Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Looking for duckweed in the bacchus marsh area. Any ideas anyone?

Quachy

Had a few silver deaths over the past week or so, but now set-up with a hospital tub! Sick looking silver has been in the tub for a day and a half and looking good. Put it back into general population tonight and it swarm away, hopefully happily. Salted the main tanks to 5ppt and the silvers in there are looking great, good deep colouring, fairly aggressive feeding.

Currently, levels are at:
Nitrite .25
Ammonia .25
ph 7.4
5ppt salt
temp variation 17-22

Started feeding the fish a bit more over the past four days to see if underfeeding was the issue with the deaths. Since then, the readings have started to climb slightly. Will keep monitoring.

Going to get 10 rainbow and 10 brown trout for winter. The silvers will slow down feeding soon so the trout will keep the system ticking over during the winter. Will be adding another 400lts of growbeds as well (in the form of 1/2 olive barrels).

Feeding the silvers crushed organic pellets, which seems to be clouding the water a bit. They don't get all of the feed as it falls, but there seems to be very little feed in there in the morning/evening and only a small amount in the growbeds, so I guess they are eating away off the bottom.

Does anyone know where I can get cheap olive barrels near the Bacchus Marsh area? I can get them for $35 each in Clematis (other side of the city) but too far to travel!

Hopefully some pictures of where I'm at soon!

Quachy

Time for an update.

No more fish deaths!!!!!

My silvers are all looking pretty good and feeding well in the afternoon when the water temp hits about 22. Night time the temp is getting down to 15 but will get lower as the nights get colder. I got 11 rainbow and 11 brown trout on Saturday at Ballarat and couldn't be happier with them. Here's to hoping that I have trouble free times ahead!

Went and visited Fishfood and Steve today. Thanks heaps guys for your hospitality, advice, duckweed, watercress and the beer! Seeing Fishfoods set-up makes the brain go into overdrive with ideas! After looking at Steve's tanks and growbeds, I'm very tempted to go the pre-made stuff rather than buying bits and pieces, but $$$. Maybe a couple of 2000lt tanks and use bathtubs for grow beds to cut down the costs?!? Went to a second hand building supply place and $80 for 250lt fibreglass bathtubs! A few of those dressed up would look awesome! Picked up 3 olive barrels from there today and will get cracking to turn them into grow beds. I'm thinking that I will fill them with scoria as it's nice and cheap and readily available in my area.

Here are some photos.

We get bathtubs at the tip for $10 let me know and i will see what i can do

Cool, I'm going to have to sit down and design the system first. but at this stage, 2x 2000lt tanks (allows for two types of non compatable fish), 1x 500lt sump (one of my existing tanks for yabbies), 1x 250lt header tank maybe(?). So a total of 4500lt-4750lts.
Working on 4500lts and 250lt/bathtub, I'll end up needing 18 tubs for a 1:1 system. I have read somewhere that I should work on 1 fish per 10lts, so if I were to stock each of the 2000lt tanks with 200 fish then I should be OK(?) Hoping that this will provide enough food for the family (wife, two kids and myself) with only the occassional shop bought produce.

Just reading back, 18 tubs is a lot of plumbing! Anyway, long time off into the future (not really maybe at the end of the year), so plenty of time to plan, design, re-plan and re-design!

Quachy

PS: Thanks again for opeing up your house and the beer!
PPS: Are teh tubs fibre glass, moulded plastic or cast iron?

PPS: Are teh tubs fibre glass, moulded plastic or cast iron?
some fg most are enamel Se Mizzie system he has 20 enamel

nice to meet you today!

regarding the floating or sinking feed, the fish can be re-trained to either, but it can take time. i go with floating for the trout because i figure they go for surface feeds in nature.

do you still have that black and green valve in the system (from one of your pics)? IF you do then i'd highly recommend drilling it out, if you look through it youll find that it most likely has a built in strainer. things like that will clog eventually and at the worst possible moment. aim to have as few failure posts as possible.

You inspired me to use a heap of eastern bloc (it has been called so many names ) watercress tonight, was very nice. like i said, i've found that it grows taller and more lush in a more flooded location.

read up on the comfrey yet? this is a very good site, and i can personally recommend her book to........fantastic!

http://www.herbsarespecial.com.au/free- ... mfrey.html

Cheers Steve, will check that site out today.

I do have teh green and black valve and I have drilled out the filter/strainer. Damn pita of a thing cloged up pretty quickly and I couldn't work out what was going wrong with my flood and drain. Had a good look and out came the drill;-)

Checked the bbq date and time, will have to see but I may be able to make it.

Quachy

Hey Steve, checked out the vids you backed-up for me, love the grow your own drugs one!

Quachy

hehehehe, backed up, thats right, i'm preserving data incase of a world wide corruption.

glad you liked it

I've been using vinegar fly maggots as supplimentary feed to the silvers and trout for the past few days along with some worms. They love them! The vinegar flies are breeding in my worm farm at the moment (over supply of food to the worms!). The worm farm is a little on the smelly side but definately producing a hell of a lot of supplimentary food for the fish. To catch them I soak a couple of pieces of stale bread in milk, chuck it on top of the worm farm and the maggots make their way to the bread by morning/afternoon for an easy harvest. The trout go absolutely crazy over them and the silvers have a mini war when I put some in their tank!

Any idea on the protein and fat content of these little babies?

Quachy

For people who may be wondering... the 19mm green and black ball valve with the inbuilt "strainer" looks like this...

You drill out the "grid"... leaving just the actual valve flap...

picked up some lemon balm (i'm fairly sure it is anyway) from the back garden of a job i was on today. shouldnt take long for it to take hold.

let me know next time you're in the area if you want some.

Better give him a set of shears to go with it...

My wife Hayley had a crack at me the other day, apparently I buried her lemon balm plant a few months ago, so grabbing some off you will be a bit of a blessing!

Quachy