Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Just knotted some more. Easy this time. I held both the hook and the loop in the vice grips and wound it by had around the extended shank. took the line thru the open loop and tightened it. Then released it while pulling on both ends and it works. I could do this in a boat now with just the grips, I could never do it by hand. I was able to dangle the vise grips around without the knot giving in. So the fish we are after weigh half of that weight. Should be OK. Guess we are going fishing after lunch.

Now I can go after that fish in your picture.
TY

Well done Deuem
Success through perseverance - that was our school motto !
It sounds like your line may have far grater braking strain than required for these fish. The lighter {thinner} the line the more fish you will catch. Even if you have a small leader of light line between the hook the main line and use this knot to join the two lines :

Wish I could be there to help, always like a challenge of catching a new type of fish !
I'm not sure how much fishing you have done in the past but if you can spend some time observing there behaviour, see what they are eating {insects etc }and use these as bait this may help.
Good luck !!

As far as watching them it is a problem in a fast moving brook with some small rapids. I don't even know what they are yet. We did toss in some fish food pellets and they sucked them down fast. On the first trial we used some small tad poles out of the nearby pond and they took it and the hook clean off the line. Knot problems. There is no way this knot is going to get stripped this time. It held the vice grips well. We didn't go yesterday, something came up 10 minutes before we were going to leave. So the fish are waiting for us. As far as fishing goes, I never fished fresh water. I have salt in the blood and lived on the East coast of the USA so it was always out in the boat looking for stripe bass, blues or flat fish. Plugging off the shores was a lot of it. It is the most exciting thing when you catch a big fish out of the surf.

So these little fish are not for eating. If we catch anything we hope it can make it back to the fish tank alive and well. I like to collect local fish in the tank. If I can catch a pair I will try to breed them. It is the only hobby I have here. There is not much to do here and very few hobby activities as of yet. Only the very rich can own and operate a boat capable of getting out far enough to catch anything worth the trip. No fishing charters either. I have never even seen a store that sells fishing boats nor have I ever seen a truck pulling one on a trailer. Not even a canoe. They do have fishing fleets near the ocean but they are those big wooden clunkers you might see on the news. Junks with no sails.

Carp Story:

When we first added the Alien Minnows to our tank the white carp was about 4 inches long. He is now over 6 inches long and we are down a lot of minnows. Yesterday I was feeding him and I tossed some pellets into a section where he likes to feed. At that moment about 20+ minnows decided they wanted some of his food. With the quickest blast of his tail I have even seen, he blew them away from the area in one quick flick of the tail. The minnows and water went tumbling about 9 inches. Needless to say, they stayed away until he finished eating. So the carp has now learned how to defend his food. Smart fish.

I had always taught my fish that 3 raps on the hood means it is feeding time and the gold fish all came running to eat. It took about 2 weeks and now all of the minnows have wised up to the tapping and come running also. So the minnows learned from the Gold Fish when it is time to eat. The Gold Fish used to have at least a minute advantage on first come first serve. Now they are in full competition with every meal.

Internet:

I am now having a terrible time connecting to this site. I am getting about 80% failures on log in and 90% failure on posting. We call it the internet cannon. What they do on a site is slow it down at first hoping you will just forget it and move to a local site. This cannon fires for about a month until it finally gets the site once and for all. So all I get is 404 errors. This is the 8th time I tried to post this letter and about the 15th time I tried to log in. It could also me a slew of other reasons, traffic, win 10, my router and others, But I have seen this error too often.

So if I just disappear you all know why. I would need to start my own local AP site and since my Chinese is terrible, I don't think that will happen soon. Plus no one does it here so I would have 1 member, ME. lol

Gday Deuem

It's not just you that's having troubles getting on the site :
http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=12797&start=345

Thanks GTK, I also have posted on that thread about SQL problems.

I was at the big market today and walked into one of the fish markets to see what they had an low and behold they sell blue tilapia. they are already plate size. I was very surprised that first I was able to pick them out of the mass amount of fish ( because of all the photos here ) and that when my phone translated tilapia the owner said yes that is what the fish is. He can't get me babies but if he can buy full grown ones, someone is producing them! He pointed me to another local fish a bit smaller and said it tasted much better. I was a bit in a rush and there were many customers for him so I bowed out and told him next time.

So I do want to get the other fishes name and see if they can be breed well. He did tell me that no one can mate the tilapias but yet he sells them, so this must be another deep dark secret. If I could figure out what a male and female looks like I could buy pairs right from him. Most fish sold here is still alive and stored in big fish trays. The Tilapia was 10 local dollars a pound or 500 grams. so I figure they were about 1.5kg or 15 bucks each. 2.3USD each.

I also ended up buying really small pellet food for my Alien Minnows. This way there would be less crushed mess in the tank. All of them can swallow it whole even the tiny ones. When they finished eating today there was no mess left in the tank. A very clean feed for once. And they went into a frenzy the moment it hit the water.

Nothing better then seeing a thousand huge blues go into a frenzy and chasing bunker clear out of the water. Something a fisherman never forgets. So no matter the size of the fish, the frenzy brings back really good memories. Now I need a few pet seagulls. lol

tilapia can be difficult to rear with their microscopic fry and nutritional requirements at that stage

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Fish Up date:

Yesterday we went out exploring for a new fishing hole site. Just driving in towards any mountain dirt road we can find. On the first road, not too far in I saw a man and told my wife, I know that guy. Not again! Yep! I know people in the strangest places. After a few minutes of talking about what we were doing, he joined us for the trip. This was Saturday. He said to get into this side of the mountain was very difficult and a long hike but he knew a back way in. So off we went.

20 minutes later we were driving down an even smaller dirt road with the branches closing in on the truck as we went further into the unknown. No way I a could turn around even if I wanted too. The fish are calling us. Somewhere about 2 miles in, the road ended in small turn around and a farm. We all got out to see where we were and the farmer joined us. Seems not too many people actually drive to his place. And an American to boot. Maybe the first one ever in 5,000 years.

He has a pretty good sized veggie farm and I did take some photos. Nice place to take the wife food shopping. He has to grow at least 50 different things all in sections in the terraced field. Mountain streams surround the farm and this water is used for all the plants and their drinking water. So, with his permission, off we went exploring the streams and trying to find any small ponds. This place is miles away from the place we get the Alien Minnows so I figured we could find something new.

Well we did and we didn't. These streams also have the Alien minnows but not in abundance. So they have to be a local variety. I am beginning to think that the entire valley is connected to every stream and over countless years the minnows have found every one of them. We did find one new Minnow, that looks like a minnow.

The BIG story is what else we found there. 2 Monsters. We managed to get a hold of 2 larger fish. My carp is over 6 inches and the smaller of the 2 is longer then him and the large one is over 9 inches. The new fish are air breathers, body style similar to an Eel, Fin from head to tail with 2 more right behind the gills. The small one goes 2 minutes between breathing and the large one 5 minutes to 10. They are round fish, like a pipe with a head that looks like a puppy dog and nice round eyes. They eat local water grass and minnows.

Every fish in my tank is scared silly right now and over 200 Alien minnows are grouped all together in the tank near the bottom ready to flee into the plants. I hope within a few days they will all settle down. They look like they might be an off shoot of an Arawoni Fish. They have the circle on the tail. I have not taken any photos yet because they both hid from site and are staying hid. I will when they come out.

I like weird fish. I think I can get the name in a few days, I was told that they get larger and people eat them. Stick a chopstick up its butt and toss it on the BBQ. No idea on what sex they are. It would be cool if by stupid luck we got a matting set and we are not going to eat them. I could use about 3 more Fish Tanks at the moment. The collection is growing and we still have 2/3rds of the valley to go.

The wife caught 2 Blue colored shrimp and one yellow one with eggs attached. All very small this time, a bit longer then finger nails. Width wise. They are very difficult to see and even harder to handle. They can jump about 20 times their body length also. Quick little buggers. I read they like to eat and live in moss. I will try and find some.

On the 2 monsters, I just looked and they are still hiding. Sleeping peacefully in the back of the tank resting on a plastic bush. They both have some bruises on their mouths from running into things. This is common for any fish we get the first time it is put in a tank. They have no idea what walls are at first. Even some of the minnows swim head on into the glass at first and cut a lip. They get over it in a few days. I don't feel bad about it. The farmer wanted to eat them so I quickly made a deal and paid him off for the fish and went home with them. Hey, they came off of his land. He told my wife that they eat them all year round when caught. The face looks like a salamder with the beady cold eyes.

Bottom line, we got 2 monsters, 15 shrimp and a huge bag of veggies to go. And a new friend out in the middle of nowhere. I asked the farmer how he grew his plants and he said they are all from seed, planted in the ground. He buys his seed which was strange and on the next farm trip I will dig a little deeper. He has a section of peanuts and carrots I would like to taste. Since this farm is not watered from the polluted river, I sense the plants should be cleaner.

well that sounds like an adventurous day. If he's not too far maybe you can haul some of that good water.
That is a strange fish you found and, I'm looking forward to seeing them.

my goldfish came out of a small pond so he had the same issue. I wrapped the tank and he seems more comfortable.

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Yes on the water. Both my wife and I said the same thing yesterday. I could back the truck up to his place, add a hose I have and fill water jugs with ease. At home we have an elevator to the car park so the labor would not be too much to lug around. I also have a 4 wheel cart to pull loads around on. I would just need to get more 30 liter jugs or make many trips. I can get larger jugs but they become very hard to lift when full. When we got home with the shrimp bottle, I drained 5 liters off the shrimp tank and used his water. All lived thru the night. I forgot to check the Ph but I did wait until the temps were similar. The mountain stream water is colder then room temp by at least 10 to 20 degrees or so.

All fish seem to be accounted for and I see no half fish in the tank. If they ate any minnows last night I can't tell. I will say one thing that is strange. All of the minnows have these brown black vertical barbs and all of them have turned them on in full color today. Even the babies. Before we added the monsters they were on at 50% in color. It must be some kind of defense color system to make the predator think they are a dangerous fish to eat. The males turned off the red stripes. Weird!

The wife said she had a nightmare last night that the 2 monster fish grew legs and walked out of the tank and attacked us all. They are scary looking but really cool............

On the Monster fish , We have the name

Chinese: Sheng Yu
Official Name: Channa Argus
English Name: Striped Snakehead


I can not get into my photobucket account. Bah humbug.

Our Monsters

picture off the net, very similar.




They can get up to a meter long and are used in many aquaculture projects. They are egg bearing with 10,000 to 30,000 eggs each time. They are also for sale at the big fish markets. Average size is 61cm when culled.

Our large one (22cm) is getting a bit brave and has ventured out into the tank twice today. All the fish are giving at least a foot or more clearance to it. We just read that they are still prey hunters and will wait for a fish to swim by many times before going after it.

In the photo the fins are in the closed position and the fish can raise them like a sail. Height about twice of what you see. Our fish are similar in color with the large one lighter then shown. The circle on the tail is also more pronounced.

Tilapia: First I can't find one anywhere

Next I find big dinner plate ones at the market

Next saw a guy with a bucket of fish with one inside, Netted in a stream

Then we got a baby one today out of a stream.

So we are the proud owners of a tilapia now. 1-1/2 inches and growing. Caught in the wild by hand..

I think they are here, just hiding from AP people.

By the way, the one rare wild tilapia we found is not located in the FT. The Monster Snakehead would take him in one gulp. So it is currently in with the shrimp so he can have an all he can eat buffet.

On todays journey we went back to the same road as yesterday late in the afternoon and parked the truck near a gate. Within a minute the dogs were at the gate on the other side and a man ventured out to see us. After some talking we were invited in to see what was going on inside. The gate and 2 meter high fence is solid. While inside he told my wife what they were growing there but I could not make it out. A few new words. looking at the place they had several sections of the earth dug out in trenches and a very fine net surrounding the pits. Still no idea. Ok far off on the side was a green house. I know what that is. So I asked if we could see inside and off we went. When I came around the corner all I could see were large holding tanks like AP beds from end to end. Is this AP heaven? yet no plants in sight and they seemed empty. In we went and I had a hard time believing what I saw next. Each tank had about 2 inches of water in them and they were full of Leaches. Ouch. Some tanks had hundreds of them, Some were from breading and others for egg hatching.

The owner spent a lot of time with us and explained the entire process and even showed it to us. When he stuck his hand in the tank and swirled it around, his hand came out covered in them. Ouch, again. All of these leaches are for the Chinese medical field. They are medical leaches grown in the clean fresh mountain water and fetch a high market price. Something like 15 yuan dollars each This is one job I don't want. Any animal that would wander into the trenches outside would be dead in a few minutes to an hour. They feed the leaches pig blood. I saw no pigs so they must buy it from a daily market slaughter.

So I now have a new friend who owns a leach farm. Anyone up for some testing? Because of the massive leach trenches outside in marsh land conditions the mosquitos were everywhere. Everyone was losing blood. I need to get a hazard suit to visit him again. Everywhere is something sucking your blood. lol