Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Nah we're good Tonzz, thanks for asking! We're down on the south end of Canberra and it totally missed us - we got like three drops of rain and some gusty winds. The rolled-up flap on my hoop house shook loose from the clamps that are holding it up and broke one branch off my tomatoes, and two small potted plants blew over. Talk about lucky - hopefully everyone else is OK.

Mel you must be able to do Trout year round in Canberra, right? If I was living down south here in WA [Collie, Dwellingup or say Albany further south etc], keeping year round or only needing very little cooling could be possible on paper ........ but yeah what fish do you keep?

Not trout! We get way too hot in summer - my water temps have been over trout-friendly levels since early November and are now reaching 30 degrees C at the hottest point of the day! A lot of Canberra people run trout over winter, and then either switch to another fish for summer or just carry over their systems until things cool down again on the accumulated nitrates and solids in the beds.

I would like to do trout at some point in the future, but for now (and probably for at least a couple of years in the future) I've got silver perch. They've got an excellent temperature range and will be fine (though probably not eating or growing) at the coldest we get, which is water temperatures down in the single digits. Basically if you want to run the same fish all year 'round here, you're limited to silver perch or goldfish, with tandanus catfish as a slightly odd option (I gather they're tasty but don't like living together in the numbers/densities you get in aquaponics), or golden perch if you want to play with a fish that might decide to just stop eating pellets and go on a hunger strike waiting for live food.

(...I really want to try golden perch at some point when I've got a lot more experience...)

I thought Canberra was colder than that tbh, I suppose you get the cold mornings frosts way more frequently than here but I thought your water temperatures would be on the lower side (similar to Collie over here for example .. ) but yeah I've heard in some parts (down south WA) you can do Trout all year round but Im not 100% sure on that....... anyways, I suppose if Trout all year round is appealing just go buy a property in Hobart hahahaha

Tasmania would probably do it, yup! XD We get well below freezing here in winter and hit 40+ briefly most summers. The water in my teeny test system got down below 2 degrees C a couple of times back in last June and July, but hopefully the bigger volume in my current system and the hoop house will keep my temperatures higher this year; silver perch can survive water that cold if it doesn't last too long, but they don't like it.

Oh Mel, you just dont have enough shading and suitable pump timing! Trout certainly are doable in Canberra, all year if you want, but you really don't need all year to raise them to plate size. It's a lot hotter here in summer, and I still have trout in my non-chilled system. It does take careful management, and a bit of ice (here, but maybe none or not so much there), but I have not lost any yet this summer, and we have had quite a few days in the 37-40C range already.
Yesterday was 39C, the day before was 40C and last night's minimum was a very uncomfortasble 25.2C, but my water only maxed out at 24C. Pump lots overnight, not very much in daytime, shade your GBs during the heat of the day and pump lots of air and you can do it too!

Ha, yeah, I really should have put that as "I can't run trout all year round without doing a bunch of things to manage my temperatures that I'm not up to yet". My pumps aren't on timers, I don't have any way to make or store more ice than you'd put in drinks, and a couple of my growbeds are pretty bare so they're transmitting a lot more heat into the system than they would if I had a bunch of big leafy things shading them. (Pretty sure the bed with all the huge broccoli plants in it stays nice and cool!)

Once I've got everything built the way I want it and have all my standard maintenance routines etc set, I'll start doing some more active temperature management, but the fish seem perfectly happy with the way things are now so it's not very high on my priorities.

And on that note, my graph isn't as pretty as yours but it does the job:

If I was a stockbroker I would take that, any of them 4 haha

Ah but it's not a long-term investment, the market's gonna crash in a couple of months

worse still when you run the line of best regression against the data your tank temps are going to hit 45 degrees
I always love it when they draw a beautiful straight line through cyclical data and assume constant increase.

http://xkcd.com/605/

Woohoo! My topup water IBC is operational and my system is at maximum water capacity for the first time since the HSM! (Now watch, we'll get an unexpected rainstorm and it'll overflow... )

Mel, I just made it through your thread and up to speed. Like many before me, I'm jealous of how nicely things have came together for you! Now if we could just exchange some of your hot weather for some of my cold weather we'd both be in a better place and I could start growing more stuff again! It was never really in my plans to be able to grow this winter, but I made it in to about December before things really turned down... so hopefully I'll finish everything when summer gets here and next winter will be better off! All of the pretty pictures of stuff growing for you makes me a tad bit envious!

Thank you for the compliment! Just imagine me out here madly fanning hot air in the direction of Michigan... does it feel warmer yet? I've been really lucky, and I've avoided a bunch of things that could have gone wrong thanks to everyone on the forum. I'm looking forward to seeing how things go for you once your greenhouse is fully operational!