Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Kuda, it's a pity your not closer, I could lend you some goldies. I've got about 30, up to around 8 inches. Really cool 'cause they were only about 2 inches when I bought them.

I love my goldies. They're indestructible!

yeah but viciously savage I'm told :-) I've already lost two fingers, to lose more to a fish would be devastating :-) But I do appreciate the offer. Where exactly in the goulburn Valley are you? It's a damned big place. Like somebody once told me they lived in gippsland! Huh! (litterally 1000kmx1000km for those not local to Vic, it's a big place)

The tiny town of Numurkah, 30Ks north of Shepparton. Theres about 3000 people here in town. Getting more all the time though, they keep building retirement units and we've got a few new estates too.

As for the savageness of my goldies, you just have to keep well clear when you feed them. They can jump at least 6 inches out of the water when they want too! They know when it's feeding time too.

I just read about your baby goldie. Poor fishy, I feel sorry for you. I had babies too. I noticed this 'little black thing' in the tank and low and behold there are two 1 inch long black moors! God only knows how they survived in the tank with all the big guys. They are now about 2 inches.

I can't wait to get more room and start breeding them in earnest.

That's why only 2 survived, there'd have been hundreds...
What I don't get is my baby was in a tank. all my tanks only had 1 goldfish in them... perhaps some eggs got sucked into a connecting tank for fertilisation? Weird thing nature huh?

Solitary confinement and you still got babies?

As they said in Jurassic Park.......

"Nature will find a way"

Guess it's true. Yours certainly managed it!

As for hundreds of babies, thats why I've convinced DH that fancy goldies are valuable. I have permission to breed and sell them. Yay! I can't wait to get my new tanks set up. 'Course I'll be using grow beds as filters.

Yay indeed! :-)

OK good news, after removal of most of the duckweed, addition of some more goldies, and feeding them a tad more, my nitrates are now reading 10-15ppm! Yay!
Now I need to know why my veggies are still struggling... perhaps they're just getting burnt by the sun.
I did notice that my cucumbers were actually growing again, maybe 1.5" in the last week.
KP is happy!
Getting some SP soon, been offered 400 80mm fingerlings. They'll be fine in 10kl right? I'm not risking overloading my system am I (Rupe) ??

Think of it this way Kuda....

400 plate sized fish..... plate size is usually thought of as 500gms....

So that's 200kg of fish : 10,000ltr of water..... safe enough, I'd have thought.....

IF, you're cycled, stable, can monitor your system and have the growbed capacity, or at least the capacity to expand to 1:1 or more, rapidly....

80mm is probably twice the normal fingerling size people would start with... where are you getting them from?

Obviously being larger they will eat more straight away and poop more...

Hence your cumulative levels will be larger than most peoples might be in a new system..... test and monitor closely and don't feed intially until you have established the baseline after adding the fish..... be prepared, especially if you need to do a water change.

Now if you were to take your 400 fish toward the kilo (each) mark then of course your ratios approach less tolerent levels... or at least your margin for error is less....know what I mean

10kl of water is still a lot of water though

200kg of fish - thats a big freezer

Who is the silvers coming from i am looking at glenburn

Rupe, I was planning on beginning harvest when they were 500g.
Hopefully when they get to 1kg, I'll only have 50 left.
The supplier is a private contact, and it looks like a once off deal atm. He is planning on breeding more, and when he does no doubt I'll pass on his details so you can all get some.

And yes I have a decent freezer.

One has to ask - are you going commercial or something?!

By the way - those 1 cubic meter cubes you are using with the cage around them is exactly what I just saw in the building supply store here - cost was about 120 USD each. Nice to know they look like they will work well.

can i ask WHY you will let em get to 1kg?


fingers crossed but i can see a huge loss.......r.i.p all the lost sp's for a first time experiment

Well, I wasn't planning on eating them all at once.
Also
I saw this comment and thought that you meant it'd be alright to grow some up that big.
I plan on growing them to 400-500g and eating them, maybe slow the feeding so they don't grow so much, but hey. Am I meant to harvest all 400 at once?
Instead of asking individual questions and predicting disaster. Can I ask how you would handle my system? How big would you grow, how many would you harvest. Cos frankly I have NFI, it is as ROZ pointed out, my first time.

KP - silver perch are fairly slow growers in comparison to some fish. It will be a long time before they get to 1kg and I would expect the FCR to be less favourable the larger they grow. Your fish will grow at different rates, so you may find that if you are able to eat the largest ones first and start at about 350 grams, all the fish will indeed be gone before any get to 1kg (unless you particularly want to keep a few to get to this size). I expect you will not eat them all yourslef, there will be friends and family who will expect a share .

400 fish is a lot though - what happens if you don't like the taste. I'd be inclined to buy less first up, despite any deal you may have going with these people, and get a new lot next season.