Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I feel like I've hijacked your thread Savarin... please let me know if I should create a new one.

Colder nights here of late... down to 13 the other morning. But the BSFL are self-harvesting in good quantities now... a cup full this morning... mixture of white and black larvae.

The white ones were a bit hard... likely the jade perch would have spat them out. But I didn't find out, because I had a go at making my own pellets and the JP really went for them.

Very roughly equal portions of frozen BSFL, leafy greens from the aquaponics and flour. I pureed the first two in a food processor - when I was alone in the house . Then mixed in the flour, smeared on to some baking paper about 5 mm thick and then cooked in microwave.

They were a bit leathery rather than crisp/dry. Easily cut in to strips and then torn across so that I had roughly 6 mm pellet sized (or a bit bigger) home made slow sinking pellets. None of them hit the bottom of the tank.

Next will be reading the long thread on this forum about home made food... to work out what else I should add.
Also need to work out how to cook them so they're drier... for longer shelf life. If that all goes well... I can scale up my BSFL farm and supplement the commercial pellets.

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Dave

My first system
My Murray cod system

keep hijacking, heaps of excellent info.
I will be dismantling my setup soon to move it to a new house so not much happening in mine at present.

The BSF farm slowed right down in winter but is back in full production again.

I've yet to make a large batch of floating "pellets" from the mature larvae. But yesterday I harvested about 300 g of soft white immature larvae.

Used a coarse sieve to separate them from the frass. Took only a few seconds. The jade perch finished off half of them in no time. The rest will be their breakfast today.

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_________________
Dave

My first system
My Murray cod system

Dave, Very interesting work you've done with the homemade crumbles.
I wonder if the catfish I'm running would eat something like that.

I still have a good amount of larvae growing, I'm interested in trying, and like you.....when nobody else is home...heeehhee

I have tried feeding them (catfish) live larvae, and it seems most are scared of them, and a few will eat them. My other fish (sunfish) do eat them. But, I have very few sunfish.

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If you give a man a fish, he can make an AP system, but if you give a man too many fish, he'll probably have problems with ammonia.

Barrel System
IBC System
300 gallon flood and drain system

Let us know how you go cooking your crumbles [FACE SAVOURING DELICIOUS FOOD]

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_________________
Dave

My first system
My Murray cod system

Yesterday morning's breakfast for my fish... Self harvested and most of them soft enough for the fish to eat.

There are so many in the BSFL farm that I can just scoop out handfuls of immature white ones with almost no frass mixed in.

Have halved my use of commercial pellets. The fish seem healthy... I ate two of them yesterday and they tasted pretty good.

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_________________
Dave

My first system
My Murray cod system

Dangerous Dave
Good to see your BSF are cracking on. My BSFL farm is only just going, not sure if it's my location or the temp here ( we just had a few days over 40*c ) any way will keep trying.
Would be interesting to see a comparison in growth rates with BSFL & the commercial feed.
You get the Jade Perch to feed better on the immature BSFL is interesting. I have Silver Perch & sometimes they won't eat the older brown BSFL. So I have been freezing them to use later. Once I have a few more in the farm I'll try the silvers on the white BSFL & see how it goes.
Will keep an eye on this tread.
Thanks

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GTK
http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=26139

Still feeding with mostly BSFL supplemented by some commercial pellets and greens (eg sweet potato vine leaves). The Jade perch seem to be doing well. We ate another one last week and it seemed very healthy when harvested

But I've given up making my own pellets... too much work and too messy

I just scoop a handful of larvae from the bed of the farm, wash most of the frass off in a seive and feed them immediately. There are a mixture of sizes of BSFL in what the fish are getting... but few mature brown/hard ones.

The BSFL that self harvest are allowed to get on with their usual life cycle.

My small farm produces far more than I need to keep 15 x 750 gram JP fed.

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_________________
Dave

My first system
My Murray cod system

Forgot to add picture

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_________________
Dave

My first system
My Murray cod system