Fish and Aquaponics Reestablished!

In February we moved our yabbies and aquaponics system to the new house, but both to temporary areas until we had some paving completed.

We didn’t want to lose this 6 weeks of growth by emptying the grow beds!

After much thought, we decided to set up a second aquaponics system rather than run aquaculture as we had at our previous place. This will enable us to keep Silver Perch year round as we like to do, but also run Rainbow Trout over the winter months as usual. It also provides more space for growing edibles!

Over the Easter break, we finally set up our systems in the area that was planned for them. This was no mean feat! One system was new and easy to position and set up from scratch, however moving the existing system without emptying each of the three grow beds and their lush veggies was quite an accomplishment thanks to ingenuity, perseverance and sometimes brute force!

car wheel trolleys were perfect for relocating the yabby tank and the aquaponics grow beds!

Once the new system was set up and all the pipework complete, we used a spare tank to transfer the water and fish from the existing system.

Tractor buckets are very handy for that last bit of water!

With some planting out, we now had the new system up and running with over 60 Silver Perch. Now to tackle moving the established system……

A car jack was used to lift each leg of the grow bed enough to place the car wheel trolley underneath. Once all four were in situ, the whole grow bed was pushed into place on the other side of the house.

It was not without difficulties! But we succeeded!

The empty fish tank from the original system was dragged around and placed in position… and the pipework completed.

Next step was to return to our old place and get the Silver Perch from the swimming pool! The small tank borrowed from Cheidys Aquaponics was invaluable.

We ended up removing the pump and draining the swimming pool (using the pool water to transfer the fish over a few trips), and successfully transferred 120 or so fish from the pool to the aquaponics systems. Each tank has 90 or so fish in a variety of sizes from fingerlings to 40+cm long.

And we are now fully set up, with yabbies in the foreground and our two aquaponics systems on the right!