Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Good to see you back more important how is the young one just run on amonia till the water is warm enough

Ran some tests this morning.

Temperature on our thermometer for the kids gave a reading of LOW˚C. Which wasn't very helpful but the GB that was empty over night had frost on the gravel while buckets of water around the place had about 4mm of ice in them.

Low PH 7.6
High PH 7.4

Ammonia 1ppm
Nitrite 5ppm
Nitrate 10ppm

Given those values I don't think that adding any fish at this point is a good idea but plants would be very sensible

Idea I had though was that I could get some advanced trout from Ballarat and give them a final fatten before Christmas.

Well I finally got a thermometer yesterday and I've got time in the forum because the boy is away on another of his trips. Yes I was surprised 9˚C . Maybe I should get some trout for the next few months?

I've divided my rhubarb and planted out a bunch of the little "pups" in the GBs also got some chives planted. So in addition to a few wind blown weeds I've made a beginning but still a lot of gravel to cover up.

Seriously thinking about getting some trout for a few months. Temperature today is 8˚C I know that that could turn around in a hurry but other than using "additives" what can I get in the system to run it?

If I do get some trout I'll need to get some food from some where.

If you go to ballarat for the trout you can get small amounts of food at the hay market corner of market and crewswick rd

Went fishing today and caught 219 redfin

Took about an hour even though conditions were not that great (too much wind, not enough sun).

KP came up for a visit and we spent about 3.5 hrs in the rain, wind and not enough sun but I'm still waiting on a count from him for how many we caught. Didn't see any of the torpedoform fish but then the water where I had seen them before was just too hard to see into with the lack of direct light and past the waves and rain ripples.

Still had fun and found some excellent spots for yabbies.

Stu, the PM thing is having trouble again.
We had about 250 live and 50 dead.
Unfortunately I wasn't as prepared as I could have been. Some 100 of the 150 I put in my tank went down the drain
75% of my drain drains into the trout tank. They were not particularly hungry the next morning
I do however still have about 30 odd at last count. Let's see how that goes...
I need to do some work on the tanks and get some more that wont become trout food.

If your trout suddenly begin dying ,, you can blame the Epizootic Necrosis Virus that redfin carry.

Gee, thanks for the positive thoughts Chappo, I appreciate it!

Only 300 and I reckon we probably caught 1/2 to 2/3 of those in the last hour rather than the first 2.5. Amazing what a difference being able to see them makes

I wouldn't feel bad about how many you lost for three reasons:

1. there are plenty more;
2. if they fed your trout while they may be expensive food they at least went to a good cause;
3. I think I am loosing many into one of my GBs but since I can add 200 or so when ever I get the chance (yesterday, today, tomorrow...) I'm not worried.

No worries Kuda ,, but I would have thought you would have checked about such a horrible pest fish before adding to your system.
OHH I get it ,, it's your way of thanking me for the "heads up"

I do give you the congrats on removing them from the stream/lake ,, now the best you can do for our natives is compost them.

Hi called at Stuarts today to see his system was very pleased to see it up and running [had my doubts when i first saw it ] the alternate filling contraption worked well when i was there the plants need a boost [sea sol ] its a large system with a few readies 150 1 in long
Yea i got 70 of the little buggers to play with [put a few in with the water Lillie's ] and a few in the aquarium
all in all looks promising
Ps noticed one thing his water is to clean
Thanks Stuart

Well I'm having a bit of trouble feeding my perch. Least I was. They are now getting a steady stream of ant larvae, small worms, and stuff. I'll be getting some pellet food from Ballarat on Saturday if they are open and now that I have the blighters feeding I'll try and mix in a few pellets with the live food and gradually cut the live food out until they take the pellets with gusto. Once they are trained onto the pellets I'll then go back and feed as much live food as possible and use the pellets as a supplement. That is the plan anyway.

KP and FnF how are your perch doing?

As FnF said my water was too clear so I added Seasol (N03- 5ppm) and Chelated iron (yellowing beans and pumpkins). With the extra fish, about 1000, and seasol nitrates have jumped to 40ppm while the ammonia and nitrites are both 0.

I have had big problems getting seeds to germinate in my gravel. While others have used blue stone with goods results my gravel is 20mm screenings and I think this is bigger than most peoples and is not a good substrate for small seeds to get started in (I think even the raddishes struggled although they are fine now).

To test this I cleared about 3" deep of gravel off a section of one GB, then added 3" of coarse sand and a bunch of smaller seeds. Three days after doing this I started to see seedlings coming out of my gravel were I had cast seed about a week and a half ago. Went to have a look at the sand area and saw seedlings. That was about 3 or 4 days ago and now I can say that not only were germination times much quicker in the sand but the rate of germination and the rate of growth have also been superior. How this pans out in the long term I don't know but I do know that I need to get more sand even if it is just to grow plants to seedling stage before I transplant them about the rest of the system.

I've had good luck getting seeds to germinate by making a slight trench in the gravel and putting a line of worm castings in the bottom of that trench and planting seeds on that.

When simply scattering seeds into gravel, many of them will sit dormant for a long time before deciding to germinate.