I did it! I succesfully raised rainbow trout in my backyard system. I started april 4th with 34 trout weighing 25 gr and ended mid september at a weight of 300 gr per trout. Last weekend I had some friends over for lunch. Guess what was being served?
the trout coming out of the oven
They enjoyed the meal, so I'm very happy. I cooked the trout papillote style in the oven covered with aluminium foil.
System still up for now
For the moment I still have 25 trout swiming in the system and some plants. I'm going to feed the rest of my feed and then possible freeze the trout. I still have some summer vegetables (tomatoes and peppers) they are finally ripening but outside temperatures are dropping fast.
Lettuce is doing good
I have an abundance of strawberries, taste varies A LOT, but much better than in spring.
kicking ass trout
Do I recomend this and will I be doing this next year?
First I'm retiring my system. A couple of reasons, I must have a leak somewhere because even in this heavy rain my water is dropping. These ibcs have been outside for four years now. Second, I didn't use any solid waste filtering other than my growbeds and there is some mud in there. Finally raising trout in my climate is a bit squeezing it
next year
I will be working on some pure hydroponics, I feel I can't answer some of my questions with a setup with fish. I can't bare the thought of waking up to dead fish. A hydroponic system will hopefully give me a more solid understanding of everything going on.
try aquaponics if
You want to experiment and don't mind spending up to half an hour every day checking and managing your water chemistry, feeding fish and picking the fruits of your labor.
It's been fun blogging on steemit
I started blogging about this system ten weeks in,it's now week 23. Blogging gave me a boost being more disciplined about measuring nutrient values and trying some things out. Thank you for reading.