Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Maaaaaaaaaaaay Husband and Aie, Would like to congratulate You on reaching this centurah.

hmmm - what do you class as a reasonable sized maggot farm... and do you have close neighbours

Congrats on 100 - here's to many more

Crackup Jaymie, thanx. AM, strictly backyard size. Only got one backyard neighbour with a laneway at rear. Our southern neighbour is in fact a church group of some sort that meet about once a month. Got a 6 m by 4m garage doing nuthin at the moment. How to get the idea past the minister for recreational harassment.....hmmmm, don't tell her!

Ok, bit going on.
Got some practice catching silvers on the Murray, (at Koondrook) over easter. Kids now want to catch em, not just give em warm fuzzy names. That's a good thing.
Bought some yabbies and shrimp home from the river and threw them in the tank. Most carked it. Ammo! You got it. Anywho, carcasses now feeding mossie lava in duckweed tanks.
Bought a fish net for 4 bucks at the Murrabit market, gotta be bargain of the century. We caught plenty silvers over the wknd. After putting a few on the stretch rack, we got a feed!
Ordered some silvers from KGFF to pick up Satdy. 150mm for 2 bucks each. Will have a sticky whilst there.
Might have to do a bit of a water change b4 adding silvers but dats ok atm.
Picked up a 20kg bag of pool salt for 5 bucks today! It was a bag with a cut in it and basically unsaleable. The guy said i was doing him a favour, so my guilt soon evaporated.
Got a couple yabbies left from the river trip, they can eat the shite etc.
Bloke at the fish shop today reckons copper sulphate was the go to get rid of fish diseases. Told him that i had a very cheap bag o salt that would do me fine for a while. He mentioned something about old wives tales b4 retreating to sanctuary.
Let ya know how things progress. Photos as they come to hand.

Does that mean we are all old wives?

Things are sounding good, TT!

not me!

Hi Janet, he was the expert so didn't want to contradict him with the evidence of those on the board here, but secretly sniggered to myself.

I can personally vouch for the use of salt in a fish setup! So can my remaing fish.

LOL!! He wanted you to buy his expensive stuff.

Well, got fish from Lindsay and Glynnis today. Lindsay spent half hour showing me around. They are really looking to wind things up. They have 30 odd mixed brood stock, some over 2feet long!! All silvers. They run anaerobic and solids filters to remove/convert ammo/nitrite and he has 30m by 6m growbeds on polystyrene rafts. Looking to increase this 6fold with the fishtanks they have. He sells his fish locally, live at $5ea for 350gram size, or nearly 15bucks a kilo!
Sells a mixed kilo of lettuce leaves for 15bucks also. Their location isolated from Melb cbd markets prolly allows them that price locally. He gets $2 per basil plant, assorted varieties that are ready 8 weeks from seed. Their stuff tastes good too!

Finished up with 21 silvers. They are nearly 12 months old and some have got to be 20plus cm long. Photos etc soon.
Did a fairly major water change and still got a crap nitrite reading so thought, "stuff it." In they went. They are incredibly active, gave them a bit of food after a few hours but they were more interested in swimming thru the siphon water from the GBs. Ran the spa pump for 15 minutes to see what they would do. Lined up like a school parade, 5 abreast into the current.
Have had the pump running most of the day to keep things turning over. Finished up with some Barra pellets, P2 i think, they have a protein count way over 40%. Interestingly have a 13% or so potash count, so this should help fruiting plants.
Must get some lettuce seedlings tomorra b4 heading off to the footy.
Don't remember being this nervous b4 the birth of my kids, but i am sure my memory is playing tricks, hehe.

have fun with them TT

hehehe.... The fish are the fun part aren't they....

mine are starting to jump out of the water for food now

I had a jumper last night. The dog was going nuts in the middle of the night so got up to inspect. Hear the flop flop on the spa deck. Turns out a few had been playing in the bubbling water and one got a bit too keen to have a jump around. All good now, popped it back in and all alive this morning. Still no real interest in food tho. Pics shortly.

a lid! put a lid on!