Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Nup, but the duck weed i got sent to be had about 6 TINY bright red worms. are these the same VB? They were like candy apple red

I expect they are the same Steve. I have hundreds on the bottom of my tank. Might be thousands in the duckweed. Maybe we have found aquaworms ourselves

The worms I got were exactly like earthworms but in the water. I thought they were earthworms and my DO levels were off the scale hehe.

turns out I went to the stream where i got a rock for the tank, rooted about in the gravel and there they were eisenalla foetida. Aquatic Earthworms.

Very interesting AA. You're right about earthworms being quite happy in water with very high DO.

Will have to look that name up...............thanx

Maybe the little ones we have in the water will get bigger - did I say there are heaps in my pond, yes I think I did

are they normal worms surviving due to high levels of dissolved oxygen or specialised worms -

i have some 1950's fish mags . i saw a wasp trap the wasps where attracted by something sweet caught,dried , crushed and fed to fish. it also has an advert for a hand worm shreder .
what about snails (land and water) and slugs. woodlice (pill bugs, sow bugs)
spare chicken eggs (if you got hens)
bread and bread crumbs
moths
i live near the sea so could include shellfish in there diet for a small cost in time (cockles,mussels,prawns,mysis)seaweed
daphnia, monia,cyclops
freshwater rotifers
greenwater algae
sprouted wheat

blodger

b.u.k,

You have a pleantiful supply of those bastard euopean wasps that were introduced here from your side.

When i was traveling there, i threw a hamburger in a public bin, and an almighty swarm flew out. And they HURT too

Sacrifice them to the fish i say

On that note,

Jaycar, an electronics store over here sells a little device with a fan and a uv tube, it attracts bugs to it by the light, then they get caught inside due to the fan pressure and are dessicated........cheap device and low power (could run it off sloar easy, as it only takes a couple of batteries)

Have you thought about installing a low wattage light over the top of your tank. Small moths and other flying critters belt themselves to death on the light bulb and fall into the water where they become fish food.

You can also build a fly trap and periodically empty the contents into the fish tank

These are not my ideas.....I first learned about them in 1980 when I bought a book called "The Integral Urban House."

Another variation on the theme is to mount a beehive over the top of the fish tank. Dead bees are protein and as dead bees are removed from the hive, they end up in the water and then in the fish.

If you set up a dead bee trap under your hives (a simple frame fitted with flyscreen which catches the dead bees as they get chucked out of the hive), you can locate the bees away from the fish tanks and avoid being stung. You gather up the dead bees and chuck them in the fish tank.

If you use native bees, you even get to avoid being stung periodically - they don't sting like European bees do.

When we're breeding Japanese Quail, we boil up surplus eggs and crush them up for use in layer or meat bird chick diets.......shells and all. I'd be very surprised if fish didn't eat eggs. Mixed up with some worms and a bit of duckweed and possibly some bread crumbs, they become an egg salad......which ought to be nearly a balanced diet for many fish species.

Gary

Gary, compltely off the topic of fish, do you feed egg shells to your chickens?

.....and don't let's forget maggots. Easy to breed and cost very little to get set up. I heard a fisherman describe them as making protein out of thin air.

Those of you who watch CSI on TV will be aware that there are many species of fly. Some species will only lay eggs in fresh meat so there's no need to risk divorce by messing about with stinking stuff.

Gary

Curios thing when we had one of those "ebay" pools set up last summer, Bees (not wasps) kept on landing on the water and getting stuck, there were almost a dozen one day. I've never seen it before............

Did i mention in another post that i cant wait for summer?

brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrring on summer

here in cairn the flies seem to lay their eggs EVERYWHERE!!! even in small puddles of spilt milk - I am looking into the fly hing, but will have to keep it WAY away from the wife as she almost throws up when she sees them in the wheelie bin