Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hey Guys,

I live in the Barramundi Capital of the Planet and do you think I can buy any????

All the Aquaculture places up here only deal in Saltwater. I know I can buy them and slowly convert them to fresh as this is what they do naturally in the wild, bugger that, to much messing around.

I have emailed a few places over east about importing some fish, havent had a reply yet.
I know the NT are very strict on Live Fish Importing and dont know how I will go with this.

I have thought about catching them in the wild but this is illegal, as you are not allowed to take fish from the wild that are below the legal size limit, regardless of what it will be used for i.e Barramundi = 55cm

The only other option is to buy fish from the Pet Shops, but if I'm going to pay $15 for one fingerling then I may aswell just buy fillets from Woolies!

Cheers
Dave

Have you tried NT Gov hatchery at Chanel Is??

Yeah mate, I actually work at Channel Island Power Station and am right next door, its a Saltwater Hatchery pumping their water straight from the ocean.

Ask them to purge xx number of Barra for a week... then take them home...

You can always salt your home system to 3-6ppt before you introduce them... and lower it over time...

Talked to the Local Hatchery.

They wont purge them for me, so it's up to me to keep them in a seperate tank and acclimatise them to freshwater myself, which I am going to have to do as I'm not allowed to import something from interstate that can be sourced locally.

The other problem is they will only sell me a minimum of 100 Barramundi Fingerlings. My system will be 2400L and 100 Barra is too many, so Im going to need to find away to offload probably more than half of them? They are charging $2 a fish.
I might be able to sell them to the Pet Shop, Dunno?

Either way, the next batch of Fish wont be ready until October/November, so I cant do anything until then anyway!!

Dave
I "might/shud/hope to" have a system up and running by Oct/Nov........and would def take the other 50. I will keep you posted on my progress between now and Oct if you like. How long were the fingerlings (at $2)??? Have you got yr system up and running yet??

cheers
Doug

Hey Doug,

The Fingerlings are at around 100mm long, I dont have my main system up and going yet, but have a small trial system hooked up to a 6 foot Aquarium. If you are keen to go halves Im more than happy to, maybe it will work out well if we can help each other out as there arent to many people doing this in the Territory.

Cheers. Are you in the Northern Suburbs/Palmerston or Rural?

Batchelor

Ha, I was in Batchelor Today!