Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Our Alien Minnows have 7 fins total and a similar red dot over the eye but it is very pronounced. Today we went exploring and found a new pond at least a mile away from the other one. The 2 ponds exit water is about 2 miles apart and go off in different directions. But the water for both comes from the same mountain. So today we found more of these minnows in the new pond. Not as abundant but there. Similar size to all the other places so I guess they must span in the early spring. I am still hoping they bear live young and I can raise them. This new place is quite a little hike for this city boy and right now every bone and mussel hurts. Up, down, slide, drop. It has it all.

When we put new males in our Ft, the males that are in there now all fire up their red to full. I guess they are telling the new males that they are in charge of the tank.

My large white goldfish carp has now figured out that the small ones do fit in his mouth and are tasty. He is getting a pot belly eating them. The larger ones are now all hiding in the plants hoping they are not next. he did leave them alone for over a week and then Mother Nature must have kicked in. I saw him take one out at full speed and the little guy never knew what hit him. Gone in a flash. Fish eat fish. We did move as many of the little guys out that we could find. The average minnow in there is too large for him to take in one shot. Maybe he will bite them in half. We will see.

If someone dangled a Cheeseburger in front of me for over a week I would take a bite also. He is just being a fish.

The good thing about these fish is that they seem to be a local variety. Not released for fishing later. Might be why I can't find them on line either. Nobody has cataloged them yet so we might have a new one here. Un-googleable. lol

One male we got today seems to be very special and I hope he lives to mate. It has one red stripe right across the tail where the rest have the dark stripe. It is about 5mm wide also. You can spot him a meter away from the rest of the fish. He is large but maybe not large enough for the carp to leave him alone. Fingers crossed. Everyone who sees these fish are asking to take some home. My friend is going to buy a FT just for them and get more. No matter how much or how often one buys fish, the ones you hunt and bring home always are worth more.

We also got about 10 more Mountain shrimp so the colony is growing. We placed all the babies in with them for now. The shrimp might pick one off if they are lucky but I doubt it. They are too small to catch the babies. They will eat dead ones though.

Gday Deuem
Sounds like you have had a busy day !

RE damping off :Yes seed raising mix is like a finer potting mix. This is rinsed off the roots of the seedling when they are strong (when adult leaves have developed) then discarded into the dirt garden & new mix is used each time.
I looked up damping off on the forum & citric acid can be sprinkled on the soil but this would not be recommended in the system as it is a strong anti bacterial. Also camomile tea was mentioned ?? don't know about that either.
I guess boiling the clay would kill all the bacteria.

I am having an awful problem transplanting greens and now the tomatoes. They all died. Step 2 failure. So I am going to try the local net cups to prevent shock but I have to grow from seed again to get this far. One step forward, two back.

Your the fisherman, have you ever tied a line to a hook that has no hole, just a blunt end. They need some kind of hook snood knot. The hooks are about 1/4 inch by 3/8 inch and made in Japan. It must be like winding small flies and one needs a setup to hold it. They are the only hooks I can buy here. No wonder no one goes fishing. Cant tie up to the hook. Even the store guy I bought them from can't do it. I can't imagine doing this on a moving boat.

We were after 2 to 4 inch fish for our tank. Guess they get away another day. we have 2 places we can see these fish but can't get the hook to the line. And I am used to big Blue Fish hooks with holes. Those I can tie or leader off. If you have ever used the small flatfish sandworm hooks, these are 1/3 that size. My guess is the Japanese don't catch many fish using them either or there is one guy/gal that ties all the hooks for all.

Oh no, I'll bet my goldfish is that slow.


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Can you bend them with pliers to make a hole?
Try fishing with a soda can tab, I do sometimes.

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And make the tab dull then when you have a bite don't let it lose tension.

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If I can turn this AP into a good living then that'll be my endgame. Get almost everyone to grow some to all their food at home.
I can't think of a healthier meat than Homegrown carp, trout, or talapia.
Plus, as I'm sure you've mentioned, modern farming dirt is nothing more than a sponge on which farmers put about 80 percent of the fertilizer (which only contains the most essential plant nutrients) that they're supposed to then stockpile the rest (it's a high powered explosive that them hillbillies can't get enough of) or sell to the tweak cooks. (the neighbors)
There are prolly 101 reasons why this is dumber than punching yourself in the face or puking scenes in cartoons and movies that are supposed to be funny.
One of those reasons being antineoplastis.
You're body has responses to the most common types of cancers called antineoplatis, highly complicated antimetabolites that require the rarest (by modern standards) of nutrition to be made.
Here's another reason,
Ground is tilled by an oil powered machine .Seeds are sown with an oil powered machine. Then watered with a pump that uses electricity derived from carbon fuel.
Then dusted, and sprayed poison on by oil powered machines. Then harvested by an oil powered machine, processed by an oil powered machine, transported, transported, and sometimes transported again by boat then again by truck...
When all is said and done it about takes 10-15 carbon calories to produce 1 food calorie in a vegitable the modern way. That's dumber than making ethanol from corn, (a net loss in energy.)


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I just found this on the net

https://next.ft.com/content/d264ab16-a4 ... 411a84f346

I did not know you could grow lettuce on old carpet. Awesome.

I bet there are 101 styles of aquaponics too.

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We are by far an oil driven society. Even our AP units have plastic everywhere, steel or glass also which are made or transported via the old oil loop. If you check, the main people reported to pollute the Earth with too many fertilizers is the home gardener. We have a tendency to use too much. If one measure is good, then 2 to 4 must be better. Where any good farmer would only put on what they need because of cost. But year after year of doing it on the same field will take a toll. Most farm veggies world wide are now lacking in minerals. The ground has been sucked dry of them. It takes about 20 to 30 years per field if it is pushed to its limit.

The nice thing about AP is that even though it has an oil impact, for the most part it should be a one time deal. Most of what you wrote about will not happen to us. I don't know which impacts more glass or plastic. But I would take the glass first. No worries about leaching or disposal.

The hooks I got have been flattened on the very end. I would need to drill a hole and by looking at the size of them that idea is worse then figuring out a good knot for them. Never tried tabs. Or even paper clips. But a staple is closer to the size of these hooks. They are too small and if I hold one in between my fingers I can't even feel it.

I can't get to the carpet site from here, It must look really funny. Even if I wanted too, there is no carpet for sale here. All floors are tiled or a plastic type wood. The weather would mold carpet in a few weeks and make a huge mess. The only somewhat carpet I see are the red rolls of astro turf in front of stores. "Welcome" in English. lol Nobody can read it.

Turning AP into the end game of selling them is not an easy adventure. I have one person that wants one now but I have to put it off until I can prove it through to the dinner plate. If I can get my test 4 up and running with the Alien minnows and also breed them it will be a good start. I reality that idea of selling them is at least a year away. I need to do everything from seed or cuttings and need to have a constant supply of new fish. As it is my wife wants to fry up a bunch of my minnows now. They like eating small fish here and they are worth a lot of money if they taste good. At her home they have some that sell for 200 to 400 local dollars a pound and they are dried fish. regular fish can cost 8 to 10 dollars a pound so you can see there might be a good market just for the fish alone if they fit the bill. They are about the same size right now.

For the first time we lost about 12 of the new fish over night, including red tail. Ouch. I think all of them were from the new place and for some reason maybe the others chased them to death over night or they were much weaker to start with and we had a problem getting in and out of the new place. falling, dropping and so on. Very steep climbs in 3 places. I am not the mountain man and need better hiking shoes/boots to handle that area. In another place I will need to lay in some rope lines for the vertical climb areas. Currently it is a butt slide going down and a tree limb pull going up. 10 meters of knotted rope tied off to trees will do the trick and either leave it there or pull it down when we leave.

The endgame wouldn't be just selling them, but also showing people it's potential for food security, health & well-being and lowering your environmental impact.
My current AP system is puny, an experiment that it's looking more and more successful (almost) every day. Now I'd like to make lots of 500 to 5000 liter systems for people at highly competitive prices. It needs to be popularized, I may even do free DIY workshops one day.

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Also, if your minnows are tasty, you could be sitting on a mini goldmine.
And staple sized fish hooks? Sounds like you'll be getting pretty handy with a net.
I've used soda can tabs for fish hooks and snare trap hooks before when I lived in Texas.


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Right now I would be happy with a 100 liter system. Going to 500 and up would mean a lot more room and need to be outside for sure. The bigger the units, might bring bigger problems. If I translate AP to Chines no one know what I am talking about. Every buyer would need a demo and a workshop for sure. It would need to be in the cost of the unit. But who am I fooling right now. I have no plants on the food table yet. So it is only a dream. It is a dream many of us have.

If you can't prove the health of purchased plants then that is a dead end to use. Just use the ideas of not using chemicals.

Gday Deuem
It's a bit hard to describe how to tie this knot so I found this image.

they are mainly used for fly fishing.
You may need three hands to tie them though !
Good luck

It looks like a hang mans noose.

This what I figure also, they are for fly fishing. Yet they do not sell fly rods. The people that tie their own flies have special tools for winding them. If I had a spindle with clamps it might be easy to do. The shank on the hook is so small I can't even feel it. I have 2 hands and need to borrow another 4. I think the line they gave us is to thick. I can't get it tight enough to the hook. The line diameter is larger then the hook diameter causing that problem. I can not break the line by hand so I will see if they have lighter line and try this knot again. Maybe I could stick a shaved pencil in the hook end and tape the line to the hook and wind over the tape and pull it out afterwards. The 2 I did knot, I held with mini vice grips but could not spin them.