Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Had a beautiful breakfast of homemade yogurt this morning and to tide me over to lunch, I had a homegrown and homemade brunch! Did a lucky dip into the tank and pulled out a 30cm trout weighing in at 333grams. Beautiful fish trout, to look at but also to eat! The trout was caught, killed and cleaned in less than 5 minutes, reducing the stress on the fish, improving flavour but more importantly being as humane as possible. I know how the fish are treated (with TLC as I love my babies) I know what they eat and I know how they are killed. From the net to being killed, less than 20 seconds. I was asked this week by some students if it was sad when I killed my fish and I will definately say yes. But at least I know they lived a happy life.


For brunch it was an AP salad, homemade real sourdough bread and a lovely pan fried trout!

Mental note: Need to buy a bigger fry pan! The bigger trout won't fit!

more photos

That fish was a real fatty, looks real good

Thanks gnash!

It wasn't the biggest in the tank, hopefully next time I'll be able to net a bigger one for my lucky dip!

Noice fish. When did you get them as fingerlings??

got them as 2" fingerlings at the end of Feb and first week of march this year. Not bad plus another 2-3mths growing left!

Nice one Quachy....

Great to see people eating their fish along the way rather than waiting till the last minute then losing them all in a hot spell...

That has always been the aim, but i know that I will have to do a cull when the weather gets warmer. but to make sure there is room in my freezer, i need to eat a few

I will say that the browns have grown no where near as fast as the rainbows, they are about 20cm at the biggest so at a guess 150-170grams. Oh well. I know next year just to get rainbows and maybe only 30 browns in a seperate tank.

Quachy,
how much and often did you feed them?
My largest would about the size you just pulled out, maybe not as fat though. Nice plate size.

regards
Matt

Matt I am feeding them twice a day (most of the time) with a rest day on the weekend. I feed them until they stop hitting the top and then chuck another half handful in. I then leave them for a minute or so and then grab another handful to feed them over 5 minutes. When I see the feed hitting the bottom of the tank and staying their for longer than 30secs I stop feeding. All in all I am feeding the rainbows about 2.5 handfuls of feed 2 times a day (level handfuls, which for me is about 1/4 cup per handful). The browns I feed 1 1/2 handfuls twice a day. I find that they don't hit as hard and are happy to eat off the bottom of the tank and 1 1/2 handfuls is enough to make sure no feed is left.

also to add, with the trout, my stocking rates for 1:1 are 180 fish at 500g. So if I get that many, and eat a few on the way, allow for the trout to eat a few of their own if they are too small, then I figure my system should never over load. I have silvers, catfish and bass as well and they are starting to feed daily (small amounts like 2-3 pellets each max) so I see it as a good idea to slowly make my way through my stock to help ensure no HSMs.

Thats what I am planning to do and harvest along the way, as the trout vary so much in size. They are really whacking into the food at the moment

The very first of my hops have sprouted! The fuggles have shot through the gravel and hopefully the chinook won't be too far away. I planted the other hops plants out in the dirt garden and they should push through in the next week or two. Very exciting I must say! It will be interesting to see which of the hops does the best, AP or dirt garden. Good experiment I say as they were all planted within a few days of each other. Not perfectly scientific, but hey who cares, it gives me enough of an idea as to which will grow better.


My money is on the AP system!

Wowsers that is inspiring to say the least for us Homebrew types.

I wonder how much space I would need to grow some barley?