Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

When I first started feeding I raised the temperature gradually from 11-14c and must have tricked the strawberry to believe spring is coming:)
All flowering and setting fruit.

Looks great so far.

Can you take a picture of them next to a ruler for scale?

How many do you think you have in there now?

I am counting down from the initial 1000 eggs my stock book says 592 today.
I am guessing there are about 550 healthy feeding ones. Some I see are one eyed or no eyes at all. So they will die starving cause they can't see the feed.
I'll take pix with scale. All under 25mm still.

Is the one or no eye one normal? Is something to do with the aquaponic system? What would the survival rate be for a controlled hatchery enviroment?

I think that even in controlled hatchery conditions, the attrition rate is pretty high...

That's hard to answer. Even In flow through hatchery systems there is the occasional 100% mortality. On the other hand 90+% success is reported too. Most bigger hatchery setups have separate lines of incubators and rearing trays to avoid cross contamination and so on. The success rate is then calculated over the whole system.
My setup only allowed me to keep a constant temperature fluctuating by one degree Celsius.
Temperature fluctuation is known to cause deformation and blindness.
The current at hatching is a big factor too and I believe I had a very high flow trying to keep the fungus under control.
My water is tested from aluminium to zinc plus all the standard tests on a monthly base to rule out those effects and all readings are fine.
I do the Api test every day and have not recorded any issues besides a ph drop from 6.8 to 6.4 after last weeks rain.
It balanced out to 6.8 by itself over 48h.
To control bacterial, viral and parasitic nasties I run a 1800w uvc steriliser at the growbed outlet.
So back to your question:
Is it as
good, better or worse then traditional hatching? I don't know.
What I know is that it works to a degree and hasn't been disastrous so far:)
Thanks for all your interest in this.

At the Ballarat Hatchery the other day we culled about 20 of these out of about a 1000.

In nature they would have never made it that far competing for food and escaping predators.
Does not mean all wild born are healthy.

Oh for sure. That is one of the reasons after all that many species lay so many eggs.

Mind you they can still get rather large in captivity. The biggest one I've seen was double the large one in the photo I posted.

the 90%+ you speak of would more than likely be rainbow trout, salmon are notoriously finnicky little pricks of things and you will lose a good 20% through to first feed regardless. Trout ive had 100% success with the buggers easy as, sometimes their trays dont even need picking. Trout are pricks to strip because you cant hold onto their tails but apart from that they an absolute breeze at every stage of their lifecycle.

Which is just another reason why they are one of the most farmed fish in the world.

Albino
My guess would be not enough pigmentation in the eyes, which makes them oversensetif to light, Try to put them in a shaded area, very dim light, near dark, my guess they will see fine and probably thrive.

I have lids on my tanks with a small clear window. So very low light.

Bit worried about them at the moment. Lost about 20 over the weekend.
They seem to have one sided gill issues. Swollen gill plate and open mouth.
Looks alot like bacterial gill infection.

All readings are fine and the tank is perfectly self cleaning and I remove uneaten feed every 12h from the swirl filter.

they look like they have a little bit of moss on their peck fins? just like a really light white colour/dust... hard to explain

the surviving ones should have it, usually the peck fins are almost seethrough, if you can see them clearly with something lightly white on them its probably flexibacter

upping the water flow and a salt bath is what we do. we also use chloromine-T aswell but salt on its own is good too.