Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hum, well sometimes they mess up when they put things in seed packets. Take heart though, spinach can be tricky to get to germinate so had they been spinach seeds, you would probably have nothing! I've read that hydroponic spinach is tricky to get the right amount of moisture to the seeds/seedlings without rotting them. They also often use some sort of acid on the seeds before planting to help getting them to germinate.

About 50% of the spinash I plant comes up out of gravel with no problem. new zealand spinach seems to come up near 100% when seeded in gravel.

I've not had good luck getting much spinach to come up in anything. I suppose it is greatly Dependant on the seed too. I've never seen this "New Zealand spinach" yet, what is it like? I've grown Malabar Spinach but it really isn't like spinach.

I don't think there was a mixup with the seed. I think the mixup was in my head!!!!

New Zealand spinach is a huge seed that looks almost thorny, but makes a pretty much normal spinach plant with a larger leaf and slightly more salty flavor.

anyone recoomend and aussie seed for growing baby spinach?

Well the female I moved out this morning went back in with the rest of the fish this afternoon. I don't if she was upset with the smaller tank or being alone but this fish was so stressed over the move I put her back with the others. Even after several hours she had not settle down at all. Anyone ever see this before?

to be honest i would have thought you'd get better growth than that.
how much light are your plants getting?

Well another fish jumped out last night. I have a full piece of screen over the tank. I have no idea how the thing got out of there but after today I'll have a solid frame on it so it can't flex.

The new fish load is having some effect on my water quality. I'll have to watch it very closely now.

readings this morning:

temp - 73(will go to about 83 during the day)
ammonia - .25
PH - 7.4 (this is a drop in one day of .4)
Nitrites - .25 (haven't seen anything but 0.0 for months)
Nitrates - 20 (had been a solid 30+)

Yep, now your bacteria have to get in gear and multiply a bit! Isn't it kinda funny how all of a sudden the plants wake up and start sucking down nutrients? Yep keep a close eye on things and keep the feeding kinda light until you get past this little cycle up.

And start working on the plans for the additional grow beds to handle your increased load as the fish grow!

How was the visit to Morningstar? What do they teach at the one day seminar?

Well it's been quite a day and a long one too. I got an early start and put up the plastic on one end of my greenhouse before the winds kicked up. Then I went in to work on the fish tank netting. I wound up building a frame with a door and covered it in screen. The screen itself is sitting directly on the lip of the tank. Let's see them get through that!!

All the time I was working on that I kept listening to the war going on in my brood tank. It seems the dominant male was staying pissed at every fish in the tank. He had one female that he tried to keep in his den. He would herd her in then go attack the rest of the fish.

After about 4 hours of this I had enough and put in two more barrel tanks and moved he and his girlfriend into one of them. This was pretty amazing. 2 things happened.

1. He and his girlfriend seem very content in their new home. There is no fighting going on at all.

2. In the brood tank, apparently there is another male that has chosen a female and is trying to herd her into one of the hides. There is a small amount of aggression going on there but only a little. I haven't seen any scales fly yet.

So with all that said. My report is finished and here are the pics of the greenhouse(where I'm starting to add some growbeds), my two new barrel fish tanks, and the screen cover for my main fishtank.

Well, I was tempted to tell you to leave the ends off of the greenhouse for the summer since it gets so warm there.

So how have you arranged your circulation among your extra tanks now?

Yeah it really got hot in there today. I'm going to have a partial screen in one end and a fan in the other. I have to have this thing closed up or the animals will eat everything!!!


As for my two new tanks, the first gets filled with an aeration jet returning from my growbeds. This tank also has an air pump feeding it and my breeding pair is in there.

That tanks feeds the second tank via a water bridge and the second overflows into my FT sump. There are no fish currently in this second new tank but I'm prepared to add what my be the second breeding pair tomorrow. I also can feed it with an air pump.

Now I need to get lucky like you and find a 10 gal aquarium on the side of the road for all my little babies(am I getting the cart before the horse here?) No it's just being optomistic!!!!

Well my first breeding pair is no longer. The male killed the female last night, or possibly it was the results of the beating up two days ago. The entire front part of her body was red and she had almost no scales left.....

He's going to have to live by himself until I figure out what to do with him.. I think tomorrow I'm going to get a large tank for the adults with plenty of hides...

The good news is that my water readings haven't gotten any worse:

temp 80
ph 7.6
ammonia .25
nitrites .25
nitrates 30

The fingerlings are very busy and devour any food that hits the tank. If I weren't afraid of upsetting the water quality, I could probably pour the food to them! I do remember the 'P' word though so I'll wait until my nitrites go back to zero.

Sorry for that, what a bummer to loose one of the breeders so soon. I think the method of putting one male in with a couple females and a couple of hides might be the ticket. I don't know if having some gravel or a large flat rock in the bottom of the tank might also give the male something to do in prep for mating and maybe distract him from beating up on his potential mate?
I remember reading somewhere how Janet does some surgery on her breeding males to remove the upper lip and allow the fish to get along much better.
I expect you might want to read through the tilapia threads again if you haven't already. I know there is at least one really long one and probably a few more shorter threads to find.

I hope she wasn't the one that you found with eggs in her mouth before.