Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Two fish I recently harvested appeared to be unwell and so I euthanized them. Sure beats chasing healthy fish around the tank.
When I opened them up they were both suffering from internal bleeding. When i opened the first one up her stomach cavity was full of blood and a huge haematoma around the heart.


The other did not have as much blood in the stomach cavity but had a bigger haematoma around the back end.


I wasn’t sure what was causing this but a couple, of days ago when feeding, the fish were so keen to get the food they were banging into the sides like never before and smashing into the float switch and bilge pump that hangs halfway down the side of the tank. Bob, the second biggest fish in the tank (Brutus is the biggest and both are significantly bigger than anything I have harvested to date), smashed into the bilge pump in the feeding frenzy and took the skin off the top of his back just behind the dorsal fin, exposing the nice pink flesh. I'm sure if either of these fish slammed into another during feeding that would explain the internal bleeding.

Anyhow back to Bob, did a nasty cut on his back slow him down? Nope he is still a mean bugger.

PS the bilge pump survived and is working again after knocking the dents out

Thanks Ben

Are you keeping records of cleaned weights too?

Hi Bunsen, yep keeping live weight, cleaned weight and weight of the guts and gills and weight of food fed. Only data I don’t have is their weight when they went in, but I think I should be able to have a good guess at that (or ask Gavin).
I was keeping records of the vegies but gave up as that was taking too much time and annoying the crap out of SWMBO.

I'm not boring everyone with all the photos. Every time I clean a fish I take a heap of photos (beats writing it all down).

I'm not bored Mdw and we appreciate your photos and reports.

Sent from my GT-N7000 using Tapatalk 2

My recent harvests have been losing about 8-11% of weight in gutting and gilling, but the fish I cleaned for friends today, was considerably fatter at 16%, but still I don't think it had nearly as much as fat as shown in your photos?

What sort of percentages in mass are you removing? (just for curiosity's sake)

You just love growing fat fish dont you Marc

the trout at Gavins are drawing lotts to see who get to come to my place next year

You started with the advanced fingerlings, 180mm & 65gms so got a head start on many of the others on the forum.



Saving all the slabs for you next season Marc, lets see if you can fatten them up!!

just had the most awesome feed of trout tonight. SWMBO Cooked Crispy Trout with brown malt vinegar butter with home made garlic bread and an aquaponic and dirt garden salad.
The recipe is in the latest edition (issue 65 Oct/Nov) of donna hay magazine.
I would have taken a picture but i was at risk of loosing my share

sounds yummie marc

Hmm that does sound tastey.

I am looking forward to seeing these biggest fish

Me too.

Temps in the tank finally made it to 18C over the weekend but quickly dropped back to 14C this morning with the cooler weather. With 2 more days of warm weather in the high 20sC forecast for this weekend the tank may make it back up to 18 or even 20 if I'm lucky.

With the tank remaining fairly cool even in the recent warm weather I should be able to hold on to them for a few more weeks, so they will be even bigger when they are finally harvested.

I will probably hold on to a couple as Mathew suggested and see how they go over the remainder of the year given that you could count on one mutilated hand the days my tank made it over 25C last summer. The only interest I have for keeping them into the summer is to increase the harvest period, particularly up to Christmas, where trout would make a welcome change from the usual food.

I've been real slack lately and not updated this thread. The latest is its been hot in Perth, says me sitting at the PC with trackies and a sweatshirt on!! Well it was hot in Perth. Now it's bloody cold.
Anyhow the trout made it through to Christmas. Made a nice change from the usual fare. I'm real happy that I can get the fish through to Christmas. That's almost 9 months with trout in the system. Hmm time for a rethink and focus on trout and not Silvers (as much as I love Silvers).
With the impending run of hot days we decided to harvest half of the remaining fish on Boxing day as the temps were getting up to 26C and likely to be getting hotter with no cool nights in sight. Up here we usually get nights down to around 16C and often down to 12C over summer so the tanks cool down if they warm up during the day. Last season the tanks only occasionally got over 25C and then it was only for a short time.

So bright and early out we went and caught half of those that were left. All the fish were over 1kg and the biggest was almost 1.6kg and 500mm long







Anyhow, after seeing a recent thread on the Forum on Ike jime and a link to a great website on how to do it http://www.ikijime.com/ I decided to give it a go. I have killed animals with a captive bolt and pithing but this was something else. Once I was confident where the brain was it worked a treat. The first one I did went instantly limp. The bigger trout were a bit harder as their heads were tougher and I was thinking that maybe the captive bolt would be a better idea

Wow!