over the US that way, i've done it with silver perch eggs from australia to florida and having the plane stopping in europe and it works well, just have a smaller hatching rate than normal but eggs are cheaper than fry or fingerling so it compensates.

Wow, that's just brilliant. I've shipped fish once and it was hard even finding a drop-off point that would take them. Shipping eggs, you could just go with the US Mail. In my fish tank, the mothers hold the eggs/larvae about 10 days, so if you took her eggs in the first day or two, there would be plenty of time to get them anywhere in the country. I'm thinking a small styrofoam shipping box, a small tupperware container, a chemical heat pack, and a sitck of butter in a ziplock bag.

Want to test it on me JP?

Not on the current mouthful, John. I've struggled too hard to get a spawning to tamper with the female right now. If I can get her producing reliably, I'd be willing to test it out on you. I'll acquire suitable shipping materials. Maybe I can find some of those "breather bags".

In the mean time, you can figure out how to build an incubator. I'm thinking of an inverted 2-liter Coke bottle. Cut the bottom off to make a deep funnel. Put a fine airstone in the neck of the bottle, and secure it so the eggs cannot fall underneath it. Fill the bottle with tank water, and hang the whole thing in a heated aquarium to keep the eggs warm.

To durn cold at the moment as well J.P.
Intresting incubator, test it out on your next batch?

In the ideal world, I would take the next batch of eggs, package them for shipping, drive around town with them making sure to drop them a few times, and then incubate them.

Let's just see how the females do. No sense incubating the eggs before they're spawned.

lol, then you could claim, Drop Tested for sure!
Good luck, this the batch that both mom and dad are hatching?

Well, Dad seems to have lost his charges. Mom still had hers yesterday evening. I'm in the office today, so can't take a peek.

I found some Kordon Breather Bags on eBay. I went ahead and ordered those. I think they'll be the nicest for packaging the eggs in the smallest amount of water. Also, since you don't seal the bag with air inside, there would be less sloshing when the box is dropped.

Some folks at the BP group told me about a place that ships yellow perch in egg form then you just hatch them out. Wonder what the price difference is compared to fingerlings and how they ship them.

Janet,
I don't know what you paid for those bags, but you can get them from Kordon directly at a good price. They also have quite a bit of information on the best ways to use them. Their developing engineer told me that you are best to use a sealer (or curling iron) to seal the bag as close to the size of the fish as possible with the least air possible. This way there is less sloshing as you mentioned, and less stress over all. All of their testing has been for 30 days of freight, around the world, loaded and unloaded many times.

If you are going to ship eggs (which I think is a great idea, by the way, Amacafish) you may want to give them a call at Kordon. They were very helpful and easy to talk to. But be sure and ask for the engineers, other wise the sales just tells you what they have been told. The guy I spoke to is the one who actually developed them. (if I remember right, he said the idea came from a soviet space project, of all things). I think it would be worth it to call. He said the more you follow their "prescripted meathods", the better the success. If you like I might could dig up their number.

If I go into business shipping eggs, I'll investigate getting a larger quantity of bags from Kordon, Mathew. That's a good idea. I found someone who sold me 20 bags for just a few dollars. That's enough to experiment with.

I'll have to figure out how to seal them nicely. Maybe with the iron and some wax paper. I'll have to test that with water alone, no eggs.

They were actually designed to be heat sealed, they told me the curling iron would work fine.

I would really like to know what they tell you about shipping the eggs this way. Sounds like very good info to know about.

Hi,
I've also heard of these bags, hope you'll give us the test results, it seems very interesting and you'd dilute O2 evenly in the water around the eggs.

For the incubator, it is not that type of incubator you would have to make, the one you are talking about is called a zoug bottle and is used for floating or pelagic eggs, they don't work very good with cichlid eggs, that just have to be rolling in a slow current.
i'm still searching in my library for the exact design, the things I remember is that it is called an upwelling incubator more are less the same as for oyster by the way.
The pic added is more or less the best for tilapia eggs, making them constantly roll on a grid with very slow flow, the overflow must be very soft so that it doesn't take the eggs aswell. The eggs must stay at around one or two mm of the bottm grid. It will then be much more like what the female does in her mouth: rolling the eggs with her tongue and the flow so that they don't touch anything on one spot for to long because it will create a blocking spot and some organic matter can stick to it and create a fungus infection. I've some big incubators made with a bucket and a piece of mesh glued in it, the onely big problem is to have really clear water and regulate the flow so that the water goes evenly over the sides of the bucket, this then means that the water is even on all the parts of the mesh where the eggs are.
The other thing is to not use air bubbling in the incabator because it moves the eggs to much.
I hope I haven't confused you to much with this explanation but if any questions I'll be on the forum all week end. And I'll be searching for the documents I have.

OK, I do understand exactly what you are saying, Amacafish. The trick is to find a mesh that is fine enough...the eggs are perhaps 1mm in size. Does the mesh need to be a certain material? The picture looks like stainless steel. I was thinking of going to a kitchen supply store and looking for a fine strainer. Or maybe the hardware store for fine screen.

The female is still rolling her eggs and is not too aggressive yet. Happiness!