Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

well done G....your up in the hills.....when they eat they get really hungry........wishing you all the best of luck

I think it is that most people are concerned that they may kill their fish in an excruciating death or they are concerned that their fish may die because of something that they may not be doing right. I think most people respect their fish and not see them as an investment. Anyone who is able to grow out their fish and kill them to eat hopefully will do it in a humane way as they have nutured these fish and would almost resent the weather changing to force them to have to kill them at certain times of the year. It is the facination of Aquaponics that has made us become interested in fish and unfortunately alot of us are new at it and have just gone along with the flow that summer is for Barra and winter is for Trout and there are a huge amount of deaths in both camps as these fish have a huge amount of issues that even the more experienced APs have troubles with. We do respect fish because they are living breathing creatures.

I don't understand why everyone has problems with Barra... I had them last year, and again this year, and they come up to greet me every time i'm near the tank, from the day after i put them in. The lids are up most of the time on the tanks, and there's plenty of light... I can put my hand in the water and scoop one out they're so friendly!

Must just be the South Aussie ones

Remember that there are many factors involved in a fish's environment and when we move them to our systems, they are often in shock. How fast they recover and settle in is going to be affected by many things and keeping track or controlling those many things can often be hit and miss with a backyard system. Many people get lucky (and we often don't hear about those cases because all went well.) Other situations, some factors are just not close to optimum and it takes longer for the fish to adjust. Often we don't even know what the conditions were where the fish came from so we can't match them or even if we did know, some things are just not that easily/quickly adjustable.
So, we do our best to keep the water quality as good as possible with enough aeration and then sit back and hope for the best with the hard learned patients we all need for this addiction we call AP.

I've been reading over posts on this forum for quite a while and really come to enjoy a lot of the tongue in cheek, dry witty posts and exchanges here

if it wasn't serious you wouldn't post it

what is a barramundi 'stress line'

FB it's the white line on top from head to dorsal fin most young barra have, it dissappears when they get older but reappears when they are stressed

oh ok thanks. all my barra yearlings have it, but EB said not to worry too much on one of Ivans threads . . .

If the man said "don't worry".......don't worry

Yeah. I'm not overly convinced that it is just a stress line as I've seen it on many barra in a number of different places.

While it may brighten up because of stress, there seems to be a multitude of other triggers as well;

- it's daytime
- it's nighttime
- the sky is blue
- clouds

.... and so on

Yeah I think Barra might be one of the easiest fish to stress....