Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

gotta start eating them Mon!!!
No 2 ways.

Today I netted a medium sized fish, turns out at 295 grams. Now has no head or guts and is in the fridge

Tomorrow I am breaking the syphon between the 2 tanks, pumping the vat out to the growbeds which will be plugged. At a couple of inches of water, I will sift out all the fish less than 200 grams and add them to my poly tank leaving all fish of eating (albeit some a bit small) size in the vat. I will then refill with half \new water and some salt and begin the purging process as Heather feels that the first fish we ate was slightly "muddy" even though I disagreed LOL (probably biased LOL), and I want them to taste the best they can to prove to some disbelievers that this whole thing is worthwhile! From here we will be having some fish dinners, as this tank will as of tomorrow, not be hooked to my AP system, just running thru it's blue barrel biofilter.
My guess is the biggest fish will be around the 400gm mark. The one today looked around mid sized in the tank. I was very happy to see the scales at almost 300gms, I feel stoked that it got there and is a decent little lump of fish worthwhile heating the pan for. I will post opics and weights post harvest if I can find the damn camera DOH!

Excellent work.

man am i jelous or what

Good efforts Mon!
well deserved.
C1

Mmmmmmmm, Barra....

Here fishy.....

LOL, I have to drain the tank to catch them because as soon as they see the net they rack off LOL No hope of catching them!

Need all that good info Mon....in the planning stage of having barra next season.

Keeping temp records, lowest over last couple of weeks - 22c then rising to 27c....this morning 24c, so still have some good fish growing temps still going here in GH (with larger tank, fluctuations should be less also) - pump on continuous flow

Les, many people have said they will die at 20 degs. I have found that they hang inthere at 20 for me, start eating at 21 and start thriving at 25. I reckon at 28, my DO was a bit low, so they seem happer at 25, a sort of tradeoff between temp and DO I suppose. Mind you, I now have a 70 LPM air pump running 5 big stones, so more action on that front LOL I have been turning my system off for 8 hours overnight. Water still crytal clear. and much less temp drop overnight.

I have lost a couple of fish over the past week, showing me that although they survive at temps like 20 and even below, they certainly are weaker and more susceptible to stress etc. Hence the next stage- purge and eat!

Chase them around with the net to help with the purging haha!

ROFL

Yeah, thinking of turning off overnight and checking the temp difference, been pricing dc bubblers and will use it as a power backup supply as well

GH nice and warm during the day and temps returning to 25-27c by afternoon, will keep trialling until drops below 20c then switch off pump overnight and see how long it will go holding minimum temps - should get another month or 2 of growth into them up here

I had my barra down as low as 15-16 and they were still ok, not eating really, but alive.. They even got lower than that some nights in the dead of winter... I did the turn off at night with only bubblers going and that certainly helped a little in maintainting temps..

An exciting morning here.

My findings:

Fish are sized in 4 distinct groups

100 - 120 grams around 30% runty buggers LOL

200 grams around 50%

300 grams around 10%

400 plus. around 10%

I moved 57 fish from the vat to the poly tank after draining the vat into the plugged growbeds. This used around 1200 litres, leaving me with around 300 litres to chase them around in (vat was very full to start with)
Used DD's method but not by choice LOL

Took note of the different sizes and moved every fish I feel is under 200 grams, although a few I am sure were over. Also, there are about 10 fish in the poly tank still which are well and truly 400 grams. Beatiful looking fish at that size, and the biggest ones certainly look the healthiest.

I would take pics, and want to show new plantings and good growth of broccoli etc but the camera is AWOL, having a holiday with Heather's MP3 player (also AWOL )

Weighed one of the biggest and he was near 500, so very happy with that

Can't decide whether to start purging the vat ones now (probably 100 fish) or mopve my goldfish in with the silvers and use the aquarium inside to purge 4 at a time with salt and water changes. On the other hand, I may not purge them at all if Heather is happy to eat them like they are straight up. I have 4 in the fridge ready to bake for dinner so I eagerly await her verdict

What was your address again Mon ???