Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I will take a photo for you when i get home. Basically just a coke bottle and some cable ties.

Sorry for not posting a pic of my yabbie trap. We had a bush fire about 3 - 4 kms from work and it slipped my mind when i got home. Will try for one today or tonight.

One thing, I managed to identify one of the fish i caught. The one with the yellow tail. It is a swordtail, and it even mentions in the link beolow they can be found where i caught them. Looks like i should be able to add them to my tank ok.

http://www.fish.wa.gov.au/docs/pub/IMPFreshwater/IMPFreshwaterPage07.php?0506

and another link

http://www.livefish.com.au/tropicals/swordtails/pineapple-wagtail-swordtail-5cm.html

Sorry it took so long with these photos. It has been busy here with the bush fire causing an evacuation at work and visitors. The trap basically uses a coke bottle and some cable ties. You cant really catch big ones, but there really isn't any of a decent size in the river anyway. I was actually catching bigger ones than people with a proper net though, as well as probably close to 100 baby swordtails and a couple of bigger swordtails.



The above pic shows a photo of one being made. You can see there is still a cable tie missing.



Above is a completed trap. It just needs some rope and some bait

what are you baiting it with..?

Juergen

iv never even thought of using cable ties i have tried cutting the plastic in strips and folding it over but this looks way better thanks for sharing

Remeber high school physics?
Red cellophane doesnt turn white light red, it blocks all the blue and green light, only letting the red through. Hence making white light come out red.

It is the same with plants, the leaves are green, so the green light is passed through or reflected off the leaves, the red and blue is absorbed.
That is why when you buy fluros for plant growth they have a purple tinge, the amount of light they can put out is limited by the tube itself, so they are made to release less green light, more red and blue, aiding plant growth.
That is why plant growth lighting has a PAR value, or photosynthetically active radiation, it is a measure of the amount of light released that is used by the plant to aid in photsynthesis.
If you google PAR spectrum you will see what light plants need, but basically it is a graph, going through the colour spectrum, you can see plants need high levels of red and blue, but almost no green.

The plants still need both red and blue light.
You can buy CREE LEDs that are designed for plant growth, generally the have a vast majority of white LEDs, and a couple of high output red and blue ones to give that extra boost to the PAR value.

Andrew

That's a nice trap. Simple. You gave me an idea for a weekend project.

I tried some red meat in the traps but i have found mulies work heaps better. Probably closer smell to their naturally occuring food. The best i have managed so far was 12 in about 15 minutes of soak time. Also caught over 100 fish in there as well. It turns out that both the yabbies and the fish i was catching are a noxious pest so i took them all home. I posted some pics of the fish i am talking about. It is called a swordtale.

I put the yabbies i caught into a 2m diameter pool in the hope that they would grow out a little, but Charlie has made it pretty clear that they wont. There is probably around 50 in there. Its a shame they are so small. Im happy to share, especially to this community of pure awesome There was someone with a normal yabbie/marron trap on the other side of the river and i was definately pulling up more yabbies than they were.

Thanks for the detailed info werdna. I have definately seen a droop to the plants after a few overcast days and that is with the long summer days. I dont think anything will grow in winter! You have given me a wicked head start on finding the best light for plant growth.

So my new fish arrived yesterday! Very exciting. Only problem being most of them were dead The female gourami was alive barely and 4 of my 5 neons were dead, one of which was half eaten. All 10 glassh shrimp were alive, but at last head count i could only see 4. Im not too worried about them though because they are hard too see and some may have been sucked into my sump.

I am most disapointed with the female gouramis though. I was excited to try and get them breeding. So my attention will turn to the glass shrimp while i work out whether i want to try my luck with another female or just get a refund and leave it for another day. If i can get a decent amount of glass shrimp i can use them as feeders when i get some trout hopefully next month if it isnt too hot.

that sux

hey rsevs3 do you know the Doherty family?

Not that i can think of Charlie. Why do you ask?

Well it has been a while since an update so here goes. I have had a couple of HSM moments with the water bridge.

The first was entirely my fault. I got a small UPS to run the pump on in case of a power outage. It should give me about 6 hours to get home or organise someone to turn off the pump if the power isnt restored quickly. Anyway the water level got a bit low as i was moving the pump over to the UPS. I powered the pump back on and the bridge started working. Sweet. This was, however in the start of my nightshift and i was somewhat sleep deprived. Long story short, i didnt check to make sure my syphon was still working. So i went to bed and dreamed about my tank overflowing only to be waken up by my GF and housemate yelling at me about it overflowing. Lesson learnt there.

The other i cant explain. I just walked up to the tank to see how it was all looking as i usually do and i noticed that the syphon wasnt moving any air bubbles through it. I checked to see if it was flowing and it wasnt. The tube was full of water that i could see but just wasnt flowing. The waterbridge was still flowing so i thought i had a bit of time, so grabbed a towel so i didnt get water anywhere while i tried to restart the syphon. As i got back it had just started to overflow. So i just pulled the pump out and got it all going again.

Then, day before yesterday i got home from nightshift only to find my female dwarf opal gourami dead. Just out of the blue. No idea why. No discolouration or anything untowards. I have also noticed one of my neons has a white growth on its mouth. It seems that it cant open it properly. So tonight when i get home from work i am going to have to try and catch it and give it a salt bath.

On a lighter note, I have bought 2 more tanks This will roughly triple my tank volume. I might use the one i have now as a breeder tank. Plan is current fish in one of the tanks and some red cherry shrimp in the other. I am hoping that i can sustain a population in a 3 foot tank and have enough to use as feed for my trout/barra.

Plant growth has been very poor. I am near certain that this is because of lack of light. So i have ordered a couple of grow lights and i am waiting for them to arrive. If that fails i will just get some low light indoor plants. Now i have my IBC system running i am not too concerned if i cant get herbs out of it.

Well time for another update. I stumbled across 2 tanks for sale cheap which i couldnt resist. So i am now up to 3 fish tanks, 2 of which are connected to my indoor aquaponics system.

The first tank i bought has been removed from the biofilter and i am just using the filter that came with it. The reason it isnt hooked up to the biofilter is purely because it is too hard to connect it. It has 1 permanent resident being a yabbie and i chuck a few gambrusia in there for him to chase. I might have to have a naming competition



The other day i saw him sleeping upside down I didnt know they did that but he still seems happy.



As some of the plants on the other tanks grow out some more they will get split up and some moved into the yabbie tank for him to have more stuff. I dont like how empty it is and im sure he would appreciate more stuff to push around.



The 2 new tanks are sitting on the shelf unit that old one was. The main fish tank it a bit hard to see in the photos because of the light from outside. I will try and get better ones tonight. The first photo is mostly like plants.



The second is The old fake plants i have. I am slowly replacing them all. You can see the overflow that i drilled into the side of the tank. I made it too high and there is stuff all lip at the top. But i can get enough flow out of it so i will survive



The second tank i am using to breed red cherry shrimp. I was originally planning to use them as a supplemental food for trout when i get them, but i have read that getting live food can put them off their pellet food. This will be a big problem given i will have a short grow out time with them anyway.



All of the plants except in the little green pot and the bit of spindelly stuff next to it came from Marc de Woose (Thanks again Marc, you are a champ )





Below is one of the few remaining survivors from the original lot i got. I had read that these shrimp can have a high mortality rate from the shop, but the ones that get bred in the tank fair alot better. Mainly due to poor conditions and food they get at the shop. That seems to have been the case with me, i lost close to 10 shrimp and have 5 big ones remaining and around 40 baby ones swimming around.



Another shot of one of the bigger ones.



Below is a shot of one of the bigger baby shrimp. To give you some scale, it is sitting on fly screen mesh stuff.



Finally the plants. I am having a huge problem with growing plants. Anything i put in there either dies or doesnt grow. I have tried putting grow lights above them. These grow lights were bought in the middle of a nighshift swing and without much consideration to what werdna had already told me about grow lights. They do seem to have helped a small amount and i have seen a small reduction in nitrates and growth, but it is stagnant compared to my IBC system. The other thing could be food, although small doses of worm tea dont really seem to help anything.



You can sort of see in the pic above that the lights cast a reddy purpley colour. I am still waiting for a stranger to knock on the door asking how much for a good time

The only other problem i am having is my ph being high. It is sitting around 8. I am fairly sure this has to do with the limestone in the shrimp tank. I will be swapping it out once the baby shrimp are a bit bigger and out of the moss.

Just found a snail in my aquarium.

I really dont want snails in there. Dont know how it got in there but i squashed that bastard quick smart. Preparing for snail war