Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Good to hear....

The fish are feeding well, they ate 25g of 3mm pellets for breakfast this morning, the most they have had in one go so far, with all the food gone within a couple of minutes. They've eaten 25-45g each day this week. Some of them have grown heaps, others not so much, and there is quite a range of colour- some are quite light and others fairly dark in appearance.

5 fish had taken the trip to the ST via the SLO, but a couple of days ago I noticed one was missing, and yesterday I found it under the pump. One of them had been hanging around right up against it and must have become stuck underneath when I moved the pump a bit to try to suck up some more fish poo a few days earlier. Ammonia and Nitrite were up to 0.25 and 0.25 yesterday, Nitrates ~100ppm. Plants powering ahead, we've eaten quite a bit of rainbow chard now.

I collected my 4 new GBs yesterday, and started welding up some support frames for them late yesterday and will get one finished today. The existing 4GBs are on 3 high stacked concrete bricks, which is a little less expensive than steel, but does take up a fair bit of space, and doesn't support the GBs as well as I'd like.

Water temps etc for this week:

With the arrival of 4 new GBs I decided they will be supported by steel frames I designed myself, rather than the concrete blocks I used last time (the wife's idea).
2 welded up so far, but with a couple of days cloud and showers forecast, I will have to take a break from building them, as there wont be enough solar power for more steel cutting and welding.

Hi Gordon,

I am a new starter living in Salt Ash near Newcastle.

Could you tell me where you get your fish as I see you said you had to drive to Newcastle to get them.

Cheers

Baz

Hi Baz, I met Rupert of Oz at the end of the freeway as he was doing his deliveries around the Central Coast. I don't think he would have any trout now, but PM him to find out for sure. Arc en Ceil at Hanging Rock, not far from me, will have trout available in 2 or 3 months time.

Arc en Ceil usually begins offering their trout fingerlings from the end of September....

Not much use to anyone North of the Southern highlands... going into spring/summer....

Cheers fellas

Thriving cruciferous vegies at 10 weeks, but I will have to hit them with some eco oil soon, as the aphids are increasing.
Compare with pic on 31/5 here:
download/file.php?id=56259

Very warm for this time of year, in fact some of the fruit trees are about to burst into flower, and one apple already has, any more heavy frosts will destroy the flowers or small fruit.

Progress on installing the new GBs. The ground needs to be leveled and then I'll plumb them in, and I still need a couple more trailer loads of gravel to mix with the Canna clay balls. I'm going to transplant everything from the end GB on the left and put one of my steel frames under it, rather than the concrete bricks it has now.

The trout are really going crazy for the pellets now, here's a short video of them eating 20g of pellets for dinner this arvo:

http://www.gunagulla.com/organic/images ... 30720a.wmv

They ate 75g today in 3 feeding frenzies.

We've been eating the AP vegies for a while now, but made our first sale, 4 bunches of rainbow chard at the markets today

Look like they're coming on well....

Looks great and congrats on the sell

I bought some rainbow chard seeds the other day for just under $3 US dollars...opened the package and there were maybe 8 seeds! WTF!! I then looked at the package and it stated 20mg. I don't know how much that really is but either I got hosed or somebody thinks that rainbow stuff is really magical

Eight seeds makes a lot of Swiss chard! I'd does sound like you paid too much though. I paid 2.27 for some organic ruby Swiss chard, and I still have way more than that in the envelope. The rainbow stuff looks pretty, but the red stuff tastes good enough for me!

A tiny fraction of an ounce, <1/1000th! Let one of your plants go to seed and you will get a lot more than that for your next planting! The colours dont hold true though, seeds from a yellow stemmed plant wont necessarily produce the same colour. We've been using our own seeds for years in the dirt garden