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I would try it again. Just figure out what went wrong.

A former neighbor of mine use to raise supplemental Brook and RBT for a local fish farm that Cecil and esshup knows.

He said he didn't mind raising them in his pond's, but hated the hatchery phase. Too easy for him to screw something up, and he said he wasn't cut out for the job. He no longer raises fish.

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Do you have any idea what went wrong? Do you think it had to do with food supply? Size, variety, ability to digest? It is a great experiment and sure is fun to watch. You had me thinking about how I can do it in my garage with Koi.

I guess one must fail a few times to succeed at all. Good luck!

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Bcotton, in my mind you are successful. You gave it a good shot, and WE ALL have learned from it. Next time, whoever may try it, will benefit from this. Thanks for taking us on this experiment, and hope you have a greater success next time.

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I would have a culture of green water available to feed your fry with. Make sure you have a lot of it too. After a couple weeks, you can begin feeding newly hatched brine shrimp.

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What good is the green water (phytoplankton) if it doesn't have zooplankton?

JKB,

Hatching trout eggs and feeding swim up fry is not rocket science. We did it in college and I can assure you if some of my classmates that never graduated can do it anyone can. grin

Last edited by Cecil Baird1; 08/23/13 03:39 PM.

If pigs could fly bacon would be harder to come by and there would be a lot of damaged trees.






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Yeah Cecil, He just didn't like messing with the eggs and all. Picking out the dead ones and fussin over the whole scheme of things involved, without any real income for time spent. He wasn't paid jack squat for his effort. It was a financial thing, like being screwed!

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I see. Many times it's not worth it being a wholesaler. Or raising animals is not everyone's thing. I'm seriously considering hatching triploid eggs this fall though if I can swing a chiller.

I just sold my extra fingerling perch for just under $400.00. Not in the fish supply business, but might as well sell what I can't use. More than made up for the feed, utilities, etc. Still held back a couple hundred for two high schools of the largest fish, as the buyer wanted a consistent size, and there were some that were significantly larger.

Just asked for a quote of 6 more cubic feet of MB3 media from WMT as I'm going with all moving bed filters in the schools. That leaves me with three unused RBC's though. eek

I may use the RBC's for my trout tanks when I set up the pole building or sell them.

Last edited by Cecil Baird1; 08/24/13 12:12 PM.

If pigs could fly bacon would be harder to come by and there would be a lot of damaged trees.






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Yes, i think it was lack of food. I did finally get an algae bloom started in a 300 gallon ibc but it was too late. I can also see the tiny zooplankton swimming around so i think it would have been sufficient if i had it a week earlier.

I drained the outdoor ibc today and there were maybe a dozen fry at the bottom. They are now about the size tilapia fry are when they are born. i wasnt able to catch them. but they may be in a rubbermade tote where i emptied the bottom off the ibc, i will check again once the water settles and i can see better.

Theres no doubt i will try again i just havent decided if it will be this year.

On a recommendation from another site i am going to try to use Spirulina Powder as a starter fry food. I dont think i will be able to generate large algae blooms with all these

Also next time i wont take the parents out of the tank. Since i only need 100ish, i will just siphon out water and capture a couple hundred to place in another tank. Less should be less food competition and easier to keep alive.

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Originally Posted By: bcotton
Yes, i think it was lack of food. I did finally get an algae bloom started in a 300 gallon ibc but it was too late. I can also see the tiny zooplankton swimming around so i think it would have been sufficient if i had it a week earlier.


Not enough food at the right time soon after the hatching of yoy is also a big killer in natural outside waters. It is often noted in studies.

Last edited by ewest; 08/24/13 06:37 AM.















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Originally Posted By: ewest
Originally Posted By: bcotton
Yes, i think it was lack of food. I did finally get an algae bloom started in a 300 gallon ibc but it was too late. I can also see the tiny zooplankton swimming around so i think it would have been sufficient if i had it a week earlier.


Not enough food at the right time soon after the hatching of yoy is also a big killer in natural outside waters. It is often noted in studies.


It also happens to those of us that produce yellow perch in ponds in early spring. It's tough to get an algae bloom going to feed the zooplankton in cold water, and if you get a cold snap things can go awry.

Additionally as Bill Cody will tell you, not only do you need the zooplankton there at the right time, you also need the right sizes for the mouth gape.

Last edited by Cecil Baird1; 08/24/13 12:18 PM.

If pigs could fly bacon would be harder to come by and there would be a lot of damaged trees.






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A zooplankton bloom progresses typically from smaller individuals to larger individuals. Ideally you want the bulk of the zooplankton to be smaller sizes (early stages) when the fry are 2-4 days off the yolk sac stage.


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A tiny baby food factory then.

I never really looked deep into this part of the process for BG and such.

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In 2014 i have a couple of goals to build off of last years bluegill spawn

1) keep the larva alive and grow them into feed trained juveniles
2) cross RESxBG or BGxRES


I have set up some Bg and RES in my 100 gallon aquarium, set the light to 16 hours on 8 off and added an aquarium heater to bring the water up to and maintain it at 78 degres. it would usually stay at about 70. I will probably post some pictures so i can get you guys to help verify i have male BG;s and female res.. or i may need to swap some fish around to make better breeding pairs.

meanwhile, in my 60 gallon aquarium where i am keeping only feed trained res, one of the res males built a nest and today i noticed some eggs/larva in his nest.


The big male RES is the one closest to the nest and kind of facing me, I think the other 5 or 6 fish are all female res but i am not sure. He seems to always face me like i am a threat.


The nest


a closeup of the eggs. they are moving and jumping around but not swimming.


as for keeping the larva alive this time i have a multi-pronged approach where i keep some in different tanks and try different approaches.
1) I am moving some aquaponics water into a 100 gallon stock tank outside. Hopefully it has time to algae bloom a little before the larva start swimming.
2) I acquired some spirulina powder. I plan to try to get them to eat this.
3) i bought a mixture of daphnia, fairyshrimp and clamshrimp eggs a few months ago. I am going to get that culture started today so i can add zooplanton.


moving pictures showing same stuff as above with my hick voice talking

Last edited by bcotton; 05/26/14 11:30 AM.
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Pretty cool.


"Forget pounds and ounces, I'm figuring displacement!"

If we accept that: MBG(+)FGSF(=)HBG(F1)
And we surmise that: BG(>)HBG(F1) while GSF(<)HBG(F1)
Would it hold true that: HBG(F1)(+)AM500(x)q.d.(=)1.5lbGRWT?
PB answer: It depends.
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Good luck!

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Nice work. Should be interesting to see how things go.
















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add 150 gallons of aquaponics fish tank water into an ibc
add some acidic rain to lower ph (fish tank water is about ph 8.2)
wait 3 days.
equals the beginnings of an algae bloom...

i ordered some rock phosphate to feed it, it will be here tomorrow. If i knew the bloom would be so far along today i wouldnt have bothered.

I nee dto move it to a different container, when i do, I will add some aeration. (We dont want the larva/fry to suffocate at night when the algaee is using 02 and making CO2.)

I expect there will be some naturally occurring zooplankton that already existed in small amounts in aquaponics system but i will seed it with some of the zooplankton mix i mentioned earlier once they start hatching.



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once it goes green, it really goes green!
one small suggestion, get a few clear "juice" type bottles, fill those up with some of the green water and put someplace out of the way but in the sun.. i used for emergency backup starter cultures..

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Walleyes For Tomorrow runs portable fish hatcheries where they take over for mother nature. They strip the fish, incubate the eggs, and release the fry.


The system uses continually circulating water from the lake. The fry are kept inside the jars with a filter setup, but once released they flow out through a trough to a vat that also has a filter. They are carefully collected into coolers then taken out to the middle of the lake to be released.

In your case you could probably hold them in another tank if you could circulate "blooming" water.









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Fry jar.jpg Fry Vat.jpg
Last edited by Hesperus; 05/27/14 04:23 PM.
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Keith, I have had little success keeping algae alive in jars. If i can do this in 3 days i dont really see the point.

Hesperus, That's really interesting and there may be parts of this that i can learn and use but i am not sure i completely understand the details that make this method work.

1) what type,size of filter do they use that allows the right size of plankton in but doesnt let the fry out?
2) do they change the filter as the fry grow and need different sizes of food?
3) how big do they grow the fry out before release?


My plan is to
a) move some of the algae water into a different ibc (250gallon tank).
b) Then add more fish tank water to feed the algae bloom and bring it up to about half full (125 gallons).
c) Once the fry are swimming i will siphon half of the fish tank into the ibc (~30 gallons). This will do both feed the algae bloom with more nitrates and move a fair number of fry to the ibc.
d) Then every few days add about 10-15 gallons aquaponics water and maybe some rock phosphate to feed the bloom and keep it going.
e) in a couple of weeks when the ibc is about 90% water capacity (~225-230gallons) i will have to start doing partial water changes to add new fish tank water. Maybe 10% every few days?

"e" is going to be the tricky part. I dont feel like i need constant circulation, just a little water swap here and there to keep the bloom fed. The fry will still be super tiny and i am not certain how i will keep all of the fry in the tank. Maybe i can get away with just adding a little rock phosphate until the fry are a little bigger?

I will have to keep them in this non circulating tank until they are big enough to not slip through my plumbing in the indoor hatchery system, so they probably need to be about an inch long. The openings in the "drains" at the bottom of my barrel tanks are miter saw cuts. They are about 2" long but only about 1/16" or 1/8" wide.



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They release the fry shortly after hatching. This way they have the egg sack to feed on initially. The socks are such that the fry cannot pass.

If you want details I'm sure I can get them in fact I think they did an instructional video. They have several of these "walleye wagon" portable hatcheries and numerous chapter organizations so instruction was key.


For reference:

http://walleyesfortomorrow.org/


https://www.facebook.com/WalleyesForTomorrow?ref=stream

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i'd use (and have used in my minnow spawning/marmokreb breeding tanks) sponge filters... safe for fry, but you'll end up having to feed the tank your green water more often... maintenance is squeezing out the filter every couple/few weeks in some clean water - non chlorinated
one thing i did notice with my rosy red fry was how there would always be several tiny little minnow hanging around the snails (that i got from duckweed i bought).. i know i read something somewhere about the snail waste, and now i'm thinking it was something i read about gamarus (scuds).. anyways, yeah.. sponge filter, just hook up to an air line you can regulate

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I moved all of the red ears out of the tank except the male last week.

The red ear fry started swimming early friday morning 5/30. I tried to take pictures of them but i just cant get the camera to focus on them in the 60 gallon aquarium. The 100 gallon aquarium i had the bluegill fry in has the back painted black which helped a lot.

The one thing i though was weird is that it seemed like all the fry left the nest but then i saw more eggs over on the far side of the tank in a much smaller nest. I didnt notice the other nest before. I dont know if the male could have moved the eggs or if that was just another nest from a different male and female i didnt notice before.

an additional point of interest is that once the male found the other eggs, he guarded that nest too and would fan the other nest's eggs





I have siphoned off 70% of the aquarium water to the green water tank 3 times now. Each time i refilled the aquarium with fresh water from my outdoor aquaponics system. Each time it siphoned thousands of fry into the green water tank but the 60 gallon aquarium still has wall to wall red ear fry. I read on this forum where people say that red ears wont take over a pond like blue gill but if that is the case it's not because they produce less eggs. at least that is my humble small sample size of experience.

I have an aerator in the greenwater ibc and the algae bloom is still healthy. This is my best chance of having fry grow large enough to eat commercial feed.

I add a teaspoon of spirulina powder to the 60 gallon tank 2-3 times a day. I dont know if the fry can even eat the spirulina but if they cant the fish tank fry will be dead in the next couple of days. If i still see fry swimming around by thursday or friday i will assume they are eating and i will move the male out of the tank and continue to try to grow the aquarium fry.

brian

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Very cool. Thanks for sharing what you are doing.

I'm trying to raise RES in a forage pond with FHM. Not nearly as sophisticated as your attempt, but similarly trying to increase my RES numbers.


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I have gotten further than last time.

The fry are about two weeks old now. I am pretty sure they were all dead by now last year. It's hard to count them because they are small and spread out and sometimes hiding but I see approx 100-200 still alive in the 60 gallon aquarium. There may be/should be a few hundred still alive in the greenwater tank too. They are 3-4x the size from the newborn. I would say they are about the size of newborn tilapia which are able to eat powdered commercial food, so i have started crushing up a couple of pellets to see if they will try to eat it. If they are i cant tell. I have to be careful because it's hard to vacuum with so many tiny fish and I have to worry about fouling the water more than it already is.

My daphnia, fairyshrimp and clamshrimp hatch attempt seems to have failed so i dont have bigger zooplankton to feed them. They are going to have to eat chunks of algae or powdered food to sustain themselves in the interim if they are going to survive.


These pictures are from last friday so they are about 4 days old.


The green water was still very green.. But now the green water is clearing up. I started a second ibc about a week after the first so i should still have green water for a few more days. From my understanding you cant keep green water going indefinitely. Oddly enough The algae produce an enzyme that will inhibit algae growth. I will end up discharging this water into my aquaponics system as evaporation and transpiration calls for top-ups. I *think* i will have to collect new rain water or treat some municipal water to start a new one.




I dont know if these are some kind of mayflies or mosquitoes or what, but they think they can land on the water but they find that the air stone causes no surface tension and instead of landing, they dive and they drown.



It's possible to see the fry now but still cant get a good picture. The spots i circled show dark spots which are mostly fry.



I am optimistic i will get 100 or so to live this time. I am still learning a lot and there's a few changes i will make to my process the next time i get a spawn.

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