Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Well keep your eyes posted Chilli.

1 possum has just been removed from the biopod and it was nothing but bones, a bit of skin and some fur. The amount of fly maggots it created was enormous and the salmon have put on some good growth gains over the past 3 months even with winter well and truly here.

2 more possums (bless their road kill cotton socks) have just gone in and the blowies are going mad already.

Interestingly, as maggots only consume dead flesh, the smell is hardly anything at all. I was quite surprised that collecting the maggots each day was no onerous task. A thick layer of oats line the bottom of the biopod and the maggots consume this and cleanse themselves before entering the bucket so are very clean with no smell either before going into the fish tank.

I have taken before and after photos of the possums and will post the outcome shortly.

Cheers
T

Did you ever take these photos Tony ?

Still interested now that the biopod is coming back into production again.

Yeh mate I have..

Have been producing large amounts of fly maggots.. I've just been too slack i.e. flat out to post it all. I started writing the post and it is sitting in my drafts..

Actually its even more pertinent now. My fish need 7 mm pellets and I can't get any that aren't laced with synthetic petrochemical colouring.. What in the hell is it with humans and the need to eat orange Salmon..! They are light pink people...

I promise to get onto it soon Chilli.. You well?

T

Yeah, all good here. SPs gowing and now eating BSF regularly !

Keen to see some photos of your salmon when they're grown up !

Well lets face it, if Salmon was a white fleshed fish I dont recon they would even sell half as much as they do now. As for the 7mm pellets without pigment in it Skretting do the Classic and Nova in 7mm without any colouring.

Which just highlights my point exactly.! We are happy to consume a petrochemical additive just for the sake of seeing an orange coloured flesh that naturally should be a white to pale pink?

It is pure lunacy..!

And sorry, the Nova and Classic feeds are not for AS.

If you look at the ingredients of the Nova there is little difference from what goes into the Spectra. A lot of Trout farmers I know use the Nova for their Trout as it is available in a floating pellet in the smaller sizes where as the Spectra is only available in a sinking until you get to the 5mm size. I can assure you that your fish wont know the difference and if you dont want orange fleshed Salmon your only other alternative is to feed them the 5mm sized Spectra Pellets.

A Salmon harvested from the wild would usually have a nice orange flesh so I guess that is what the buyer wants to see in a farmed fish. The fact that its the carotenoid additives to the pellets that causes the orange coloured flesh is of little concern to most consumers and I would say that most are probably unaware of it.

I've just purchased a 7, 9, and 11mm pellet in the Nova... And FF to help keep the tank somewhat cleaner.

But not sure what colour perception you have TM, but I have caught plenty of salmon in the wild and even farmed escapees very quickly lose that bright orange colour and revert back to a more light pink/pale 'salmon' colour.!

Do we know these colourings are petrochemical derived ? There's certainly plenty of natural sources that are used by the food industry such as the carotenoids harvest from salt lakes and there is a massive industry around producing oleoresin from capsicums/chillies - both are used for producing the same sort of colour.

Skretting use purely synthetic agents. They are not sure how it is made but will get back to me with answer. The sales manager was reasonably certain it was not a PC but couldn't be sure. Will let you know

Tony, the wild Salmon I have seen with bright orange flesh have all been caught from the sea. I think their diet in the ocean gives them more colour than if raised in a freshwater environment.
There are no wild Salmon in Tasmania are there?? The ones in the rivers are the escapees from the sea cages and the ones in the lakes have been stocked by the IFS which have been bought from the Salmon farms in order to improve the recreational fishery in some of the less productive Lakes.

CB,

A if you don't mind, what is the depth on these tubs?

Thanks.

is it OK for them to drop right into the fishes water? to be a self feeding system?

Slightly off topic - but you all might be interested in the current doco on SBS - saw a really interested episode on why food industries use colours etc....:


Food Additives: An Edible Adventure at 20:30pm, Thursday 6th January, 2011
Food writer Stefan Gates sets off to uncover the truth about those notorious artificial food additives.

Find out more at http://www.sbs.com.au/television

Hoping it warms up around here soon. Still in the 20-30F range. Too cold for flies of any sort. Have NockyPod built, waiting on weather.