Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

might be on to something there...........................

I want some. Can we have some piccy's Daniel?

I will try and take a pic or two tomorrow, only one is black, but there is one or two with abit of black. I am going to try and spawn them again sometime. According to all the info on the net they are too small to spawn, so i wasn't expecting any, and only managed to nett and relocate 25 or so, out of who knows how many eggs were layed (can be into the thousands)

I'm trying to recall, I'm sure I was all excited over a black fish once that was all gold within a year. Was so stoned back then...

Want to see your system too, still impressed by how cheaply you put it together.

The fish pointed to with the blue arrow shows the colour all the baby goldfish were origionally, As seen in the other pic, the "black" goldfish is definately darker on the top and fins, but below the lateral line it is still simmilar to the "origional colour"

circled in blue is one of the shrimps i was trying to breed, but if they did have any babies, the goldies would have eaten them

I love those shrimp. Mine are a slightly different breed but look exactly the same. Yours would be Paratya Austrailensis (spelling? ) There's another shrimp in that photo on the wall by two of the fish.

I recall my fish now. It had a black back, like that one, unfortunately it went all gold. Slowly the black receded, kept hoping it'd keep a stripe of it at least, but no.

Still got my fingers crossed for you though.

Monitoring those fish will let you know soon enough if the shrimp are clean. Give it a couple months, no problems should mean - no problems.

You can see in one of the pics there is an all white one, and i doubt that will turn gold, and i am hoping the black one doesn't change either.

Thats the biggest this species of shrimp seems to grow, i dont feed them as such (a silver perch pellet or two occasionally), but you can see in the pic that their intestinal track is full of algae, etc. Had the shrimp for over three months now, added two test silver perch, an a connected tank about 2 months ago, and then the goldies about a month and a half ago. No problems with anything but plants (poor growth due to low/no nutes)


Will get some pics of the system soon. I lost the fish in the main system on a hot day. I had anticipated the problem and added an aerator, as warmer water means lower DO, which coupled with the fact that i had just had an algal bloom, so in the evening they were fine, but in the morning they were dead (algae stopped photosynthesising at night...)
It is currently undergoing a makeover, which will probably double the cost (to about $200) The bamboo and poly frames are too flimzy (pic of it on another page, 1 i think) so thats getting replaced with pvc, i have an aerator which has become permenant, a header tank, etc

Perhaps some shrub cover on the sunny side. Of course roots can become a problem then, potted shrubs?

Check Gary Donaldsons satellite AP pots, might work well for you.

Intending to shadecloth the pond (but then the lettuces in the floating raft probably wont get enough sunlight..but that can easily be lifted out of the water)

if you had rafts on the surface, wouldn't that double as shade for the pond hence getting rid of the shadecloth?

The raft only covers about a fifth of the pond surface area, i didn't want to have too many and decrease the natural gas exchange.

But its in full sun , so i was loosing a fair bit to evaporation.
Would lettuces grow if the shade cloth was just used to shade the midday sun like in the quick scribble below

Aquaddict, i did plant some agapanthus along the side, but the for most part lack of rain and watering restrictions, they did not go well, but satellite pots may be an option (although the plants would be ornamental as it is very hard to access that part without causing a mini landslide)

Id think the lettuce would be fine under there.

Well i have updated it abit, now got a header tank to increase flow through the pipes (without getting a bigger pump).The flow is roughly five times greater (though obviously the same volume over time)

Built a shadehouse thingimabob out of pvc, went with some fancy corner fittings, but next time i would do it with T's instead, and it would be cheaper and more ridgid

and the raft "cups" are filled with shell grit and have lettuce seeds in em (yeah i think the lettuces should do fine, thanks gotfish?

oh and added a solar powered aerator

Where is a pic of the solar powered aerator?
BTW - looking good.

Is that an air line running into the pond in the first pic?

Nova