Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I was told the MC were pellet trained, and bought a small quantity of pellets from the supplier with the fish. They were floating pellets, but the MC never came anywhere near the surface, and so never ate any, and started dying off due to starvation and cannibalism, until I tried the Blood Worms, but they are just too expensive to continue with. At least they eat some of my ox heart mix, although, being stored in the freezer and having to be chopped up each day, its not a style of feeding that can be automated.

Hey there, re pakchoy - have to tried - Asian vitamin green or tatsoi - both great producers

Tonight I made some AP silverbeet, AP tree onion, AP chives, AP dried tomatoes, (home made) haloumi and (organic market) capsicum rolls- delcious

Here's one of the smaller bulbs from the tree onion- I twisted and pulled, leaving most of the plant still in the GB. It doesn't make the eyes water anywhere near as much as regular onions, I barely noticed it at all, but has a quite similar flavour.

Good stuff Gordon. Have never seen the tree onion before but will be sourcing some seeds for sure.

Got leeks in the bed from last year, any idea how to tell when they're ready?

Just let them grow and grow - long lasting - have a go at cutting one of near base and let grow back

Ok great I was worried they would go to seed and I would miss out.

What variety and how old and how warm is it? If you cut one at base then it gets a second chance to grow and you get to see if its going to seed. When it goes to seed there will be a big centre stem (no layers).

Perennial leeks are also great as you get little ones growing around the middle one.

We're hitting the 30s all this week, it's been in since last year. No idea on variety. I have several in there so will use them one at a time, they seemed to not grow at all for months but now they're really tall although not as thick as the shop bought ones.

I've always just picked leeks anytime they've looked large enough to be useful, and before they go to seed.

Looking at 30ish here today too...I adjusted my pump timing last night for longer night pumps and shorter day pumps, put a 2nd layer of smoky polycarbonate over the ST, and put some air cell around the outside GB#9 to reduce heating a bit.

Doesn't Aircell get trashed by UV?

Eventually yes, but it survived last summer in reasonable condition- the sun doesn't really deliver much UV to it in the middle of the day (for outside GB #9) when the UV is strongest, as it hits at a glancing angle then. The other 8 GBs are mostly shaded in the greenhouse during the high UV period of the day. UV index is getting up to 10 here lately. The insulation effect isn't great, as it isn't a tight fit to the GBs, but the reflective outer side does reduce the heating of the black GBs due to direct visible radiation, which is a large part of the heat gain. I'll put the white polyester on the exposed parts of the top of the GBs to stop direct heat gain there if it looks like getting too hot too- that worked quite well last summer.
The Air-cell is what I had handy at the time, but I do have some other stick-on thin foam with a shiny Aluminium face, which I plan to try on the exposed-to-the-sun GBs this year.

I thought I saw one of the Murray Cod eat a pellet the other day when he water was around 19C, so figured it was time to add some more heat and see if that helped. I added about 25kWh yesterday via direct solar radiation, and got it up to nearly 22C, and now the fish are actively swimming some way up from the bottom to get the slowly sinking pellets. Yay!

It's only taken 9 months to get them to eat pellets. I'm hoping not too many of the smaller ones get eaten from now on.

The aim now is to keep the water temp in the low to mid 20sC, and forget about adding some trout until March when the water gets back down to <20-22C. That means I'll need to sort out a live fish transport arrangement to get them here from the trout farm 80km away, and do it on a cool morning so they don't cook before I get them home.

I'm running around 300ppm salinity now, and the strawberries are really taking off- covered in flowers and forming fruit amongst the burst of new leaves.

The biofilm on the bottom of the tank has largely cleared in recent weeks as the water has warmed up, but I'm not sure exactly why. That's only leaving a few small darker patches for the fish to hang out near. It appears to be a bit thinner on the sides too.

Good stuff Gordon its going to be hard on you to cook them after all this effort. Are they eating the biofilm?

Some of them occasionally appear to be eating it, but that's nothing new, so I don't think it's a factor in the great biofilm vanishing mystery (GBVM) of spring 2014.
I have been using a bit more B&B and Seasol in the pst few weeks to try to get the tomato and capsicum seedlings moving along, but I can't think why that would have that sort of effect.

Aquatic snails maybe? I didn't feed for two weeks and the biofilm in my 625 gallon tank is gone. I can't really say that's what did it but it's a thought for my system anyway. pH is also pretty low now for what it's worth.

Cheers