Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi everyone,

My daughter and I managed to take a photo of this slippery little sucker.
I brought them at 100 mm in mid Jan now 230-240mm

Cheers

Wow, is it just me, or are those guys growing fast?
They must be happy Barra. Good work!

Start eating them as soon as they're big enough BigDaddy... I lost mine overnight & today after the tank temp crashed to 16 over the last day or two...

Nice healthy looking specimen bigdaddy, do you have some heating in your system to keep them going over winter?

Hi everyone,

Aren't they a great looking fish?

They grow well, aiming to have them ready to go onto the barbie at Christmas,but not so sure now,after seeing what happened to Rupe.

I have 2 300 watt Jaeger aquarium heaters 1 in each tank at the moment.The grow beds do not get turned off at night yet the temp has dropped down to 10 C overnight and they have read min 20. something in the coldest fish tank.I aim for 26.

I was going to build a seperate 600 litre trout system,with 3 200 litre drums I have left over with 600-1000 litre grow bed/s.Then the thought hit me,Why not put the 20 barra I have,into the 600 litre trout system and put trout into the current barra system,that way the heating would be less and the enclosure I was going to build around the current barra system, would go around the 600 litre system would be smaller.I might go that way unless I'm advised not to. I think I have a couple of weeks to decide as I need to make the grow beds yet.I'm open to any suggestions.

The electricity bill was slightly higher than normal, but that could partly be because we bought a big bertha new fridge,the next bill will determine if we will be getting stuck into the barra sooner than expected.

I am really sorry about your loss Rupe, to lose that many Barra would break your heart.I may well be eating mine soon,after reading your story.

Cheers.

I once saw a swimming pool heating setup that ran off some poly pipe on the roof with a small pump for circulation. We tried it at work to keep the lungfish ponds warm throughout winter and to cool them in summer. They worked really well and may be a way to reduce your power bill.

Hi Folks,

The barramundi have not grown much over winter in our environment as you would expect.

I have been concerned with the appearance of fine solids back in the water of the fish tank,so unfortunately,I stirred up the water a lot today and really cleaned the bottom out,cleaned the heaters,air discs pipes etc,etc.I was using a fine fish net to try and scoop out the fines after vacuuming on the bottom and accidentally caught this bloke he's about 270mm long.I reckon he is a smaller one with some possibly 300 mm long.

Sorry about the fuzzy picture,I did it on the fly,he was wriggling a bit so I wanted to get him back into the water ASAP.

Cheers.

Good to hear that they are all still ok. Only another month or so and we might get some warmer weather down here, which will make your job easier