System Progress Update

Been a while now since I posted anything on my system progress. The past few weeks its just been a day to day routine thing, where I have been feeding the fish and at weekends emptying out the fish waste. We use the fish waste on the garden and the plants seem to like it.

Its not so exciting at the moment. That makes it difficult to write a lot but .... Today we had a good clean up and checked the water quality, pH of 8.0, bit on the low side but OK. Im still looking for DO and Nitrate test kits. So if any of you out here can point me in the right direction please do!

The plants are doing well. Tomatoes are turning red and the chillies are surprisingly hot! Also thinned out a few of the basil and will be planting some more in next few days.

Wanna is beginning to take an interest which can only mean one thing. They are nearly ready for the Bar B Q!!!!

On a separate note Ive been looking into a commercial system and will be getting round to my business plan shortly. Need to decide just how big to be and as long as it is sustainable I can employ someone to look after it up on our farm. Will keep you updated on developments.

Adding Mozambique Tilapia to the Fish Tanks

I finally have some Mozambique Tilapia in the fish tanks. I made the journey to Overton Fisheries south of Corsicana, a three hour drive one way to pick up about 50 fish. Overtons has a pretty nice operation with quick friendly service. They had me in and out in about 30 minutes.Overtons was out of fingerlings so I had to go with the normal stocking mixed sex/ mixed size offering at $10 per LB....it was a much better choice than fingerlings, and for about the same price, I received much larger fish.

The fish were packed in a large bag/box with some fishy valium and oxygen to keep the Tilapia calm for the trip home.

Once back at the greenhouse I had to move all of my gold fish out of three of the tanks and into a single tank, which took me a couple of hours..its hard catching 75 gold fish...I now have about 100 in one tank.

Before doing this I opened the box to check on the fish and placed an air stone in the box to aerate the water. I also, checked the PH and Ammonia of the fish box water, the PH was 7.2 and the Ammonia was a whopping 8.8ppm, versus my own tanks levels. I thought the fish were going to be goners...but they are tuff. I started adding water from my fish tanks over the next three hours to help equalize the PH and cut the Ammonia down, after which I introduced the new fish to their tanks. I graded these into three sizes, small, medium and large and placed each size in their own tanks.

Here is a video overview of the Tilapia in their new homes.

I also picked up a 50# bag of Cargill Aquafeed for the little beasties, that should last me several months. I plan on going back in June for more fish and will pick up another bag of feed if the fish do well on it.

 Until next time....keep on farming those fish and veggies.

Adding a few prawns

Watching fish grow?.....However does it really sound so interesting?... If you were to tell me yes I dont think Ill believe you!  But for me yes...
It is a patient business and I can assure you that they, the fish grow slowly. In fact they grow very very slowly.
Last night to add to the interest we purchased some jumping prawns and added them in. The prawns were small. Only ones available in the market. I felt sorry for them really as I expect the cat fish to eat them all. Will be checking this evening to see if there are any left. If not, I will need to make an additional tank and have a seperate section of the system just for prawns.  Exciting?... I can watch them grow as well.
Well, if the cat fish have eaten the prawns then they will have had an extra special dinner. Well worth watching... err....
What is worth watching is the video of these type of prawns. Make for tasty eating for us let alone the cat fish.... This much I do know.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXQ2XO1wvJY

In The Beginning

I have for a long time been interested in Hydroponics. even going so far as undertaking a Hydroponics Distance Learning Course from Australia (ACS). Excellent course..
Subsequently I have developed and ran several different systems with the biggest being a 2,000 salad head per week NFT set up in Thailand. All good fun and throughly enjoyed the fruits of my labour. This encouraged me to expand into mushroom farming. Why mushrooms I am still to this day not to sure ! However we got production up to 450 Kg per week, selling to the local market. But my main job got in the way and things moved on. But those are other stories except of the continued need to be doing things in the agriculture arena.
More recently I have been following several Blogs, discussion boards and such like on Aquaponics. (definition below).
I am not going to explain the concept as that is already well covered in thousands of Webs and Blogs through out the Internet, by people who know far more than I ever will.
My decision to take the plunge into this field AS A HOBBY ONLY, was encouraged, no, I should not say encouraged, but confirmed after reading about Travis Hughey and his Barrel-Ponics. The fact that he made available an online simple guide on how to get started did it for me. Travis Hughey
Thank you Travis. So here I am ready to start.