Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

they are gluttens, they will be swimming around on the bottom of the tank with full bellies.

I can recall my trout being so full the food kept falling out of their mouths and still having a go for more ! no shit!!

NC,
those trout of yours would be just about 1yr old. At 15cm they are about the average size for a farmed trout of that age. It is possible to get a trout to twice that size by 1 yr of age if they are raised in the optimum water temps and fed high protein food fequently. Most trout farmers who are going to on sell the fish at 1 yr of age or less hold back the growth of their trout by feeding them less to save money on food bills.

Your trout would be ready to breed by this time next year. The thing is they wont breed in your tank and you would have to manually strip the eggs and milt from the fish. This is easily done by running your hand down along the stomach of the fish. The fertilized eggs are normally held in mesh trays with cool clean well oxygenated water continuosly running over them. When the eggs hatch the fish fall through the holes in the mesh trays into a trough of water below. They survive for a few days by feeding on their yolk sac and can then be fed a crumble and progressed easily onto pellets. The hard part with raising trout is the long incubating period of the eggs and keeping fungus off them. Some eggs die daily and almost imediately become covered in fungus, if these are not moved from the trays all the other eggs quicly become contaminated with fungus and you can easily lose the lot.
The only people I know of who breed trout in WA all have their farms located alongside pristine streams which can supply them with a constant supply of cool water year round. Most trout farmers leave the breeding to these guys and just buy the fingerlings from them during the spring and on grow the trout from there. They raise them through the difficult summer period if they have access to cool water or airconditioned sheds and then on sell them.

Haa, isnt that what you wanted Steve to get your nitrates going again??
C1 is right, they are gluttens and will just keep eating.
The thing with trout is that you can feed them and after a while they will slow down on taking the pellets so you stop feeding them. Go back in 5 minutes and throw some more in and they will commence feeding again as if they havent eaten in weeks!!
At present I am feeding mine 3 times a day to satiation (well they slow down a bit) and twice a day if work gets in the way. The good thing is you can achieve FCR's of 1:1 whilst the water temps are cool so you can practically seem them growing before your eyes!!

Trout man,

ok so its not like if i feed them "more" their just gong to shit it out with out getting a good FCR?

They're in dads new system, i WISH they were in mine, but after seeing the 5 goldfish become 1 i don't think my tandanus would have been happy.

Thats right. You wont be wasting any food.
Actually, they would probably do well in your tank as with it being in the ground I imagine the water temps might not fluctuate as much.
Gee they must have been hungry, eating 4 goldies and all the pellets.

how do you thnk yabbies would fare in the tank? would they suffer the same fate as the goldies?

Trout Pro:

Eat heaps and convert food to weight incredibly efficiently

Trout con:

They gobble their little friends.

LOL and after only 13 pages

what?

Steve, I recon if the Yabbies are fully grown or close to it you wouldnt have a problem until the trout were over 500gms. I havent ever kept them in a tank together but have witnessed what occurs in my dams when I throw in some pellets. The trout and the marron (only largish ones) both come in for the pellets though the trout get most of them before the poor old marron get a chance. The trout show no interest in the marron though the marron can get agressive towards the trout trying to fend them off with their claws. I have however often found smallish marron/yabbies inside the stomachs of trout when cleaning them. Put in some shelter in the tanks and keep the feed up to the trout and providing the yabbies are of a decent size I recon (hope!!) things would be ok.

Just remembered

fish tank temp: 17c this morning
swim pool: 17c

days are getting colder so will start checking max temps

does you pool have solar heating?

Les - mine was 14 degrees - down just 1 degree on what it was last night. By then end of the day it was 18 - which is good considering it was just 13 yesterday morning.

vb, your tank, not your pool, obviously?