Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Nice

Seems about time for an update...!

I should have taken a photo *before* I radically cut back the plants. They were taking over the bedroom.



The system is, as of yesterday, tilapia-powered instead of pleco-powered. I relocated Henry and the convicts to the huge tank Henry originally came with, and I've gotta say, they look much nicer in there. This one is now the tilapia-wintering tank, so I don't lose all my tilapia in case I can't keep the greenhouse tank warm enough. It probably will stay a tilapia-breeding tank, once the weather warms up again.



This guy has already made himself a nest, despite having been rudely spotlighted and fished out of the GH tank just last night. He spent all day today picking up pea gravel and moving it, and how has a nice hollow with a 3" diameter area of exposed tank bottom at its base. The pea gravel is like 2" deep in the tank, so it was a lot of work. I kept trying to get video of him working before he got it finished, but he was still too shy to let me get close enough. I had to sit there statue-still for half an hour before he finally let me get this still shot.

I've been trolling the Intarwebs trying to find out how to tell male Mozambiques from females, other than by catching them and trying to count holes. I suspect that if I tried that, I'd end up with tilapia on the carpet and no better idea than when I started, given how such things in real life never seem quite as clear and concrete as they do in illustrations.



My primary theory, at the moment, is that the black one and the two darker grey ones, the three biggest of the lot, are males. Their dorsal and anal fins are pointed and long, extending past the root of the caudal fin, and their mouths turn upward. On the rest, which I theorize are females and juveniles, the dorsal and anal fins reach just to the root of the caudal fin, and are more rounded, and their faces don't have the bit of concavity that makes their mouths tip upward.

At other times, though, I half-convince myself to adopt a secondary theory that the two larger but lighter-colored ones (shown in the photo above, with a juvenile and/or female between them) might be females, because although their fins are longer, they're not quite as long, proportionately, as those on the black guy. Also, he doesn't seem nearly as aggressive as I would expect him to be, when they get curious about his nest and go poke their noses into it.

But mostly I think they're males. I guess maybe time will tell. If anybody knows for sure, I'd love to hear from you, because while I found lots of descriptions of what males look like, I didn't find any that said for sure what females *don't* look like. For instance, a lot of sources, in describing the males, talk about the red-tipped fins. But they never clearly say that females *don't* get red-tipped fins. I'd like to know, because even some of the juveniles have a blush of red on their fins, and that could be informative, if it's actually a dimorphic trait.

When you look up "dimorphic", you then have to look up "phenotype", and eventually "Energeia".

Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a way to get around energeia no matter what you look up next.

That takes me straight to the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics. And also has made me late to work. Where I may or may not be working solo today--but as long as I don't look at my calendar, I still have a 50% chance of not having to do it all myself, right?

The secret is to stack blocks on top of each other with little people who still think stacking blocks is an excellent pastime.

Then you can stop looking stuff up for a while.

Until they start asking questions about stuff you don't know the answers to.

Then you can stall a bit with a copper pipe and a decent magnet, but at some stage you just have to get a different degree so you have something to offer.

But it's worth noting I have raised exactly zero children, and even less grandchildren, but so far none of them have hurt anyone, so I guess I can claim a certain amount of success.

What were we talking about again?

3D Printed houses!!!

Oh. I just remembered. The mystery of the tilapia genders is solved. At least partially.

I came home from work this evening to find three very black fish in three neat nests, evenly spaced across the length of the 55-gallon tank. So all three of the bigger, darker ones are males.

So far, everybody's getting along nicely. They work on their nests for a while, then they go swimming around together for a while, then they show off their nests to the lady fish (I sure hope some of them are lady fish, after the poor guys have gone to all this work!), then they go back and forth admiring each other's nests, then they go rearrange a few pebbles in their own nests, maybe using some decorating ideas they've gotten while visiting the others, and then they go check to see if I've put in any more food recently, and then they do it all again, except in a different order.

I'm hoping it can all stay peaceful. Because I'm not sure there are enough fish left in the GH tank to really justify heating it all winter, and I was thinking I'd just bring them all inside instead, and maybe let some of the smaller ones hang out with their South American cichlid cousins in the big tank for the winter. But I'm not sure putting any of the big (comparatively big, but not so much *eating* big, unfortunately) males in with my other fish would be as good an idea, because if things went bad, it wouldn't be pretty.

We'll see.

It's a total game changer isn't it.

That and wedding cake design.

3D printing is going to have a huge impact on wedding cake design as well.

But housing makes so much sense. When you make a large concrete rainwater tank, you create it like an "old school" potter might do with clay, but with concrete. By the time you get around to the start of your coil, the concrete is ready for the next layer. Apparently it's how you make a freeway or a skyscraper these days as well, so I guess 3D printed buildings were inevitable.

Very cool.

I wish people would just hurry up and do stuff that's possible so I could be slightly more entertained. I hate how long it take for new tech to become main streamed.

Maybee with rapid prototyping, it can all happen faster...

Lovely system, how long is your planter box?

About 4 1/2 feet long and 6" wide/deep. I wish there were miniature tomato plants I could grow in there. Or any kind of vegetables, really. Everything that tastes good is too big. But it's awesome for rooting houseplant cuttings.

Bonsai walnut tree?

Too slow. I don't like delayed gratification.

Your system is really neat. Could you explain how the pump in the sump and the aqualifter works? When I googled aqualifter, I found dosing pumps for chemical addition? Is that what you are using?

Thanks

Henry rocks!