Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I am looking for some barra for my system so I am ready for summer(I know still a while a way)
and I have heard about the infections that people have had problems with from golden ponds' Barramundi.
Does any one know if this problem has been rectified or not? they are not far from me, compared to Woodvale fish and lilly farm and have a reasonable price on them.
Am I better off just going to Woodvale fish and lilly farm or is there somewhere else close to Rockingham that have decent sized Barra.
I am just worried about fish deaths.
thanks in advance for the help.

I've hear some shocking reports about Woodvale from many people.... I've also bought many batches of Barra from GP and never had an issue with any of them... GP seems to be good if you get the fish fresh from their big tanks indoors rather than the aquarium stock in the shop, not that you will get a choice necessarily. Their set up indoors is pretty impressive, a big AQ set up for Barra.. I've never been to woodvale, but haven't heard much in the way of good reports.

Give freo tafe a call, we used to get ours from them and never had a problem

I'll give free tafe a call when it gets closer to Barra season and if I'm unable to get any from there I'll go to GP.
Thanks for the help EB and Freebz, now to just get these trout to size to make way for the Barra.

You may not be able to get any Barra from GP this year as I heard on the grapevine that they lost all their fish about a month ago. The story I was told is that they were actually going to close up the fish side of things, though I have only heard this from one source so it may not be true. All the onsellers just buy their Barra from Freo TAFE in the first place.

Have you got insulation and heating sorted? If not you'll need 100mm+ fish to stand a chance of growing out in the 6 month growing season.

I think the Tafe Barra are much smaller. I got mature barra from GP a few years back with no issues - just salt the transport water to 6ppt. I also had my main tank salted to 3ppt. They didn't grow much mind! Found they didn't really start to eat well until tank temps were 22+ degs.

hmmm, thats a bugger about Golden ponds if its true.
I was looking at getting them at about 150mm because keeping the heat in my system is a bit of a problem with 2 grow beds and a 6m of NFT. unless i turned the pump off at night and insulated the tank which may work?
when it is sunny there is no problem heating the system, I could add a pool solar heater strip on the roof if i needed to aswel which would help. If I did that would I be able to raise 100mm barra fingerlings to a decent size?
I know the trout will have no problems.

I found with an insulated tank (3 layers of pool cover bubble wrap - sides and top) inside a greenhouse, and no water going through the growbeds between 5pm and 7am, and a 300W heater I was stuggling to keep temps above 16 degs.

I've now got a RAS setup inside 150mm thick coolroom panels and can keep the temp easily at 24 degs with one 300W heater.

It depends what you call a decent size? Mine got to plate size (250mm), though for me, paying $10 per fish plus feed and elec to get them to just plate size didn't add up. My current batch I got when they were 20mm in Nov and the big ones are now plate size, though for barra I'd like them to be bigger (fillet size).

Yeah I tried all sorts of different things to keep Barra alive over winter outdoors and it's way too hard.

I wasn't planning on keeping them over winter, just seeing if I could extend the time I could have them. Would I be able to grow Barra to 250-300mm from 100mm?
Thanks for the input so far

I have got fish from GP before with good and bad results, as mentioned above the fish in the big tanks always seem to be healthy but the ones in the 4" tanks can be a little sketchy, now if I get fish from there I pay good attantion to them before purchase and I put them in a heated and salted quarintine tank inside for a week or two. have had no issues with the last two lots of SP that I have got from there doing it this way.

I don't think the maths will add up in Perth until global warming give us a longer growing season. To get a fish big enough to grow to a decent size will cost far more than you could buy barra and chips + a pint at the pub.

I had 2 over summer and it was great to be able to say 'I've got barra' but once this seasons trout are done it will be back to peeponics for me.