Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Good one Dicko.

Rhubarb grows beautifully in AP.
My biggest problem was to find out when it was ripe!
All sorts of answers, When the red is so far up the stalk etc.... We had green rhubarb! the universal answer for all types, when the stalks are about 10" long! (250mm for you young blokes). Its a bit like silverbeet, when the leaves are big enough, its ready to eat.
Just get rid of the leaves properly. dont put them in your compost.

of course... like tomatoes and celery leaves the rhubarb leaves are poisonous!! - for us and for the soil.

Celery leaves are poisonous as well...

Hell, nobody ever told me that... not that I use them often, or in quantity... but I have chopped them into dishes before....

the young small celery bits that you have on the inside of the celery spiral they're ok... but the big dark mature green stuff are the poisonous stuff that's why I always try to find the whitest celery green = sour... white = healthy

.... don't tend to bother with the "big" leaves...

But I've always gone for the "green" celery.... although I had heard about enclosing the stems in a tube to blanch the colour... I'd never understood the reason for it...

I didn't know about tomato or celery leaves...
I put split pvc tubes around the celery because it helps form nice long stalks. hadn't considered blanching.

Dicko have a read in the Stephanie Alexander book about blanching celery. P232.

Blanching celery ensures its crispy without bitterness apparently.

Blanched does make a big difference to the taste. They do the same thing for asparagus.

Time to pull the finger out and try to set up a refrigerated system.
This time last year I bought a huge freezer (Approx 1000 Litres).
I filled it up with coils of garden hose, and pumped tank water through it.
It worked well, but was quite inefficient as the freezer ran all day due to the inability to seal the lid properly.

the new plan is to seal the joins in the freezer with silicone, and plumb the unit up as the actual fishtank.
I have a programable temp switch that will turn on and off the power supply to the compressor at set levels so it won't try to freeze the tank.

I'll try to remember to take photo's

Ah good to see some action happening there Dicko.

I reckon its almost time we caught up for an ale and a cheese or two.

Sooner rather than later,

Do you like footy? there's a big game coming up!

Actually.... thats where it all started for you wasn't it?

Went away for a couple of days, and had someone drop in to feed the trout.
Gave instructions on how much to feed and how often....
Obviously there was something lost in the translation.
in 3 days went through nearly a kilo of food feeding 50 trout.
everything was looking a bit like soup when I got home.
I scooped out all the uneaten food and then carefully used the "Super Sucker " to vacuum the sludge out of the bottom of the tanks trying not to release too much hydrogen gas.
Went out this morning and found one aerating water pump blocked by a dead fish.
After quite a bit of scooping and netting the death toll was 17. most of them were only freshly dead and could probably still be consumed, but with the water they were marinating in they would have tasted like Carp. I should have stuck with my original thoughts that they would be fine without food for a couple of days, but the friend really wanted to help so I let him.

That's gotta suck

Yep big time.

But, it was an accident..