Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

looking good a fish tank that size will take a while to cycle
That stack if grape picking boxes they are galvanized a definite no no in aquaponics

I've had veges growing for a few weeks now. If I dose with Am Sulf to 1-2ppm and it's zero in 24hrs or less, that's cycled right? The dip tins were an attempt at a cooling tower that's gone back to the drawing board.

Feeding new fish. About how much? I am crushing 25x 2mm pellets at a time now. We (wife and I) discussed the rumour that you can over feed fish, but decided that old story might have been only relating to goldies or more to do with excess food dirtying the water. Can I feed till they stop eating? Can I feed them the grubs I'm picking off the veges? I'm worried about what is meant by weening them. Am I weening them back off of pellets?

Dex.

The leaves behind the cook's hand I would guess are turnips. Parsnip leaves are a little more like a flat broad parsley

Go for it Dex, feed them till they won't eat any more, and you can do that numerous times a day, especially with such small fish in a huge system. We were feeding our small SP as much as they could eat 3-4 times a day and they have grown really quickly..

You'd think a bloke might have taken more notice where he put what, but..... next time!

Glad to hear your advice Joel. Especially since feeding is the fun part and 50 fish confined to, maybe 20L of water in 5000L looks unlikely to get dirty.
Does anyone have any opinion on feeding grubs to the fish?

Dex.

I'd say try them.



If no ill effects, feed them to the fish...

So how do they taste?
But seriously, how big are the grubs? If they are bigger than the tiny fish, it might be hard for them to eat the grubs without special preparation. Just make sure to keep feeding the pellets they were weaned to or trained to so you don't have to re-train them again. And when you start to get low on the feed and are thinking of changing feed, be sure to start mixing the new feed in before you run out of the old or they may take a while to learn the new food.

I'm crushing 2mm pellets now, so when they get bigger, and the trout coming next week, will just get full pellets. The grubs are just little wrigglers, but the fish seem to be able to handle reasonable size grubs, maybe up to half their size. Not big enough to feed them the plague locusts we have right now. Hundreds per square metre.

I took the soft option and just tested on the fish without trying them myself.

50 trout should be on the way home from Lewiston now. Bummer about the weather. Water temp is getting up to 24 again with this bout of warm (low 30s). They have a home in a 150L bucket suspended in the tank and I have a icecream container of ice floating in it. We'll see if that helps. It's a big ask, but I'm hoping for a localised cold spot for the trout and a warm spot so the silvers keep feeding. I'll wake up in two hours or so and have to face the real world. I've got some warm fish and some cold fish in the same tank and I wont be able to have my cake and eat it too.

Just run a pipe underground about 1 meter of more in depth.

The ground is a constant 17 degrees.

All you need to know is thermal absorbency rate, exchange rate to get legth and temp at a constant.

Thermal absorbency is determined by the geology (sand clay) and moisture. The wetter it is the more efficient the exchange.
Once thermal energy is dissipated into the ground it quickly spreads around so the temp will only increase slightly in the sink area.

For those in Cold climates the opposite is true. It becomes a heater.

Geo thermal works well.

Have some plans in mind, but I'm not quite up to it yet.

In put 50 100mm trout into my floating container last night. Nice to have bigger fish to look at. They wouldn't feed, but the water is still getting to 24 deg, and they had just travelled 3 hours so that's to be expected maybe. I've lost all but 3 this morning.

Can't see them anywhere. It's a big, dark tank out there, once you've escaped your enclosure.

Bugger... so you lost 47 fingerlings ... that you can count???

24 degrees is way too hot for fingerlings... probably 20 at max.... with lots of air...

Lost as in they're in the tank somewhere and not in their holding pen. There is a change coming in now and I'm working on the air pump. Am I after the temp, O2 or just the water movement most importantly? I can't find any dead ones (they will float, yes?) but they haven't eaten yet. They were, and the ones left are, fairly active. Enough to jump anyway
With the wind at the moment, I might have to revisit my cooling tower idea.

Air is go!!! 90L/min or so it says on the box. And if you can't trust the packaging on a product half the price of it's competition, made in china and bought from an online importer based in Queensland that wont return an email about a missing part........ then who can you trust?

I've got some blocks of ice, including a 10 square bucket that fits neatly into the chest freezer, that I will chuck in tomorrow arvo if the water starts boiling.