Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

No joke.
Serious about the yolk.
Use sparingly
To avoid turbidity.



Discus fry feed by picking the slime off their parent's scales. I guess they are therefore more likely to pick their egg yolk off a pot than if it is suspended in the water.

I just fed the fish and checked on the wee ones. They are definitely getting bigger without feeding, but they are in the sump which is full of leavings of various kinds (biofilm galore, thought one of the floating bits had structure like maybe the ends of a carcass?), and I saw one the two big white ones grazing on the side of the tub, which is what I was expecting them to eat without being fed otherwise. Man I'm lazy. One thing I have been trying to do though is to broadcast the food all around so that the smaller ones have a decent chance at it and not just the noisy ones that are closest.

I have been corresponding with the tree farm guy up the hill, he and some others will be getting a tour sometime soon, in return for a tour of their wastewater system in their greenhouse, 85% complete, apparently.

Coloring the egg is optional.

Janet, night crawlers didn't get that name for nothing, they will migrate from the beds at night (in the dark), leave on a light and they will remain insitu.

They won't harm the other worms, plants or the fish , just like going on night manoeuvres

Hmmm. Maybe nightcrawlers are not the best in an indoor setup, then. I also noticed that they are Canadian nightcrawlers, which are going to like cooler temperatures. They may not do well anyway. I only bought 12. No big loss.

I went in to feed the fishies this morning, and discovered that Concubine #1 released her fry this morning! She has a little school herded into one corner of the tank. She sucks them up and spits them out in proper motherly fashion. I put in a little food for her, and she promptly swam up to get it, then darted back to her fry. I took just a pinch of flake food and powdered it in my palm as finely as I could. I put that in, too, but the fry are not being allowed out of their corner. They will have to wait for the food to come to them. Filtration is cut back so that currents are more gentle.

Fun stuff!!

You're such a great mum Janet...

Congratulations on the youngsters! I used to have a breeding colony of mouthbrooding cichlids....hopefully someday I will get to see it again with my frontosa! It was always sooo cool to watch them parent. It's really interesting once the babies get so big that they can't all fit in mom's mouth anymore. In a brooder tank it's ok, but in the wild it is like a life and death game of musical chairs.

Discus are really neat to watch as well. Once they successfully raised babies I cashed in on them though. People bid themselves silly over a purebred pair of proven discus!

Janet, I can't find it, somewhere earlier you mentioned that you originally figured 25 gal of water in each of your media filled 50gal beds, but it turned out to be much less than that. You're using 3/8" pea gravel right? What was the actual amount needed (roughly)?

I'm planning on using 3/8 pea gravel in a total of 340 gal worth of beds. I want to feed everything on 1 pump cycle but I'm concerned about dropping more than half the tank water in the process. I could run some of my siphons to feed one of the other beds (to save on water). I would rather feed all the beds straight from the tank and leave the siphon option for possible expansion.

-Stevo

Awww, grandma :triplets:

Hi Stevo, my 50gal growbeds of 3/8" river gravel take about 13gal of water to fill. The 50gal stock tanks are 12" deep, but the gravel only goes up to about 10.5". I have 3 50gal beds filling off one pump now. So when the do synchronize, I have 39gal out of the fish tank for a minute. The fish tank is 150gal, but I short-fill it to about 125gal. Tilapia jump.

Awesome, Thanks, I can finish my plumbing now

-Stevo

The fry went missing for a bit this morning, then re-appeared in the other corner of the tank. (Whew!) I can see them picking at the algae on the sides of the tank. Good thing I'm not fastidious about scrubbing the tank! They are perhaps a quarter inch long, and the yolks are completely absorbed. They're nothing but eyes, belly and tail.

Pictures!

Momma was starting to get nervous and gulp the babies in, but you can see I have quite a few. I also got a close-up look at some renegade fry on the other side of the tank. They have miniature poo-strings trailing from their little behinds, so they are eating! I can see them dart after powdered flakes, and they are obviously working on the algae.

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