Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

pumpkins are damnably big compared to the vine. They're also really heavy. You have it trained up to the roof, being that the fruit usually has the ground to rest on, what precautions are you taking to ensure the fruit does not fall too early, and when it does fall doesn't smash on the ground, or worse your head?

aerial pumpkins are great There are less woody spots from the fruit resting on the ground.

Maybe put mesh onion bags around the fruit as they grow and tie them up that way

Has anybody had issues with the pumpkin vine not supporting the fruit or am I talking out my ass? I do like the idea. I should post a pickky of the pumpkin vine that took over my dad's double driveway. in only 2 weeks! It was growing from the bottom of the compost bins though, it would have been over a square in 2 weeks :-) Only I have to find the pic and scan it (yeah film... it was some time ago) maybe I could take a photo of the photo with my digi camera? (I don't have a scanner)

I've had very large Jap pumpkins hanging from trees. Never had a problem with the vine not supporting the weight, but have had problems with the tree not supporting the weight and the branches breaking.

hmmm ok, comment rescinded.

Updated to: Looks great, aerial pumpkins are a GREAT idea

Thanks for the explanation guys.

They will fall eventually though in that the steop will detach from the pumpkin or the stem will snap once dry.

As mentioned before we had a vine growing on the chookpen fence (about 40) large blue pumps weighing about 5-10 kg each.
I don't think any fruit fell. The pumpkins lasted for about a year.
We also gave quite a few away.(soup mash boiled steamed baked bbq.)
Got sick of em.

thanks for the comments and suggestions folks. i will have to give the pumpkin extra support when they are fruiting heavily. what i will do is partially crush the soft stems so that they become harder and should support the extra weight of the pumpkins.

as for pollination i noticed yesterday that there were ants all over the vines.

my question is do ants do a good enough job that i wont need to hand pollinate?

thanks again folks.

today i netted out 23 silvers and added them into the other silver tank with 22. so now the 45 silvers are in the same tank. what stood out was most of them looked like they had almost doubled in size. the growth rate seems incredible. i've heard how slow silvers are so wasn't expecting much. it seems like these are a fast growing breed as i was informed. the growth rate for the barra doesn't seem as fast but they are certainly getting big.

i then added 35 5-10cm size fingerlings to the bare tank.

so i now have 80 silvers spread over 2 tanks, at various sizes.

i have learned the beauty of having many smaller tanks as opposed to one large one. firstly ease of harvest. it was simply a matter of using 2 large nets and herding them in. i learned how difficult this can be at eb's place.

secondly you can keep different sizes in different tanks and have a revolving cycle. ie tanks for 0-10cm, 10-20cm, 20-30cm. ideally then i would grow the larger ones out in a huge tank. this would come particularly hand with barra considering the cannibalism.

so for those who have gown barra fingerlings in large tanks, how did you go about grading them? one ting i have thought of is cages. they use cages in the ocean and dams so why not ap systems? has anyone tried this?

hey all,

got some bad news.

lost all 45 of the larger silvers today.

made a terrible newbie mistake. broke the number one rule and took the air stone out. would normally be ok because of the aeration from the growbed waterfall but i was using the water pump to drain another tank which i was ready to install.

i think the lack of air killed them but what contributed was the fact that half of them were already stressed due to transport shock and i over fed the day before. the water was foul and sucking the air out of the water.

i learned a number of lessons.

1. never take out the airstone.
2. make sure you i have a backup air pump with backup batteries at all times.
3. don't over feed. through my agressive feeding i unstablised the water which was a disaster waiting to happen.
4. do not over stock the tanks. better to loose a few and try again then loose a lot at once.

while i'm upset about the situation i can't change the past. all i can do is learn and hopefully not make the same mistake. this is all one big learning curve.

it gave me a chance to review my situation and future setup so its more user friendly.

on the positive side while most of you were recovering from a hang over i dug out the hole for the final tank. i also installed 4 growbeds to each tank. by the end of it i was nackered and to tired to go check on things like normal. hence i left the pump off.

by the weekend i should have 6 tanks with growbeds fully installed. all i need then is to either link the tanks or get 2 more pumps.

i will probably link them half way down and then on the inside of the tank have a pipe running down so the inlet is at the bottom of the tank. this way when water from the growbeds enter the tank, water will flow through the pipe at bottom of the tank rather then the side. if the flow was coming from the middle of the tank the water would not circulate well. not sure if that makes sense but soon should.

while i'm pissed i know it could be a lot worse. live and learn.

oh bugger Is it safe to eat them? Did you find them quickly?

live and learn... wow, you're positive, I don't think I'd be ready to post so soon after the event. Feeling for you mate. Hope you were able to save some fish flesh, I'd hate to hear they all went in the bin
Good luck with the new tank. And Please have a happy new year, at least from now on...

tuff break bf, air sure is key. The hot weather you have had would not have helped, increasing fish activity and reducing DO. I was sweating razorblades NY Eve when our power failed for 4 hours at 40C, still waiting for them to start floating.
If you don't already, perhaps use floating pellets and remove uneaten stuff after an hour. My babies eat slowly but consistently, after an hour they are done tho. The chooks will eat the soggy pellets leftover.
Are you planning on some sort of air diffuser at the inlet on the bottom of ur tanks? Would really increase ur DO. Pretty easy to make or reasonably cheap to buy.

Bugger BF.... glad you posted it all up though.... helps us and reminds us all to how easy it can be to overlook the simplest of things and how important it is to design some redundancy into a system

At least you've made some good progress on the rest of the new system anyway.....

Lessons learnt for us all.

Certainly doesn't take long without air for the big ones to kick the bucket. When I was purging the lot before my current lot, I had one left in the tank attached to the barra nursery. Turned the pump off to replace water in the barra setup (and therefore the purge tank also) and the big silver was on its side within 15 minutes. Didn't hink he would recover, so ate him that night :-). No loss, since he had been purged and was ready to go.