Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

North Melbourne Tafe run several aquaculture courses at their Epping Campus. Being a complete fish novice i have enrolled in this intro course, commencing Tuesday July 24th.

Runs for 14 weeks Tuesday night 6pm-9pm. Cost $174 which includes 2 field trips to commercial setups. They also have a ripper facility on-site. They grow 5 freshwater fish including Murray Cod and Sleepy Cod. The one salt water fish is Black Bream.

They are struggling a bit for numbers this intake so told 'em i would post details here.

Contact is Andrew Christie. If u are interested pm me and i will send you his ph number.

just curious(i won't be going..), what course is it? is it a cert somethin? (eg cert 3)

Just a basic intro course Daniel covering a different topic each week. Designed to give people who are interested, an overview. They then have cert 1,2,3(which i think is diploma, 2/3 yrs part time.) Believe they have an ag science degree with aquaculture major and i spose if you got really fancy you could do your Masters in AP!

Hello everyone

I know Andrew Cristie and Salem Mobin of NMIT as i have just finished a guest lecturering session with the first and second year aquaculture degree students. The facilities are excellent and the student numbers are low so there is a lot of one-on-one tuition between student and lecturer. I can highly recommend that if you have the time, invest some of it into this introduction course. I think you will be pleasantly surpised.

thanx kell79. I could tell by talking to Andrew and speaking to people in the industry, that they have a great setup and are passionate about what they do. I am really looking fwd to the course and who knows where it may lead!

Hope you get a larger following TT, unfortunately it is not very local to me so won't be attending - enjoy the course

thx Ell, not hunting for a crowd personally, just trying to spread the good word.

I would like to do the course, but I did an AD in aquaculture a loooong time ago. I hope it goes well

thx

I wish I could make it, but it's a heck of a commute for me. Do they offer any online courses? What are the course materials like? Any chance of getting a copy of those?

starts next week, rass, delayed one week. Imagine one of my kids could show me how to scan stuff in and post it. Will keep people updated. Get u some relevant online contacts when i have them.

Very nice, thank you!

Well the course started tonight and i know i will be glad i enrolled. Fantastic setup, state of the art this and that, stuff to make ur head spin. 21 were the final student numbers and 5 said they enrolled due specifically to an interest in AP. The word is getting out people!!
Anyway, will type up some notes after i have a sleep.

Some quick things from week 1.
Black Bream are very very hardy, with excellent disease resistance, but slow growing.
Excellent growth can be achieved with Murray Cod. Stocking at low densities will give u magic growth, but this in part will be due to cannibalism. Stocking at higher densities gives less overall growth per food input as they are also less likely to eat each other so the total food intake is lower.
Sleepy Cod are very very slow growing but have excellent handling and eating characteristics.
Silvers, enough said. In their system, silvers never die prior to harvest, and they exhibit good growth characteristics. They love swimming into a current which produces a nice trimmer fish for the plate.
Tandanus Catfish much underrated in Australia. Excellent growth and eating characteristics.
Further trials are being conducted on Golden Perch, with future culture of crustaceans planned.
Australian Bass, very very slow growing.

I agree on the catfish ,just so hard to find a supplier!