dandm's barra pool/swimming pool

RupertofOZ

Yep... australia has most of the good ones... :wink:

KudaPucat

and the good spiders, not so big, but plenty of bite.

dandm

Hmmm, a regular visitor! It seemed to like the 'fish' on the tiles....fortunately not the real fish, though no doubt it has been close by. We have also seen it at 11.30pm the other night, that is a bit more scary than during the day!

Now a barra question...although the temperature is still 24 in the afternoon, the barra have gone right off their food. All water quality is fine, and the barra look good and healthy, but are eating about half what they were eating before. No more morning feed at all, presumably it is too cold in the early morning now, but why are they not eating as much in the afternoon?
dandm

jessy

What a neat pic , well done :cheers:

faye

Do you think it is the same snake or is there more than 1?

RupertofOZ

dandm wrote:

Now a barra question...although the temperature is still 24 in the afternoon, the barra have gone right off their food. All water quality is fine, and the barra look good and healthy, but are eating about half what they were eating before. No more morning feed at all, presumably it is too cold in the early morning now, but why are they not eating as much in the afternoon?
dandm

Fish metabolism is directly related to water temperature... the warmer the water the more they metabolise... and require more energy to do so...

So they're more active, respire and grow more, need more energy, eat more...

As the water cools, their energy needs decrease... so does their appetitie...

Most fish will also go off their feed with a drop in baraometric pressure... i.e. before a change in the weather, a front sweeping through...

Often, they'll actually just head down to the bottom of the tank and just mingle around slowly....

Just decrease you feed accordingly... when the water warms, and they attack the feed with more vigour... raise the feed amount back towards what is was previously...

dandm

Thanks for that explanation....makes sense. Our worry was that their feeding suddenly seemed to reduce when we had a cold spell in Perth at the end of February, but it hasn't picked up again even though the water temp has been 24 and actually 26 today. They are eating though, and look well. I guess those cooler morning temperatures are making a significant difference to their metabolism.
Must be getting close to time to catch them.......

dandm

Forgot to mention Faye...we are pretty sure (fingers crossed) that it is the same one as it seems to be the same size and has some distinct ticks on it. Goodness....let's hope there isn't more than 1! Mind you, we have only seen three this summer, and saw 8 last summer, so it is an improvement!

RupertofOZ

Had exactly the same thing happen over here Dandm... cold spell for a week (including a night time min of 10 degrees one night)... knocked my unheated tank temps down from 25/26 to about 18/19...

Silvers didn't feed at all one morning.... and I've cut their ration for the morning feed by 2/3rds and about a half for the afternoon feed...

Even now the tank is back to about 23/24... I'm still not back to full rations...

Might have to get some heat into the two unheated tanks...

The other tank hooked to the solar array is still up around 28 most days... and the Silvers in that tank are still wearing their bikinis and sipping pena coladas... :mrgreen:

Snakes

Dufflight wrote:

Don't like the brown snakes. Any snake that gets into the top 5 venomous snakes list is not good. And they really don't like people, only snake that I know of that when it spots you accross an irragation ditch, goes for a swim to come at ya. Really cranky.
10th is the Western Brown Snake
9th is the Death Adder
8th is the Black Tiger Snake
7th is the Tiger Snake
6th is theSea Kraits
5th is the Mainland
4th is the Eastern Tiger Snake
3 is the Taipan
2end is the King Brown Snake
1stis the Inland Taipan Or Fierce Snake

Bugger didn't think we were that high on the list. :shock:

2nd is the Eastern or common brown snake, not King Brown (which is actually a black snake, and number 20 on the list)...

RupertofOZ

Very nearly had a nasty encounter with an Eastern Brown while camped out in the bush some years ago....

Aggresive little buggers... wasn't running away like most snakes... this one was was essentially "stalking" the camp site...

dandm

[quote] 2nd is the Eastern or common brown snake, not King Brown (which is actually a black snake, and number 20 on the list)...[/quote]

I think it must depend on which book you use...our book says the taipan 1st, mulga or king brown is 2nd, then death adder, common brown and then tiger snake. It's all relative really though isn't it....in the right (or wrong!) circumstances they can all be deadly!!! Because we see so many tiger snakes and they are an aggressive snake, we keep a snake bite kit handy, and each year refresh our memory of what is in it and what to do.

Back to the barra...Thanks for the feedback Rupe- that certainly seems to be what we are experiencing. Good to know they may still pick up again and continue growing for a while longer...though with trout season coming on.....!!!!!

dandm

Another dandm update.... We harvested our barramundi yesterday so the pool is ready for the trout coming in April. the smallest was 1.1kg and the biggest 1.5 kg!!! They started out at 500-700 grams, so we are pleased with ourselves, especially as we had them for 6 weeks or so before they started eating! they certainly were less interested in food over the last three weeks, so we are happy to have a freezer full of good sized fish now rather than wait too long and have them lose condition.

Our catching method was two security flyscreens (grill type) with the flywire removed. We tied them together, hopped in the pool and were able to use them to trap the fish in a small area of the pool. Then it was easy to net them out. We caught some, then did 'the deed' and put them on ice while we caught some more. All in all it went very smoothly, and we had a delicious baked barramundi for dinner last night!

Now we are looking forward to trout season coming up! We read somewhere that trout tend to jump and the water level in the pool should be lowered or a net put over. Has anyone had this happen?

deb and mack

faye

To all those people who say you can't grow barramundi in their swimming pool. pfft
Not only did you do it. :cheers:

But you did it so well, good on ya guys.

Quote:

Now we are looking forward to trout season coming up! We read somewhere that trout tend to jump and the water level in the pool should be lowered or a net put over. Has anyone had this happen?

Oh yeah, all the time when they are settling in (for the first couple of weeks). If you liked keeping barra, I reckon you will love keeping trout.

RupertofOZ

Pictures would have been nice... :wink:

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