Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I have been moving my males to a separate tank based on their aggressive behavior and perhaps I missed the one I was aiming for.. I saw two fish in a side by side 69 type dance swimming in a circle.

Can anyone tell me if this is a tilipia mating dance?

Gaaaa...I'm at work and video streaming is blocked. I will have to check it tonight. However, your description sounds exactly like a mating dance. Shimmy-shaking slow circles in a head-to-tail position. Fins are all splayed hard, and coloration is bright and clear. The female should have her ovipositor extended (1/8 inch perhaps), and will of course end up with a mouthful of eggs.

If you sit quietly a little distance from the tank and watch, you may be able to see the female deposit an egg. The male will swim over it but I've never been able to see the milt. The female will return to pick up the egg, and may also try to draw extra milt directly into her mouth.

I cant tell if there are eggs in a mouth or not; yet. I think I can see the ovipositor. I think I may have snagged the wrong fish. They are so stinking hard to catch. Even in an aquarium!

Dan, put something big in the middle, like a log, or rock.
Put you net on one side and sort of goad them in with a wooden spoon or something.
I have heaps of trouble catching fish too

OK, got a chance to look at the video. It seems a little vigorous to be a mating dance. Patience.

That was all I could catch on video. I did not know if they were mating or just being weird. I do not recall their fins sticking all the way up. They did this for 10 minuets one morning the cup was on top of them and bouncing around but they kept doing it.

We have tanks and supplies! A 9 foot 900+ gallon plastic tank, 5 six foot galvanized tanks for grow beds, a stack of OSB for the walls and enough tin to cover the nursery!!!

Come to find out I have been sitting here for a month waiting for tanks that already cam in, they just never called me and when I called them they could not find them... Lazy Lazy employees, and they wonder why foreigners get hired...

I also epoxy painted the floor in preparation for future water spills, and yes I even have a 3 inch drain in the floor

Because it is so late to get started for the season and have the tilapia grown out before winter I am making some changes. I am going to design the nursery system to produce enough fish to have one a day every day next year, giving a full 12 months grow out time. Continuous production.

I will use the 5 smaller tanks for grow beds and also have a fluidized sand bed bio filter to convert all ammonia in this system so I can grow NFT during the winter; indoors. This system will be using 1 kg or 2.2 pounds of food every day once all the tanks have fish in them and the first harvest time arrives.

This system, when complete, will be 25% of the system I am building. 665 gallons for this section. 2620 gallons for the total system.

Impressive ..... and ambitious DanD .... but judging from your previous projects I've no doubt that you'll get it up and running

If my math is right thats 9918 liters when your system is fully built Dan, that will be impressive.
Hope you don't get sick of eating a fish everyday

We will be trading with a local family farm for grass raised beef and chicken. So, we will not get tired of fish. The idea is to produce 1440 fish per year. I think the question is more like what am I going to do with that many veggies..

I have my fish in a temporary 20 gallon holding tank. I wanted to test out an LED grow light so without much thought I took piece of 4 inch pvc cut some holes in it and filled it with gravel and filter foam, stuck it in the tank, hooked up a pump and planted some seeds. Well now I had a problem with this little test. The water started to stink. I assume that its because when the pump is off the bacteria in the bottom of the pipe could not get any oxygen. The water stank and turned cloudy having a high (~1-2) nitrite reading; all this just when a good bio film was getting built up. I removed the offending device and changed 75% of the water and added another power head with venturi air injection to get the oxygen up hoping to suppress the anaerobic bacteria. The pH is 7.02, down from 7.3



The fish seem fine and I am not feeding for a couple days to reduce any stress. Is there any thing else I need to do like change all the water or keep changing it or adding salt (if so how much for 20 gallons)?

Test again later tonight or tomorrow morning... with a 75% water change... and no feeding...think you'll be fine.

No just wait, if the fish are ok don't play with more things than what you've done, it would stress the fish out.
Always the great "P" word.

Did your filter/growbed work on a timer?

Yep, it was on a timer, on every 3 hours for 30 min at a time. It was starting to work great. I dont have enough media for a good bio filter so I was just starting to be able to feed at 3% body weight. Now I have to go back to small feedings The plant was starting to shoot up fast too. I stuck it in a piece of foam to float it in the water. However, all the fish were over there biting on the roots..

Rabbits?