Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Update on the home made fish food.

i'm going to bin it all

The tropicals finally dove to the bottom to "have a taste" after i didn't feed them for a day.

only the electric yellows were really interested.

The clown loaches had a nibble but weren't interested. and they are by nature bottom feeders and love bits of raw white bait that i throw in.

"perchy" in my indoor tank won'ttake any even after two days of starving, he's either hooked on floating flakes or thinks it tastes sh@#t (or both)

Actually, i might keep the lot and feed it to my worm farm, considering "fattening feed" is basically flour/grain mix.

Just thought i'd let you all know.

Steve, Please keep us posted on your food experiments. My wife is a vegetarian except that on rare occasions she will have a piece of home cooked fish, so she is most interested in what I am going to feed my Jade Perch. For her sake I would very much like to find a feed mix/recipe that was based on soy or similar. Soy is a very good source of Protein – yes ?
A recipe that has NO animal ingredient whatsoever would be the ideal.

( I know that the dear little fish will eat each other if given the chance, but if all the fish in my tank are vegetarians then that should be ok.)

She has a lot of friends that are really interested in my Aquaponics adventure, the vegetarians friends really like the idea of the vegie production and other “food carefulâ€

Jade perch loooove duckweed.
Yesterday I purchased a plactic bag full of the little weed from the local Aquarium Shop - about a cup full compressed.. $4.50......I put about 2 tablespoons into the fish tank before putting the lid on for the night.....this morning the only duckweed left were a few stray lone duckweeds sticking to the edges of the tank here and there..... I have put the rest into a pond at the front of the house, so I hope it grows as fast as is reported. I think I will have to get serious about a few drums etc to grow the stuff as fast as possible.
Murray

May I suggest a bucket here a bucket there, a bucket everwhere .. ,, shade, sun in the shed .. whatever ... for your duckweed.

This way ya won't have the little plants all die at once.

This I think is going to be my no.1 way of capturing solar energy to feed my fish .. its virtually free!

I guess in the next month or so ALL of my tropical fish will not need any fancy "expensive" purchased feed, flake, pellets or supplimentary feed other than duckweed, Azolla, compost worms.

(IMHO if they are big enough .. they will take it!)

(OK .. maybe a little pig food now and again if they want a cuddle?)

OK .. I added 1/8th a can of Coke to one of my duckweed trays .. the algae growth was amazing cos of the sugar .. my tilapia and green chromides ( algae feeders) are going to love this little algae feast!

Johnnie with all those buckets around the place do you have sort of small fish in each of them to keep the mozzies down, if so what is it your using..?. I was using a feeder fish called 'darts' but most of them seemed to have died.....

My duck weed isn't growing so well yet, I figure it's probably because there isn't enough nutrient in the system as yet, might have to get some more feeder goldfish..

I did a clean out of a lot of the frloating plants in my big outdoor aquarium and found a large amount of duckweed in there... I remember there being 1 or 2 a few months ago when I was given a few floating plants for my tank a month or so ago - guess I will have to take care of them till they multiply a bit more