Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi everyone,my wife came home the other day and told me i have to add marron or yabbies to the fish tank( after speaking to some very keen fishermen) to turn the flesh pink and to improve the taste otherwise they will only taste like rubbish.. so i'm interested in other aper's experiences and advice...the trout will eat the marron/yabbies in their own time but will also keep the tank bottom clean so a win win situation i'm told.....opinions welcome ...drew

Interesting idea, my trout are pink but I think that is due to the food, I feed them the same stuff as the Macclesfield fish farm. I tried Ballarat barramundi food but they refused to eat it. Now it's used to feed the murry cod.

I just dumped 5 handfulls of barra food in with 50 rainbows and they still wanted more

The flesh of Trout will change to that more desirable red/orange colour by eating crustaceans but you would need a few on hand as it would take at least 8 weeks on that diet to achieve.
You can get pellets which contain carotenoid pigments, usually canthaxanthin which will produce the same results. Some Skretting peletts contain these pigments usually in the larger sizes.

yeh I know, but mine are a holes

I got the Ballarat food as I knew yours ate it ok. Still at least it is not going to waste

I have to say that is garbage drew White or pink doesn't matter
the taste is the same, delux

Yeah, the colour of the flesh isnt going to effect the taste though it does look more appetising if its orange. I doubt Atlantic Salmon would be so popular if it had white flesh.

Especially as far as sushi is concerned. I do not find the white fleshed sushi to be at all appetising, despite it tasting ok.

Drew I would grow the Marron or Yabbies for the pot, not the trout, as TM said you would need bucket loads to achieve the change, don't know if you use salt in the system but a farmer told me add salt a couple of weeks before you start eating fish and adds to the flavour

Yep - I've heard that one too !

Around a decade ago I looked at buying a marron farm down near Albany (that's Albany Western Australia, just to be clear), which ultimately didn't occur. However, during my investigation I came across a guy who was growing saltwater trout near Denmark (also Western Australia) and selling them into the restaurant trade. The talk at the time was that they tasted significantly better because of the salt content.

Never managed to get my hands on one and I'm not even sure if he is still doing it - never seems to pop up anywhere.

The Marron farm out near 2 peoples bay? if so it's for sale again

Yeah Nocky, that's the one. Don't know what they're asking now do you ?

$400K seemed like a lot of money in 1999 ! The ponds needed work back then to be able to drain/harvest them properly.

Hijack again, no Nigel, was their in January but all is fixed and they have a restaurant called nippers, web here http://www.albanymarronfarm.com.au/ but I would suggest more $'s now, has tourists go through, charged $20 for our family and $10 a marron, but has all dams operational which are not part of the tour

well i've started something.personally i'm not worried about the colour at all...it's the taste and anything that improves the taste is worth considering.adding salt is easy enough but plenty of growing to do yet.

Drew when I got trout a couple of kiwi mates said they taste like crap, but they had only tasted river caught ones, a couple of aussie mates (smarter of course) said when they caught them in rivers they actually put them in freshwater with a bit of air for a couple of days and flushed them out otherwise they had a muddy taste, seems like a lot of stuffing around though, the AP and aquaculture trout I have tasted are clean tasting which would make sense. Yabbies, Marron and koonacs are the same, in winter when dams are stirred up they taste like mud, but in summer or from AP system they are beautiful