A Post script

Michael looks a bit surprised at how easy that was

I haven't posted since late 2010 because the damage at the time due to heavy rain, coupled with the lack of growth of the fish pushed me to make the decision to close down the system.
And so we went fishing!! The wild eyed chap is our mate Michael and the cheezy chap is my next door neighbour Chris who is one of those lunatic trout fishermen.

Chris may have caught the biggest one

Not very sporting way to catch fish but good fun non the less.The fish were caught using the old method of worms on a hook. But then they went off the bite and so drastic measures were needed to catch them ie a BIG net. The big disruption due to the heavy rain occurred in December 2010 and we finally netted out the last of the fish in March 2011. (Or so I thought- more on that later - see the bottom of this post). About half were big enough to eat and the rest were still runts. The small ones we released into the big dam and with a bit of luck they are still there. I think we released about 50 or so into the dam.

An even less sporting way to catch fish

Unfortunately the flavour of the first ones we cooked was not great and so we have not eaten many of those which were big enough to kill and freeze. They are quite good in a fish curry but not so great when baked or fried.

A tiddler

The chooks however just love them- Di cooks a couple every now and then and just throws them in for the chooks who go bananas.

not much reward for a LOT of time and effort

The system was just left then as I had a million other things to do.

What a mess

Then in March 2012 we had another heavy rain event at home and the main tank was pushed even further out of the ground. I had at some earlier time pumped some of the water out but it still had a foot of so of water in it. You can see that it really was a mess.

 My biggest surprise at this time however was that at the time I spotted the snake below I also spotted fish in the tank. Clearly I had missed a couple when I did the big clean out in March 2011!!!!!
I will admit to being a bit slack and not doing anything about the fish at the time and I found one dead and floating in the tank not much later. Today I thought I had better do the right thing and so I pumped most of the remaining water out and climbed into the tank wearing waders and with the net I used last time. And I caught another fish which was about 200mm long. It was skinny but not diseased and seemed reasonably active. I said goodbye and floated it onto the big dam. While trying to catch this one I did catch a fish skull in the net so I can see where some of the survivors food has come from . And I can only assume that the fish ate algae and whatever critters were unlucky enough to fall into the tank. I know frogs get in occasionally and I suspect the occasional skink might fall in as well.

 A remarkable survival of almost 2 and a half years without supplementary feeding - tough little chaps Silver Perch.


And the snake?

 

Hello- Joe Blake

Imagine my surprise when I just happened to look into the tank in late January this year to see that I had trapped a visitor. The polystyrene block had blown into the tank from one of the shelves in the shed. Yes -it is a healthy Eastern Brown Snake who seems to be saying to me that he would quite like to be somewhere else please. I rescued the snake and kept him in a box for a couple of weeks intending to use him as part of one of our Wildcare snake handling courses. As it happened the course was rained out and so the snake was released back into the wild the day after the course was cancelled.

I have not yet completely demolished the system in the shed but that will happen in the next couple of months as we need the storage space again.
The hydroponics tanks in the conservatory are still going and are a success now that I don't have to worry about keeping fish alive as well. We get a steady supply of greens, peas and chillies  which keeps Di happy.