The fish are at the stage where they need to move onto bigger things to eat whilst they will still eat plankton , blood worms and brine shrimp I am going to introduce them to cooked yabby meat. I have caught about twenty large yabbies from my largest dam and I am going to prepare them the same as I would to eat myself . Once I have the tail meet I will freeze it , this allows me to store them for a long time and enables me to cut them into fine strips the correct size for the fish.If you would like to grow yabbies for yourself to eat and you have a dam and yabbies are present then you can feed the yabbies this will give you more and bigger yabbies, yabbies like legumes so peas beans Lucerne, all of these are legumes and there are other things they will readily eat, however stay away from meat It could mess up the water if it goes uneaten . if you wish to go further into growing your own yabbies on a bigger scale then please leave your number in Coments and I will be glad to help as much as I can.
Monthly Archives: March 2016
Worm your way out of this one
this fish is eating a worm nearly as long as itself, you would not want to be a worm near these fish.
Toxic mud
A friend of mine wrote this letter which tries to find a solution to the yearly fish kills that occur at the mouth of the Gellibrand river and other rivers along the southwest coast .It may be relevant to other estuarine environs around Australia also.
Watering time
Once again I am in debt to my neighbour for water in this very dry year.
Pick it up, take it home.
If we would like to have places like beaches and river banks to swim and play then we must learn to put our rubbish in bins or take it home. The pictures above show a glass and a glass sliver that I found by the side of a river where people swim and fish they would do a lot of damage to someone’s foot should they step on this and just take the fishing line home.
Staggering
Keeping it clean
The water in the tanks is about 23 degrees the p/h is between 7.5- 8.5 and the ammonia level is 0.5-i.0 that’s close to perfect , however I am expecting a spike in ammonia as the fish age and eat more food, with night time temps getting cooler I don’t expect water temps to be an issue going forward. You can see in this photo that the water has a tannin look about it that’s because I placed dried gum leaves it the water, I believe the eucalyptus in the leaves and branches can help in the fight against bacteria.
Rain Needed
To say its dry is stating the obvious. Without the help of a local farming who lets me use his spring water I would be sunk (or not).Note the green garbage bins these bins are for small fish to find protection from both birds and bigger fish.
What to call them
My comments about a name change has stirred some debate among readers of this blog, my reason for a change is simple it is acceptance, the name black fish is a good description most of the time, it is true when you catch a fish out of a over grown river or stream they are black however in a world where perception is everything cod is a far more appealing sounding name and might engender more good will towards the fish, southern cod is probably not correct because there range extended far outside the southern reaches of east Aust perhaps eastern cod or as I said in a previous post marbled cod .
Sorting out
Eventually these fish will need to be graded so that one fish does not get an advantage over the others. the above and below photos show the size differential. It is also worth noting the tiger stripes on these fish which I believe are badly named,Cleary they can change there colour to suit the background there in. I would welcome others opinions on this topic I would prefer something like southern cod or marbled cod please let me know weather they should be renamed or not or offer your name.