Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Painted the outside with behr basement and masonry wateproffer. 27.98 covered the whole tank with 1 coat.


I have to wear sunglasses to look at it in the day time.

Excuse the shade cloth, I rinsed the inside with salt water as per super theroseal's recommendation for pond use and drained the water from the bottom

The tank is now filled with water with some tilapia fry and minnows to check toxicity.



brian

Looks good man

How are the talapi & minnows going, bcotton?

That really is an intense white there mate!

Charlie,

the tilapia are growing crazy, i dont see minnow anymore so i think they got eaten or just hide at the bottom and dont come up for food. The water is very murky with algae bloom.

Everything looks healthy. I'll get some pictures of the water during feeding later today.

Sorry I havent been doing much as far as updates. I havent had the extra cash to fund the grow bed build but I have been working on a side project of trying to spawning bluegill. I'll start a separete thread later today with pictures of that and what i have learned so far.


brian

Deff cant wait for a video and picture updates

Here's pictures of the water. There is only about 6" visibility right now but the algae and tilapia are doing well.

I addeda couple of barrel half grow beds to help with filtration. There's a couple of hop plants in each but they are getting obliterated by aphids and not doing well.


brian

looking fantastic

Good progress so far.
In my case, tilapia do not eat minnows. Some of my tilapia now are about possibly 1.5 to 1.7 lbs.
They look very delicious now. Also I have some midget tilapia that look possible 1/4 of the big ones. They are all from the same stock.

If the tilapia and minnows were the same size or the minnows smaller when you put them in, well tilapia fry and small juveniles will happily eat other fish, each other if they can, definitely smaller tilapia get eaten by larger young ones.

Of course it could depend on the kind of minnows too as to how likely they are to survive. I know mosquito fish (which some people think of as minnows) will happily eat tilapia fry of the right size.

Same, My experience has been if it fits in their mouth they will eat it. And they prefer live food over commercial.

The fish do grow an vastly different rates. I think some are just more savvy about snatching the pellets. Right now the smaller tilapia are at a huge disadvantage because they have to nibble at the pellets and the bigger ones can come in and swallow a pellet whole.




brian

Smash some of the pellets before feeding them and the little guys can eat the crumbs while the big guys will eat the full size pellets.

bcotton, any updates on the system? Looks good so far.

How do your hops do in the TX heat? Try some worm tea as a foliar spray for the aphids next time. Obviously spray before the cones start to form. Neem oil will work too. I also encourage lots of frogs, praying mantis and lady bugs for aphid and nasties control.

Yes im curious on an update as well. Maybe a video update?