Pond Boss Forums AQUATIC VEGETATION Balance of plants in the environment Keith's Aquaponic Experiments

Looks like a pretty good fillet Keith. How's that swimming pool I see in some of your pics work out for you?
Thanks, Dan

130 or so yp, about 10 bg, and some rosy red minnows are quite happy in the pool

Nice system keith. You can still fillet with the best of them. I'm happy everything is working for you. Its obvious you have put a lot of time and thought into your system. Great Job!!!

rosy red minnows have started to hatch! this time i have greenwater ready for them so i should be able to get some to survive..
i should check the marmokreb, it's been about 3 weeks since i noticed she was in berry..
still have lots of work to do though

my job's been pretty busy lately.. we're relocating data centers.. my ap system has been neglected.. my blue tilapia have had at least 2 hatches of babies, i set up a smaller system for breeding, but ended up filling it with 50 nile tilapia fry.. they grew quick, so this weekend i finally got a few things accomplished.. harvested 11 yp for dinner!... caught 5 blue's from the pool, one had a mouth full of eggs that she dropped in the transfer tank and then ignored.. then i moved the now 5-6" nile tilapia to the pool, and put the 5 blues in the breeding tank.. i moved a dozen fry i found in the sump to a 55 gallon tank i was trying to set up for fry, but i don't think they made it through the night..
out of the 11 i harvested, a few were from 2010, and the rest from 2011, and i managed to take some pic's so without further ado..


i couldn't decide what to make, so we had yp 3 ways
first was an egg wash, dipped in cornmeal, italian seasoned panko, and romano cheese

second was a parchment paper pouch, a little white wine, butter, dill from the basement garden, salt and pepper

third i did a quick salt and sugar brine, then hotsmoked with tea, oak and cherry chips

and for my bonus, i found 3 egg sacs.. i just added a little butter to the pan i fried the fish in and gave them a quick sautee, they were awesome!


i'm just going to need help next time i harvest!

All those recipes sound found for an Okie to try if you do not mind sending me more details on them.

As far as the egg sacs go, what type were they and what were you thinking? (just kidding)

I have yet to try eggs so please fill me in on this as well.

Thanks

Egg sacks.. (I just puked in my mouth a little bit) lol

I've been eating cooked caviar since I was a little kid - my grandmother did too, and I got it from her.

My mom doesn't like the smell of fish, so I'd have to go to my grandmothers house (her mom, who lived next door) to eat fish. She loved fish, and I was tasked to bring her fish every week.

Don't knock it unless you've tried them!

those are perch egg sacs.. i've been eating them since i was a wee lad..fried in either bacon grease,,, or butter..they're very creamy...
or in scrambled eggs, it reminds me of lobster and eggs, without the lobster texture..
the fried fish is just a mix of cornmeal, italian seasoned panko and romano cheese..
for the smoked, i put 2 fish in a half gallon of water with about 1/3 cup salt, and 1/4 cup sugar for about 30 minutes, patted dry and dusted with garlic powder, then hotsmoked with a cameron stove top smoker for 20-25 minutes..i had smoked perch on crackers with a little tartar sauce the next day watching the browns get beat
for the baked fish, i used parchment paper, a splash of wite wine, a knob of butter on each fish, salt, pepper, fresh dill, and fresh thyme.. folded the paper up into a pouch and baked for 20 minutes @350
i'm just super happy that i raised these fish in my house.. i have a pretty good stock going, and the tilapia have been breeding - mostly feeding the yp, but i'll probably get my aquaculture license this winter..

Well since I do not have many YP available I wonder if egg sacs from BG, BCP, or CC would be any good to eat?

Has anyone tried these?

yes.. i've had bluegill and crappie..both very good.. never had catfish though..

All those listed fish will work, although the CC eggs, if close to maturity will have a tendacy to pop and spatter the hot grease all over the place. The smaller diameter eggs taste better too - CC eggs are a bit rubbery.....

All the eggs will pop and spatter the grease tho - especially if the skein isn't broken.

keith, You are a man of many talents...Nice job on everything you are doing.

brian's post got me motivated to post some updates.... my office started a project to move our datacenter last summer, worked most weekends, so my system got little attention, besideds feeding the fish, occasionally harvesting some chard, lettuce etc..
the job finally started slowing down (only working a couple weekends a month now).. i had to clean out the overgrown growbeds, add a bunch of gravel due to settling - the top layer of the growbed was damp, causing algae, and bugs, mostly fungus gnats.. so i got all that done, and replanted 3 beds - 1 to go, but i still need to set up my lighting on that one..
ok.. the pics, growbeds before cleanup;

my first marmokreb crayfish in with my tilapia fingerlings

one of the latest hatch of marmokrebs

i think this one is second generation.. eating a frozen pea;

i've fed at least a couple hundred to the pool system, and put 40 or so larger (second generation) marmokrebs into the pool, at least 3 were berried before transfering to the pool.. lots of pvc hides, but i've been thinking about adding some kind of additional "structure"..
i grow lots of duckweed in the crayfish tanks, i can get 2 "scoops" a week





the tilapia clean it up overnight

there are a few sunfish in with the yp, nile tilapia and blue tilapia

6" clay pots with the fish


10 ort so tilapia fingerlings made it to the sump from the pool last fall, 5 made it to fingerling stage....

Cool!!!

couple of overall shots of my tanks


my single tote system, right now it has rosy reds, i might get some golden shiners and feed the minnows to the pool

my ap40 air pump, drives lots of the sponge filters, and aerates the pool.. it's on top of a "rack mount" ups, i've got another one to hook up, should give me 12 hours or so of backup air

and a shot towards the 3 growbeds for the pool

i re-did the growbed inlets from 2 "branches" to a single subsurface inlet..
swiss chard that sprouted after i cleaned the bed out, chives survived as well

carrots and asparagus in the corner bed


couple of celery plants sprouted after cleaning, and i planted garlic, sprouting, there's also shallots, and basil planted, and a lone jade tree.. my son brought over a cutting and i just stuck it in the gravel, it's growing like crazy

All I can say is WOW Keith! Your really going at it, good for you. I would like to, but am afraid that it would take over all my time and attention. To many irons in the fire already. I'm jealous of you.

,...Jim

Really Cool Keith! I love this type of stuff!

Only a few more weeks and I am outta this %*&%$ town and apartment.
Heading back to the boonies. Then I can get busy with all of my projects

Great job Keith, you've got the "green thumb" everyone wants. I can tell you did a lot of homework and your results are amazing.

Awesome pics!

Keith,

What method do you prefer to determine plant surface area output vs. fish pounds or amount of fish feed fed daily? UVI says about 7.1 ratio of surface area of plants to fish tank surface area with raft culture. Another text I have is more specific and says 60 grams of feed per day per square meter of the raft for nonfruiting plants to 100 grams per day of fish feed fed for one square meter of the raft for fruiting plants. Seems to be quite a difference.

My raft is about 3 square meters. (4'X 8') and 1' deep with a divider in the middle. Flow goes to the end on one side of the divider and cuts over and comes back where it dumps back into the fish tank via gravity. Preceding that is a clarifer tank and an outside standpipe that removes suspended and settleable solids respectfully. Before flow drops into the raft it's treated with a moving bed bioreactor (mbbr).

Circular fish tank is 5.16 feet in diameter and has surface are of 20.90 ft2. Water volume is 286.1 gallons.

Just now assembling outside. Probably going with 3 to 5 inch tilapia only because these fish -- for a change -- will be for the table.

Thoughts? I'm new to aquaponics but I'm excited! Probably going with lettuce and tomatoes.

Again, great information.

thanks everybody! someday i'd like to set up a couple of greenhouses
hey Cecil..
i haven't done anything with floating rafts (although i'd like to!)
i had trouble wrapping my head around the uvi stuff, and dr. rakocy's excel spreadsheet (for backyard systems) got me ever more twisted.. my take away is it seems to me that the surface area provided by the media for bactera was the more important factor, so i base the fishload on the amount of media.. i figure that for every 100 gallons of media, i can grow out 25lbs of fish, i'll added media surface area when i add filration... the only time my nitrates have gotten high was right after i cleaned out the beds.. i try to test weekly, and haven't had any issues with ammonia or nitrites
i've actually got to get started on adding filtration.. i've got a few more barrels and i'm trying to figure out how i'm going to lay out a 2 or 3 stage filter... then i'll figure out how many fish i can add... your moving bed media manufacturer should be able to give you a good idea of how much waste their product processes
lettuce will do great until it gets hot, but rafts with insulation may keep your temps more stable.. media growbeds are major heat sinks... you may have trouble with tomatoes while the system is still "new" - i found that maxicrop with iron was a good supplement, i used a capful or so every few weeks.. it took a while, but i did have a major ph crash at around month 8, i added lots of shellgrit and a little hydrated lime and try to keep the water at about 7.2-7.4