Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

All this has a familiar sound to it. I just set up a 3000 litre tank under a Japanese Peppercorn tree. Checked my fish at 6:00am, all OK sparkling water. At 7:30am 200 dead fish and brown cloudy water.

GVo figure. I have had the water cycling thro the growbeds for the past week and no more deaths and the water ios still cloudish, with soapy type bubbles on the surface.

I need to check out this tree,

John Fenn
York WA

Yep, had a peppercorn tree clean out my pond back in the early 90's in Kalgoorlie. Ended up having to put a double thickness of shadecloth over it to make sure no berries or leaves ended up in my pond.

I think I now understand what happened, thanks to your input.

I had made a shade house over the tank to stop leaves and berry's falling into the tank. It worked very well as there are lots of leaves on top.

At 6:30 we had a short rain shower, the first in 6 months, and it must have washed all the toxins out of the leaves etc and straight into the tank.

So either move the tank, or build a roof over it.

DAMN!

Thanks again

John

Bought a big gas smoker, $200 from Aldi:



Having a bit of a dinner party tomorrow night so I pulled out 5 trout, first harvest of the year between 25-27cm so not too shabby considering I was expecting them to be a fair bit smaller this year due to the ANZAC day disasters (and the corresponding month or two of feeding very very little).



1kg fish when gutted, so roughly 200g each. So prolly 250-300g when gutted.

Excellent........ gees thats cheap for only 200, how big is it? Bit hard to tell from the pics..

Yeah, that smoker looks great, let us know how good it works. Nice looking fish with good tails too.

I have seen the same smoker at BBQ's Galore for $349, so good pickup for $200

That's very impressive for that price - nice Gemmell - can't wait to see the photos.

Holy crap it's cold. Todays max is 19 degrees... over the next week we max out at 28, and our highest lowest is 15 (lowest lowest is 9). Where is SUMMER? No problems with the trout though! Might be able to go away for christmas and leave 'em be!

Smoked:


There's 4 trouties on that part of the tray, and there are three trays. Gives you an indication of scale - I can smoke a lot of stuff in the one go.

Trout still going - we had our first day over 30 yesterday - over 300 days since the last day over 30 (according to the local rag).

A few hot ones forecast though - 18-35 today, 18-37 tomorrow. And then it goes back to being rainy with lows of 10!

The only reason I'm harvesting is so I can keep having these smoked trout canapés.

Remember if we don't see pictures it didn't happen.
Trout canapes sound really nice Gemmell

Found a cheat the other day.

I had stupidly not staggered my plantings of lettuce so all my current stuff went to seed and I had to BUY lettuce (for the first time in several years). Some would say I've failed as an APer.

However, I did discover how to cheat to get yourself some AP lettuce real quick:

Buy yourself a hydroponic open leaf lettuce from your local grocer. Take off what you need for a salad, plant the nice bare rooted, pruned lettuce in your AP bed. Within a week it's a lettuce you can use for the next salad. 2 lettuce for 3 bucks is almost better than seedlings - their root systems are so developed they recover in a jiffy.

You can do the same with those bunches of spring onions. Just prune off the tops and plant as long as the roots are still white.

I have floated a coriander plant from an asian shop on the surface of my fish tank and it lasted for weeks!

It's 37 degrees here right now. Trout tank 23.7 degrees. Still going to get down to the teens tonight though! Only a month and a bit to go and I'll have made it through the summer!

Got one thumper evaded my nets, and the runts that I threw back (which are now getting to 25cm-ish). Probably 25-30 fish total.

ebarra optima is relegated to a fountain pump which spills over my shade cloth cover, cooling and aerating.