Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I may have jumped the gun. I just pulled my 'female' with the dark mouth and aggressive behavior and there are NO eggs in her(?) mouth.......

Its so hard to tell.. From what I can tell the slit/extra opening on a female tilapia is much smaller than all the drawings and pictures. I think I will get better with practice.

I added some small pipes to the tank so that the next batch of babies will have a better place to get away from the big fish.

I, also notice that the large fish were not eating much for two or three weeks, as well as staying all together. Now that the babies are removed they are eating more normally and swimming all over the tank. Hmmm more signs for me to be aware of.

Another sweet surprise today!

20 new baby tilapia! You can zoom and pan aroudn the image above, give it a second and it will load a more clear view. This allows you to see all the photo has to offer without wasting bandwidth!!! Click and hold/drag to scroll around. Roll mouse wheel to click + to zoom in. The program used to do this is a combination of zoomify and world kit.

On another note, I added 15 ml of pickling lime to my water last night amd today the ph is 7.6. That is up from 6.2... All from such as small amount too! The fish are happy and eating lots of pellets not that mama is not defending her young.

Hate to be the bearer of badnews,,,but both pic/movie framesare empty,.....,and I'm on a 2 meg service.

The direct url to above pic is: http://naphtha.us/naphtha/images/worldkit/worldkit.swf

No idea why the flash version does not work..

Even the direct URL only shows a still pic,,,you can zoom in out etc but no VID,,,,your first one works great,,,page 2 near top.

Thats all this is, a still pic. The difference is that the pic is that the image size is 3264 by 2448. The viewer lets you only load 800x400 at a time. Each zoom or scroll loads a new view if needed.

Hay Dan,
Your first pic of small fish actually seem pretty large to me. I noticed a batch of babies in my tank the other day, they are soooooo tiny that about all you can see is a belly with eyes and you know there is a tail behind it to move them around. They start out about the size of mosquito larva it seems. I've stuck over a dozen of them into my small aquarium and they do grow fast cause I think I see a size difference in a day, still they are just bellies with eye balls and a barely visible tail now.

There are still some I'm sure in the big tank, saw one swim by today but no way to be sure how many. I hope the catfish eat most of em or things could get really crowded in there.

Fun to have the babies around, these ones make no noise.

My camera wanted to focus on the net and not the babies so they are a little blurry. They are so very tiny I would have not seen them except that they were schooling around a flower pot.

Well, I got my new cycle timer in today. Made in Japan should last a long time.. No much more than the china made timers. On and off times can be set from .05 seconds to 100 hours ±1% accuracy. Input voltage 100-240VAC, 50/60 Hz or 30 volts DC. It has two double throw relays in it. They are only rated at 5 amps each so I am going to use a hvac fan relay to switch the motor current.



I just dont have time to build my own timer just now. I have nearly 200 fish and I need more than 7 cycles a day asap!

I payed $98, but found the same thing in a different package for $52.. http://search.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch/dksus.dll?Detail?name=Z1135-ND

Oh well... Just posted about this just-in-case anyone else wanted a cycle timer

pics

I fed my first soldier fly larva to the fish today and its a winner, they loved it! Thanks again TCL for the BSF start!

My fish also love mint leaves. The big fish are to busy at trying to defend their pots and impress the female to eat much of anything at the moment. I guess that means more babies soon

Well, the plants have started growing all the sudden. The squash seemed to double in size in two days.

Cool, keep the pictures coming as they grow! I agree, the squash should be put in squash jail.

Well I had a lot of soldier flies ready to depart this evening. However, I discovered a flaw in my home made bucket. The larva climb up the ramp and then back down the other side. They are not trying to climb up and exit through the correct hole. Only a few climb out. I am going to have to rebuild it so that they fall down when they get to the top..

Here is a video of one of the worms making it out..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCqa446NWdc