Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi All, here is a pic of the marron we are putting in the trout pond to do the housekeeping & clean up wasted fish food - note the lovely blue marron in the corner of the box

Very cool blue marron.

Do the large trout bother the marron? I don't have many large crawfish in ponds with large predatory fish.

Also, I was wondering if the marron burrow into the bottom like our red swamp.
Thanks,
jd

is it ok to have marron in the fish tank

Can't see a problem with it and I'm sure others have done it before ( C1 etc) as lone as the marron have enough tucker they shouldn't bother the fish

Hi RB, be a bit careful, the local water testing labs had a few marron in their display tank b4 xmas, and they haven't survivied - IMO (not experienced opinion) their water gets too hot cos of position in that office? i read on the forum that a few people have marron going well in AP. from my experience yabbies are far harder to keep in confined space as they r real aggressive little devils and go hunting each other!?.
Hi jd - no in my experience marron don't dig much - i say that cos the biggest pond of marron i've seen is a sand pond & they simply can't dig in that base it would just collapse.
my trout r about the same size as the morron when they went in - trout r going quicker, but it may be if marron bred the trout may eat the youngsters - i've seen a "hide" recently made from muliple folds of shade cloth on a crude frame put in a pond where the juvenile marron can hide from predators.
at this stage i don't know if marron have stayed in the poind or crawled out - its a big pond to find 40 marron in & its dark water. i recon some r still there cos the lady who supplied them to me warned me that they go out on the banks at night an cut bits of kyk and bring back into the pond to eat. that surprised me a bit, but sure enough, since the marron went in there, there are bits of kyk about foot long all floating around the edge - weren't there b4 so i guess she was right!!
cheers ST

Thanks for the reply. If you could grow kyk (and i don't have a clue what it is) in your AP system, they may be happier. Our local predominant species, red swamp, are notorious burrowers. Also, nearly every predatory fish eats them.

Kyk = Kyku - used over here for pasture & lawns - vigorous grower - starts as lawn then invades wall cavities and appears out the top of ur wall plates under the gutters if not kept in check.....no i wouldn't like in an AP system as runners go everywhere. funny thing is where we have yabbies in other clay dam, we sit a small bale of hay on the edge & the little chaps happily eat away at it every nite - i'm told marron do the same, but i'm very careful about getting too much vegitation in the trout pond in case it changes water quality.......but then again i'm a very careful person, but while the marron are taking kyk runners in the pond they would appear to be happy enough......



heres a pic of the pond, i recon the marron get the kyk from that far right bank where it hangs in the water.
cheers ST

Thanks ST, I learned something new. You raise cattle as well?