Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Tank top tub tomatoes, watercress, Vietnamese mint, and parsley

Plants still growing albeit a bit slow compared with summer, next winter I get trout.

Good stuff simo, you will be impressed when you get trout, just on your mint, mine took over the missus system below a pic, the roots filled he whole little GB

Gees Nocky, I read that as.... "just on your mint, mine took over the missus"

Better get some glasses then Joel, even I read it correctly!

I just fished 6 dead ornimental catfish out of my tank, it looks like they were dead for at least two weeks . I figure the cold killed them or lack of food as I only ever saw them eat algae and the tank has none atm, but I am leaning more towards low water temps.

Had a slight ammonia spike of of 0.5, the large volume of the water diluted the ammonia so no real harm done to the other fish.

I am not planing on doing any thing about the ammonia, just stop feeding (they don't eat much atm anyway) and monitor the levels.

Is this the best thing to do?

If they have been dead that long I would say your amm would have been higher last week but no stress with the temps we have now at them levels, cutting feed will fix it but probably not necessary, main thing if they aren't eating is to check for uneaten food

Hi Simo

How goes the AP system. If you take visitors i would not mind checking out your setup and progress

I had mint within the schools season for 12 months, I managed it by puting it in a pot of hydroton that sat within another pot that was submerged in the grow bed media. Once a fortnight I would pull the top pot out and rip off any roots that were protruding through it or over the top of it.

In the end it was still a PITA so I stuck it into a big square terracotta pot in the dirt garden.

Simo, just noticed in your profile, the answer to "are you human" is:01110001100001111010
I think there's something wrong with your translation chip. I'd have expected 010110010110010101110011
I must say: "Bell-Cancel-'z'" simple does not compute.

Aww comon kuda

Thanks Kuda, have to put that down to human error, how could I be so careless. All fixed now.

Hi Shaker,

Sorry for the late repley, I missed your post. Happy to have visitors, PM me to sort out a time and date.

Up Date:

Fish:

The system slowed down over winter as the SP hibernated in the 12 to 15 C water. They stopped taking pellets altogether and would huddle together like sardines under the large teracotta 1/2 pots I put in the tank as hides. I noticed that despite only being fed about once a week they were still continued to grow although not as fast as during summer. The fish seemed to be grazing on the tank wall algae and roots of the Vietnamese mint and water cress. I assumed this was happening during the afternoon when the water was warmest but they were not active when I was feeding them pellets so they were going to waste, I started to feed them pellets when they were more active and they seemed more interested than usual but alot of food was still going to waste. By this stage the bok choy that I had not already eaten was starting to go to seed and was attracting afids so I started to pull it up and sink it to the bottom of the FT in PVC pipe sections for the fish to eat and they loved it. 4 large bok choy would last them about a week and they always ate the yellow flowers with in the first day, I mostly fed they like this over winter as the bok choy stayed fresh under the water while the fish slowly ate the leaves.

Vegetables:

Because of the reduced fish metabolism there was not as much nutrient available and the plant growth was not as amazing as it was over summer but some things still grew quite well. I had good success with bok choy, celery, beetroot, silverbeet and had tomatoes fruiting all thought winter. Snow peas, carrots broccolini, lettuce and climber beans all grew but were less than impressive. I have now replanted with warm weather veg and am looking forward ti the same growth results I got last spring/summer.

Now I'm totally confused, seems there's two separate ways of saying yes in binary..

010110010110010101110011
means exactly the same as:
01111001 01100101 01110011

At least according to http://home2.paulschou.net/tools/xlate/

Sorry about the hijack Simo..

010110010110010101110011 = Yes with a capital "Y"

01111001 01100101 01110011 = yes with a lower case "y"

you could also have 01011001 01000101 01010011 00001101 00001010 which is YES in all capitals.

But none of them fit in the box for the answer anyway