Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

bit like red wine

thanks for that TT. Sorry - didn't take any pics, but they did enjoy the meal. The 2 fillets was actually enough for the 3 of us when served with chips :-)

man after my own heart Rupe. Let's agree that at SOME time in 2008, we will get together, get on the gas and pre warn the local authorities and nightclubs. 2 ol blokes out on the tear, yeh that should scare them!

Thanks for the invite TT - that now makes 3 mature gentlemen

2 mature gentlemen and a guy that is still going for 'hornbag.' U bring the rum, Les, Rupe can bring some Tooheys good stuff and i will slip in with a few Yarra Valley reds.

Did somebody mention imbibing expensive ethanol based substances for the sheer pleasure of serving simple human desire?

Buggered if I know Kuda... but I think we might be organising a piss up

VB. I am about to install the inner and outer stand pipes in my large tank. The inner pipe supplied by the guy in gympie has a hole close to the top. Is this needed or can I replace it with a pipe that has no hole?


AP

Saw that hole too AP, not sure if it had something to do with the water level or if it was used to hook some extraneous contraption too....water flows freely over the top of my stand pipe in my setup without a hole.

See if vb has any idea on its use

AP - the guy had the hole at the bottom. This was so that solids sucked in through this as the water passed by (most having gone in throught he top). I think using an outer pipe to get solids to suck up is a better idea because if the pump goes off the water won't drain out. Because 80mm pressure pipe is not cheap or easy to come by, I just put the pipe in so the holes were at the top and would a piece of ducktape around the pipe to cover the holes, because I was in a hurry to get it in. I have since taken the tape off so some water does come through these holes and if the pump went off I may lose a bit of water if the sump was full (but not much). When I get a minute I'll use some pipe glue to just glue a thin chunk of UPVC pipe to the inside of the pipe to cover the holes. This is what you should do.

Thanks VB. Will glue a piece of pvc over the hole.

AP

For some reason the perch have not been feeding much lately. This drop off in feeding coincided with 3 events, so is bound to be realted to at least one of them. They are:

1. Removed the 5 goldfish (probably not the reason)
2. Removed 4 perch which were subsequently eaten (this would have spooked them for a while, but this was a good 6 weeks plus ago now, so this is not it)
3. Changed from Growbest back to Ridley. This is most likely the reason. They used to smash the Growbest, but just eat the Ridley as it slowly sinks over time. Little feeding is occuring from the top now.

Regardless, the fish are healthy and I figure it is time to step up the harvesting regime. So tonight I removed 6 and put them in a purge tank. 5 of themk are Jades, all good size and one is a smaller silver.

I moved one of the filters from my Barra nursery to use on the purge tank, but installed a bigger pump to make sure that the falling water provides enough aeration.

Because it is a quite strong pump and head is negligible, I ad a bit of a problem with water sprayin over the top of my open top filter. To solve this, I put a white cloth nappy over the top of it (I have a pile of these in my shed - they are nice and clean because we used mainly disposables for our kids . I gave it a rinse under the tap before using it. Much to my shock, about 30 minutes after installing, I looked at the tank and it was full of foam - must have been residual detergent from the nappy. I enptied most of the water out of the purge tank and replaced, but I am still getting a bit of foam. This is largely due to the amount of airation I'm getting - hopefully the amount of detergent coming through is so low that it won't affect the fish. I will however keep a close eye on them and if they get sick I'll harvest at that point.

I have about 5ppt salt in the tank also. Looking forward to a feed in a week or so. I may even smoke one tomorrow after I have cooked a couple of lamb roasts in the webber to be eaten cold on Xmas day. If I do this, I'll make some smoked perch dip out of the fish.

surfactants are notoriously difficult to get out of material... Good Luck VB it shouldn't hurt them (at least positive thinking wont :-) )

Yep - am trying to be positive BUt even if it goes a bit negative, then provided I get to them before they are dead, I'll be happy to eat them :-)

Make a positive out of a negative VB