Ongoing Issues
Pump / filters keep falling off ibc side walls (suction poor)
(Burnt holes into side so wire can be threaded through & pumps secured) (soldering iron to poke through plastic ibc)
Water clearing up a bit (could of washed sand another 10 times but only 10 times wasn’t enough)
Our bore water goes cloudy the following day & takes a week to settle.
Noticed wrigglers in tank 2 & 3 (added a few red tail fish) (2 to each container) (will add more when my fish catching skills improve).
Need more air pumps as redundancy
Purchased 2 foot long air stone , but current “bait keeper pump” (from boat) is not strong enough to utilise its length. Another stronger one is on the way that runs on 240v.
Installed UPS 500VA to give another hour of power during blackout (its the build up/ beginning of Wet Season & lots of lightning about) Currently running 4 pumps totalling about 45 watts usage) & 1 aerator on battery (12volt old lawnmower battery)(5 days now without recharge)
Plan is 1X 4 port air pump with hoses to 3 ibc’s plus individual air pumps in each IBC. Depends on the reality of its air pressure. (It is all good & working great)
With the extra underwater stories added to the housing we are jumping straight into higher density environment.
We did end up with 20+ in one container for nearly 2 weeks as we let them settle. 9 of those are worthy of trophy photos due to their size & another ten in the mid to large range. Surprisingly they did OK with each other. I spent many an hour watching their interactions.
These are our breeders we need at this stage as we try to find a way to produce some fishing bait under our aquaculture farming methods/attempts. As we stumble along we may realise we only need half of our breed stock. Early days yet. (3 months on & the big ones have been our big let downs in breeding)
Density ratio
The IBC is 1200 X 1000mm square or 1.2 m2 They have a volume in litres measurement with our average filling size being 450 litres.
I think because they are a ground/surface dwelling creature their density is measured in square metres. So far our maximum density ratio has been 16 per square Metre, and of those several were over 200mm long.
We are back to 9-10 per square metre.
When they are small fry (1-3cm long) we have had 200 in 1 IBC for months
Pumps and Power outages & forgetting to turn them on again
As Females become berried they are moved to the Aquarium & break the "stable" male female ratios in the IBC's.
We now leave several in the IBC with the others so we dont have all our eggs in One Aquarium.
Things change.....
Dont bother using sand as a substrate- it goes septic.
Watch out when cleaning tank via the main outlet when you have rocks. We damaged out outlets and now they leak (trying to crush little stuck stones in valve with plastic doesnt work) We were siphoning the tank using a hose plugged direct into the bottom outlet.(1 inch of rushing water) Worked well cleaning up all the mucky sand & small stones.
We no longer pull berried females out of IBC's and segregate into aquariums (seem to lose too many eggs with females eventually dropping all off after a week)- Will now collect spawn & put in aquarium without pump & just aeration. (pump will suck them in to filter)
Our BIGGEST issue to date is not turning the pumps & aerators back on after turning them off to observe the redclaw crayfish. We have lost more cray to suffocation in 2 occassions than any other incident.
So don't turn them off!!
Cleaning the IBC's.
We used to clean the muck out every few weeks before it went too rancid, at the same time doing a water drain & swap (It was a big job). 4 months on now just using a piece of hose we siphon the remains every few days/week into a bucket (filtered through mesh so we can replace the sucked up escapees). Then we replace the water we took out.
Other times we use a pump to stir up the IBC and push most of the muck into a corner for suctioning at a later time. It is a much more casual affair taking less than 5 minutes each IBC (instead of the afternoon)
We now use air pumps instead of water pumps.
Pump / filters keep falling off ibc side walls (suction poor)
(Burnt holes into side so wire can be threaded through & pumps secured) (soldering iron to poke through plastic ibc)
Water clearing up a bit (could of washed sand another 10 times but only 10 times wasn’t enough)
Our bore water goes cloudy the following day & takes a week to settle.
Noticed wrigglers in tank 2 & 3 (added a few red tail fish) (2 to each container) (will add more when my fish catching skills improve).
Need more air pumps as redundancy
Purchased 2 foot long air stone , but current “bait keeper pump” (from boat) is not strong enough to utilise its length. Another stronger one is on the way that runs on 240v.
Installed UPS 500VA to give another hour of power during blackout (its the build up/ beginning of Wet Season & lots of lightning about) Currently running 4 pumps totalling about 45 watts usage) & 1 aerator on battery (12volt old lawnmower battery)(5 days now without recharge)
Plan is 1X 4 port air pump with hoses to 3 ibc’s plus individual air pumps in each IBC. Depends on the reality of its air pressure. (It is all good & working great)
With the extra underwater stories added to the housing we are jumping straight into higher density environment.
We did end up with 20+ in one container for nearly 2 weeks as we let them settle. 9 of those are worthy of trophy photos due to their size & another ten in the mid to large range. Surprisingly they did OK with each other. I spent many an hour watching their interactions.
These are our breeders we need at this stage as we try to find a way to produce some fishing bait under our aquaculture farming methods/attempts. As we stumble along we may realise we only need half of our breed stock. Early days yet. (3 months on & the big ones have been our big let downs in breeding)
Density ratio
The IBC is 1200 X 1000mm square or 1.2 m2 They have a volume in litres measurement with our average filling size being 450 litres.
I think because they are a ground/surface dwelling creature their density is measured in square metres. So far our maximum density ratio has been 16 per square Metre, and of those several were over 200mm long.
We are back to 9-10 per square metre.
When they are small fry (1-3cm long) we have had 200 in 1 IBC for months
Pumps and Power outages & forgetting to turn them on again
As Females become berried they are moved to the Aquarium & break the "stable" male female ratios in the IBC's.
We now leave several in the IBC with the others so we dont have all our eggs in One Aquarium.
Things change.....
Dont bother using sand as a substrate- it goes septic.
Watch out when cleaning tank via the main outlet when you have rocks. We damaged out outlets and now they leak (trying to crush little stuck stones in valve with plastic doesnt work) We were siphoning the tank using a hose plugged direct into the bottom outlet.(1 inch of rushing water) Worked well cleaning up all the mucky sand & small stones.
We no longer pull berried females out of IBC's and segregate into aquariums (seem to lose too many eggs with females eventually dropping all off after a week)- Will now collect spawn & put in aquarium without pump & just aeration. (pump will suck them in to filter)
Our BIGGEST issue to date is not turning the pumps & aerators back on after turning them off to observe the redclaw crayfish. We have lost more cray to suffocation in 2 occassions than any other incident.
So don't turn them off!!
Cleaning the IBC's.
We used to clean the muck out every few weeks before it went too rancid, at the same time doing a water drain & swap (It was a big job). 4 months on now just using a piece of hose we siphon the remains every few days/week into a bucket (filtered through mesh so we can replace the sucked up escapees). Then we replace the water we took out.
Other times we use a pump to stir up the IBC and push most of the muck into a corner for suctioning at a later time. It is a much more casual affair taking less than 5 minutes each IBC (instead of the afternoon)
We now use air pumps instead of water pumps.