Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Thanks....

Cooked up the yabbies today...also smoked the last trout from the freezer from last season.....along with some garlic.....yum yum

That could easily qualify in the brag thread. Do you still have barramundi in the freezer too?

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Thanks Faye! No barra left, but here go the silver perch now!
The fish net was also very successful!

So what did you do to turn your pool into a 'fish farm'. We have an above ground pool (round, 5.5m diameter, 1.5m deep), and as we don't use it much we were going to empty it and throw it out, but ... hubby is a keen angler and putting fish in there sounds like a good idea. He can try his fly fishing skills catching perch or barra.

Seriously though... how do you change a pool into to a fish tank? We have a saltwater chlorination system, solar heating and a huge sand filter. If we can put this to good use and maybe set up a floating aquaponics system.

Any hints, help and suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Start reading from the beging, interesting read. Also google swimming pool to fish tank conversion.

Hi Stubby,
Happy to help! A lot of what we did is throughout this thread, but to cut a long story short we installed a submersible pump and bio filter as running this was cheaper than running the pool filter for the number of hours it would be needed.
We let the chlorine disappear over a few weeks first, set up the pump and biofilter and then added fish! Just check the temperature of the water/what season etc and make sure the fish will suit. We put barra in when the water was still too cold (couldn't wait!) and lost a few initially.
I have read of others who only have trout in winter, using the pool pump, then convert back to purely a swimming pool in summer. Using a pool pump, as you know, does cost a bit, so again you will need to check what the oxygen needs are of your fish as to how long you run the pump. Our little eco-pump runs 24/7.
We also added zeolite to the pool filter instead of sand, so if the ammonia spiked too much we could run the pool filter (zeolite absorbs ammonia) plus it gives extra aeration now and then if needed (like when the trout get really big!!).
We have done it for some time now, and love it!

Harvested a dozen trout from the AP today- first harvest! They were small (especially in comparison to the ones from the pool last year!) but certainly plate size and a perfect meal.
The water was a bit dirty last week, and the trout were off their feed a bit so seemed opportune to thin out the numbers. There are still 47 in there, so plan on taking out another dozen on the weekend so there is less stress for them for the final bit of growing before the temps get too high.

That looks luvley and fresh

More trout caught on the weekend!!! With warmer weather coming to Perth....have to make room for the barramundi! Not as big as when we grew them in the swimming pool, but delicious none the less!
There are still about 15 to go....getting bigger with each feed

Are there still barramundi about? Or are you getting from GP?

We are going to have to get them from GP....everywhere else they are too small for us to grow out I think as we don't heat the water

So....the last of the trout caught ready for barra, on a freezing, wet and windy Perth weekend in November?????? Our timing could have been better!!! We were supposed to pick up the barra this weekend, but postponed until next weekend........didn't fancy taking them from their warm tank, transporting them and putting them in our tank at 18..7C!

Plus our estimating......

On Wednesday we caught what we thought were the final 15 trout, and it turned out to be 20. On Thursday we caught what really MUST be the final trout, another 7!! And on Friday we really truly caught the last one!! All up we had 70 trout in the tank, so we have plenty of trout dinners ahead!

The largest was 410 grams, no where near as big as those we grew in the pool (which reached up to 1 kg), but a very nice size, especially as it was our first season with aquaponics rather than aquaculture and we didn't want to over do the feed in such a small amount of water (2000 litre tank compared to a 10,000 litre pool). All up we estimate to have harvested around 23 kg of fish grown in 6 months, and we are very happy with that!

So....latest update..........barra are BORING!! Well, compared to trout!

They are eating now, but we had such a cool start to the season (hard to believe that now!) that they suffered for a while.

The perch in the pool are doing very well- we catch the occasional large one for dinner (putting the smaller ones back to grow some more). There are currently 150+ ranging in size from October's fingerlings to 30+cm.

The grow beds coped quite well in Perth's heat wave, but we decided to rig up a shade sail over them- not only for the 40 degree sun but also to keep some of the falling leaves and gum-caps out!

The yabbies are also doing well and breeding in the warm weather- we put the juveniles in the aquarium inside, and graded the others into the two IBCs (plus some for the pot )

lol I'm looking at buying a house soon and thinking that if it doesn't have a pool I should build one... and then trying to figure out how I could also grow fish in it lol