Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Pics.

One is of what I assume to be a fully inflated swim bladder. The other is what was left after I'd had my dinner

Yep ... that's the swim bladder... fully inflated...

I can say that mine had exactly the same thing happening if they were swimming upside down. I actually had from memory, quite a few that ended up like that. Maybe they get a fright race to the surface, take a huge gulp of air then have an overload of O2 and can't get rid of it by burping like us

I cant burp but boy can i fa;t

can't burp, bloody hell that's UnAustralian

you feed them to the perch

Ok lets refrase that i would rather fa;t than burp

That looks good VB, I see you didnt lose all the barra over the winter. How many are left?
I managed to get SPs and now they are about 85mm long (maybe a few at 100mm)
they are frenzied feeders and can hear me coming with the feed.....crowd around and go nuts on the surface.
I'm trying to get as much growth as possible before April/May but if I put too much feed in the water gets a bit dirty.
I will be changing out a couple of thousand litres this weekend. That may help.
Very happy with things at the moment.....
Cheers, Ira

[F&F - I agree a good investment. Could you run it continuously though. This was a 43 hour blackout. With losing all the food and all the other inconveniences, more expensive generator that will run a fridge and freezer and maybe a light or two, without ruining the things, is looking like a good investment.]

By the way VB, "Crazy Sales" website has good generators at low prices. 4 stroke, 2000w, mine runs very well, easy to start and not bad on fuel. Just weighs a lot.

Cheers. Ira

Thanks for the tip Ira. Bugger all barra left. Most eaten or dead. Had some big dead ones this week. As I've said before - I won't be doing them again. I have my theories as to why they have been so troublesome, but they are not supported by evidence nor litterature.

I'll probably be shutting down the system for a bit once all the barra have gone - for a few reasons. I may not be able to get it up and going again until about this time next year.

You were running a trickle tower weren't you VB???

I wouldn't call it a trickle tower. I had a biofilter (maybe 150litres) full of clayballs with a spinning arm supplying the water to the media (so was a wet/dry filter). I actually shut that down a while back because there was no need to run it anymore (with high temps and more than enough media in the grow-beds to process all the ammonia).

Did you find that you had a constant nitrite reading of about 1???

Addendum... were you also running through your growbeds at the same time... or part of the time?

Rupe - was running the wet/dry filter 24/7 and the grow-beds just during the day. I've been running the beds 24/7 again for a few months now. Tests have been showing no ammonia or nitrite.

As an asside - even my goldies (that live in the sump) have now died. Wouldn't necessarily draw any conclusions on this though - perhaps the fact that I never fed them contibuted to their demise .

I think the barra have suffered from ongoing exposure to high nitrate levels. I know that this is not meant to have this affect - but I still reckon its the reason (along with the fish being generally temperamental - going into shock when I have the cheek to look at them ).

I remember a conversation I had with a commercial barra grower who was at the Aquaponic lectures a couple of years back. He told me that the reason he was interested in possibly including AP into his commercial aquaculture operation was that despite being told that barra were tollerant to high levels of nitrate, this had proven not to be the case.