Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

went for another scoop in the tank this evening since we decided to have smoked trout, salad and chips for dinner. Stirred the tank up quite a bit which wasn't good, hope they are all okay tomorrow but pulled another one out 23cm 165grams. Heres how it looked and washed down with a glass of red.

Smoker is defiantly coming out soon...
yum!!!

Pulled 7 out yesterday, sizes all very consistant but nothing over 194grams. A couple were showing signs of pinker flesh since changing there feed to the skretting.

Have got some cabbage heading up nicely, onions are starting to look healthy after planting the other day, lettuce is still going strong but we are just not eating enough.

Have been out yabbying the last couple of days, getting some good numbers, anything big enough for a feed is being put aside for a bit of a feed today and anything small is going in the settling sump tank to grow up bigger.

How are the bones when they are small like that Bundy? Are they small enough that you can just chew them up..?

Pretty much. They arn't big enough to choke you and what you cant chew up you can spit out.
The way I eat em is to peel the skin back on one side, then using a fork or knife peel off the flesh down to the backbone. this part usually can be done with little to no bones in the flesh. Then peel out the back bone and the entire skelleton usually comes out in one go, leaving the bottom half of the flesh. I even eat the skin, especially if its really crispy. Yum.

cool mate,
thanks for organizing the feed!!

regards
Matt

Okay, just got home from a weeklong bucks turn in Vegas, and maybe as a bit of revenge my missus killed my fish!

Nah the inevitable did happen though. Got a msg from her bout midway through my trip to say she went out to feed them and found that "the pump had stopped and there were quite a few dead. what do I do?"

I eventually was able to call her back at a sensible hour and found that the pump had stopped working, possibeily due to low water in the sump, also there was a dead yabbie in the sump and that the main trout tank had about 20 or so dead.

I calmly told her to top up the sump tank and check the outlets of the pump line to make sure they were all pumping into the growbeds and not spilling water out of the system. I then told her she had to remove the dead ones! As if I wasn't in the bad books already! Other than that there was not much more I could say for her to do. Putting it down to the fact we must have had some warm days with a fair bit of evaporation and transporation had dropped the water level in the sump enough to drop the float switch.

The end results were 17 dead, apparently not many much bigger than what we have been eating over the last few weeks.
Pump guard was no longer protecting the pump and there was no water pumping out of the GB outlets, source of this was a yabbie claw stuck in a tee!

Before leaving I had been out yabbying and placed quite a few in the settling sump tank.
Also before leaving I decided to feed 2 live yabbies to the RF in the pump sump tank.
One of these was either eaten and the pump sucked up the claw, or the yabbie crawled into the pump and got munched.

Strangest part is that GB's have not been recieving water now since around Wednesday.
Fish were found dead Wednesday. Scooped out Thursday. Remaining fish were all alive today Saturday on my return.
Water test showed 0 nitrites!
And everything else looks fine today.

I pulled another 3 out today just in case I'm in for more deaths.

Things that could have avoided this situation,
- not going to Vegas for a week
- larger pump line to allow larger solids to travel through to GB's
- keeping yabbies away from pump sump
- running a back up pump while away

Anyway pretty emo about the losses, thankfull that it wasn't worse, worried the worst is yet to come, curious that my ites are all good with no filtration, and strugging to get over the biggest week of partying in my life.

and fish don't mix.

Nothing wrong with drinks and fish,in fact they go hand in hand most of the time. Just don't go away for a week heavily stocked and fix things you know you should fix sooner rather than latter. Like my pumpline size which runs through 13mm LD poly instead of 25 mm.

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Bit of an update: No fish losses since the big trip, however one of the little tackers that I had hooked and thrown in the sump, was not looking healthy today. Discolouration around the tail and what looked like sores on the skin. He came out and got fed to the worm farm.
Salted the sump as a precaution.

The larger trout in the first tank are starting to look alot bigger lately. So time for another feed.
Pulled out a 260gm and a 200gm for dinner tonight. I will try baking them rather than smoking them. Would like to try that almandine recipe but the missus won't like it. Will just do them in foil with some lemon and herbs and butter.
Also there flesh is definately getting pinker.
I am using the 5mm Spectra FF, which I read recently doesn't have the beta caretine. Is this true? I'm sure it does since the flesh of my fish is definately showing a change.

he looks like he met the wooden bat across the head.

Na knife through the brain.



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Yep, definitely getting pink flesh, good stuff

Planted some more veg yesterday both in the dirt and the AP.
In the AP planted some seedlings - cucumber, sweetpea, celery and some seeds of beans and zuchini.
In the dirt planted the same plus some corn seeds.
Did a lot of weeding in the dirt veg patch and also the garden bed next to the AP.
Planted the 2 lemon trees out of their pots and into the garden bed.
They were really struggling again in the pots, they looked to pick up a bit with the short warm spell we had a while back but since its turned cold again they have been looking very sick.
Lets hope they pick up in their new home.
Digging in the garden means lucky fishes too since I collect the worms as a tasty treat for the fish. Even hand fed my little RF, he actually took a worm straight out of my hand. This is what I have been waiting for, its a sign they could be on the bite soon in the creek.
With the last lot of rain though the creek is right up and very dirty so will wait a few weeks to try my luck.
Trout are very varying in size. The losses in the main trout tank, were obviously the larger ones from this tank because the ones that survived are small, even for my liking. Not even worth gutting at this stage. However the ones in the other tank, are much better, these would all be over the 200gm mark some would be pushing 300gm.

Nice work, just be sure not to over water those lemon trees
I caught a small reddie in the local storm water runoff pond near here the other day. Had him for brecky yesterday and had forgotten how sweet they are.