Highs in the 50's and 60's F. for at least the next 10 days. My male brookies are pumpkin orange and should have intense red flanks in the next few weeks.

How about you?

Highs back into the mid 70's here next week, but lows in the low 40's tonight and last night...Almost perfect for moving the 30,000 feed trained 3" bass fingerling order I got this week.

Saw Male CNBG guarding a fresh batch of nest today.;

Lows in the upper 30's tonight.

Got a fire going in the insert since last night. Warm in the house today, so I opened some windows. It was 44°F here last night.

Lake Michigan will keep us a bit warmer, but low's are in the 40's, and highs are barely busting the 60's. Overcast and drizzle time.

It was a rather abrupt change from a few day's ago. Running the A/C all summer, and now the heat is going.

Yeah, electric bills, but they won't be whacking us during the heating season. I know, it's crazy.

High of 72 here today. Lo 80's next week. Oh yeah, 101 last Wednesday.

Low fifties at night, high sixties, low seventies during the day....perfect.

Local weather said upper 30's for Sunday night. That's in South Bend proper, I wonder if we'll have frost here out in the country?

We just hit 64 degrees here. This was easily the wettest and coolest summer we've had in 10 years. Here in East TX at least, we had rain up until August, and less than 15 days over a 100 degrees. That's certainly not the norm, but I'll sure take it.

A quote from Grumpy old men. "We're havin a heat wave....a tropical heat wave".
Cecil, glad you brought this up as I have a few ?s about temp, aeration and Tilapia. Same temp range as Scott and Cecil. Water temp @ 11:15 am @ 14"s was 61 degrees, temp @ 6:00 pm @ 6"s was 64. Most of last week was rainy, cool and almost completely overcast. I have one 9" difusser @ 9' and another @ 4' both running from 3:30 am till 7:30 am. I have lots of Tilapia from 1/2" to 2" very shallow along the beach which are actually competing for pellets every night. My plan is to capture a couple hundred and have my grandsons make raising them over the winter for me as extra credit projects at school. Well I am kinda wanting some "free" Tilapia for next summer and to give to friends (if I can come up with any by then).
My ?s are 1 do the little fellows die at a warmer temp than is normally associated with mature ones? 2 With the heavy plankton and algae blooms all yr and the extended overcast conditions, would it be wise to stop aerating now to conserve water temps or would that risk a big DO drop?

Bob, I think you'll be O.K. DO wise since cooler water can hold more O2. But, unless those are pure Blue Tilapia, you might want to get them out of there asap. The air temps the next 10 days will continue to drop the pond water temp, and the smaller the fish are, the more fragile they are. Also, they slow down in cooler water, so they are easier targets for predators in your pond.

This cold weather has me hustling to get ready for the really cold weather surely to come soon. Clean the chimney for wood burning, store some wood in the garage for extra dry wood, etc. Going from 90 degrees to this almost over night is a shock.

They issued a frost advisory here last night! So far no frost on the ground, just the roof of my car.

47 degrees this morning, and I smell woodsmoke...one of my neighbors across the valley has a fire in the stove. First time this season.

Maybe the mosquitoes won't be flying on opening day.

They said it was 40F here when I left this morning. Had to go set up some scanners (measuring arrays to determine pipe diameter coming off a mill). On the way there and back, chimneys around were puffing smoke. Saw more than a few heating and cooling trucks on the road. Saturday service calls are overtime. Don't wait till the last minute, or when it get's uncomfortable, to have your stuff checked out and tuned up.

Thanks Scott. I think I'll catch some and keep em in 5 gal buckets in my guest bedroom till the grandkids can get their aquariums set up.
Nice and sunny today which if nothing else is good for the attitude. Gloomy weather is like an unhappy woman.

Naw! Not me. My suntan may soon start to fade, but I'll just break out my various wool shirts that are black and red, orange and white, black and white, etc., to wear under my bibs. It is usually January before I break out my long red woolies.

But, today has been a long-sleeved day. I'd guess it is about 60 outside, plus a little breezy. Yet, I figure we've still got a while before we'll need a fire in the wood stove.

Ken

I'm going to shut down the aquaponics tank tomorrow and fillet 200 tilapia. Not looking forward to cleaning that many but it has to be done. We should have fish for a while with 400 fillets.

Water temp in the aquaponics fish tank was 54 F. this morning. The bacteria on the media probably isn't doing too much anymore. Time to bring it in and add it to the other tanks with perch and bluegill in the basement.

I hope you have an electric fillet knife. That's going to be a long day!

Decided to stop feeding, clean the mechanical filter, change the water, and wait a few days until cleaning the fish. With a much heavier load this year I want to make sure I don't have an off flavor. On commercial fish farms this is known as "purging" the fish.

Plenty of dew here in the mornings, so if it get's cold enough, it'll be scraping window time. I hate that, my truck is a bugger to do.

This winter, I'll just revert back to the old practice of firing it up in the morning and letting it run with the heat blasting while having coffee and getting ready for work. New top end on the engine, so I'm not opposed to it idling for a while.

Them cool fronts haven't made it here yet... still 90 and humid

No frost here, cloud cover kept the temps in the very low 40's. When I lived in So. Cal., it was easier to hose off the windshield with the garden hose to take off the frost than to scrape the windshield of the Suburban. We'd have nights in the low 30's with some nights in the upper 20's. Garden hose was close to the house, and under the overhang so it didn't freeze. Daytime temps got warm, so I never had a problem with the garden hose freezing.

IIRC, you don't have a long drive to work. Idling for an extended time, and not getting the engine "hot" for a while could dilute the oil with unburnt hydrocarbons and water vapor. Not a concern if you get it up to temp for a while. Maybe that's why you saw some premature top end wear?

You'd be better off going with something like this: tank coolant heater

If you're worried about driving away and forgetting to unplug the extension cord, they make self ejecting plugs for emergency vehicles. http://marechal.com/en/industrial-plugs-socket-outlets-and-boxes/article/self-ejecting-systems

I have a tank type coolant heater on the VW. It's on a timer, and 3 hrs of run time gets the coolant to 190°F.

It was 39 F Saturday here in South Central KS. There was frost on the roof tops.

Filleted 200 tilapia today. Thought it would never end!

The Mexican Whistler ducks are starting to flyby in mass. They're always the first ducks we see every Fall, so I think Summer is officially over.

They stay around here year round... Hope you're right about summer... Need rain from cold fronts to fill up ponds...saw a few teal land in pond last week...


Pat W

I have the A/C on again this afternoon. It's been dipping into the upper 30's at night tho. No frost, but it's not too far away.

Ac stays on round here till mid Dec sometimes year round ugh....

Pat W

I hate clammy weather. It can get bad around here.

It's been a clammy 92 here today.

DD1,
you getting rain from the Odile and the GOM storm?

Nope DJ, and none really in the forecast.

A week ago, I dug down about 10 inches and it was still pretty wet from a 1 inch rain 3 or 4 days before. So, I decided to plant wheat, turnips and beets(wound up getting radishes) this past weekend. I generally plant the 3 acres in front of the house to draw in deer. We're not allowed to hunt there. It's for my Wife to watch deer while I'm off hunting them.

So, I hooked up a disk and started prepping the soil. It was dry about 9 inches down. What I hadn't figured into things was that the soil was super dry under the wet stuff and sucked the moisture. And, it hasn't been particularly warm during the past week. Had I planted the previous week, the seeds would have germinated and died. So, now I have 5 bags of wheat, 5 pounds of turnip seed and 5 pounds of radish seed. I think I can put the turnip and radish seed in the freezer. The wheat will turn buggy if I don't toss it out for the birds.

I can still plant if we get good rains during the next month. But, I'm not real sure that it will do any good. The soil is just too dry down below.

Dave, can you put the wheat in the freezer too?

Probably not five 50 pound bags.

Yeah, probably not.....

Big freezer.

Low tonight of 39 Brrrr. Time ta pack the windows with insulation.