Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I spent 2 months in Geraldton in 2002 and I have to say that I would perfer BSF over EB. However Tooheys Old was pretty good. Way to go Nocky I see maggots in your future

Excellent, Nocky!! Glad to hear it!!

Soon as you have a good brood going, post p some pics of your pod in action!

CB

Yes took a while, CD bought a couple of hundred live ones and seems to have done the trick, Nigel the father of BSF in Narrogin, may have to erect a plaque Faye bought a few down in October but they didn't seem to take so NFI

A plaque for a plague

Fan-bloody-tastic Jeez it took a while, but you got there in the end !

Now you just gotta keep the feed up too 'em as they're ravenous little buggers - I think some of my GB space is going to be dedicated to growing something just to throw into the biopod to keep them happy.

CD, You are so right about them being ravenous. I cant get enough food for mine at home so am now getting big bags of food scraps from work. Introduce yourselves to your closest nursing home and get them to save lunchtime scraps and pick them up at the end of the day.You will get enough leftovers to keep 'em happy for a couple of days.

missus works at high school so will get her to hit the cooking room up for scraps, we don't get enough for the chooks and worms let alone BSF

Yeah mate, forgot you told me that - that'll certainly go a way to helping.

you can sometimes pick up wast vegies from the grocery store when they clean them out at the end of the day. Around here coffee shops will save there grounds for you. BSF love coffee.

This is the matting I used for a BSF ladder. The gaps are large enough for the bsf to squeeze through. At least in theory. Ii did work to some extent. I am thinking that a strip of shade cloth might be better. They could just climb on the surface of the shade cloth.

MM all the homework I did suggested a ramp of around 30 degrees, I have NFI why but may have something to do with their climbing abilities

Yep - same here

The new Biopods have a 40 deg ramp in them and I bet they work fine. My BSF climbed the vertical walls om a bucket that was slightly moist. Granted a 30 deg ramp amy be optimum but not required. The idea I am working with should make it easier to build systems. A good collection system is key to these sustems and if an alternative to the ramp can be found it would be nice.

I agree MM and hope you can get it to work, on searching the net when I was making mine, some had tried similar to yours, some worked but only less than 50% harvest rates

Ramps are hard to build. The "Biopods" are great but expensive. Which is probably why we are building our own. I will keep trying new ways untill I come up with what works or fail compleatly and then I will build a ramped system. I dont know how to judge harvest percents but I will do my best. I was probably getting less than 50% on my first setup but there was little activity in the pod at that time so hard to tell. Building is the fun part for me.