Month: November 2006

I haven’t been able to see the egg bareing female for ages in the day time so I thought I would try at night with a torch , to my surprise she was out of her hiding place and there must have been 20 or so juveniles scattered around the tank , they are swimming around like prawns crawling up the sides of the tank they are every where , I caught the female to see if she had any thing left on her and there is still heaps of eggs hanging off her so they must drop them off in groups over a week or so ? .
I have about 8 fish in the tank with them 4 guppies and 4 redfin blue eyes I am not sure if they will eat them if I do notice them taking them I will remove them from the tank , they didn’t when I was watching but they may have already had there fill !!!
Here is a few pics of them , there is a guppy next to one of them to give you an indication of there size I have read that high mortality rates in juveniles is to be expected but only time will tell.

While checking on the yabby’s today I noticed that one had moulted , at first I thought I would find another munted yabby but to my surprise I couldn’t see any carnage .
I did notice one of them had a claw from the moulted shell on the other side of the tank so he must have had a close call ! there is plenty of pipes laying around so he must have ducked into one of those .
I am not sure if canablism is because they are hungry or is a natural way for them to keep there population in check ? I have been over feeding them a bit mabe that is why they didn’t kill him or mabe he was just lucky .

I tested ammonia and nitrites again in my new system they are both at 1 wich is a good sign the water turbitity cleared up and it looks crystal clear , I added various plants into the grow beds a couple of strawberries and some cuttings , oregano some kind of a curry plant rosemary some wormwood and no idea what the last one is , some of them look a little sickly but are still alive and to be fair they are not really cuttings they were wrenched off as I walked past so I think its a good sign that they are still alive .The female yabbie settled in fine and is very healthy took me ages to catch it as it flicked around the tank I added in five red fin blue eye or feeder fish if you like and they are doing fine also.I bought some marron food for them but they dont seem that interested in it , well not when I am looking any way they do like meal worms the odd snail when I catch them in the grow beds and an apple core now and then !!
Here is some more pics so you can see the difference.

I came across some info on the net at www.fish.wa.gov.au/docs/aq/aq001/aq001page02.php?0309 it says that females dont molt while they are spawning !!! well the ones I have seem to , one of them has molted then came back later and fed on the babies attached to the sheded shell .
I dont care so much because the other female has alot more eggs on her than that one did ! hopefully she is a better mother , I think I will wait several days for its shell to harden before I place it in the other tank with the males , “after the last episode” , not that she deserves it !!
Here is a pic of the new system I made its got a stronger pump so I was able to make a flood and drain system and add another grow bed into it , the amonoia levels jumped up to 6 after the canablism incident so I dumped some water I didn’t bother with nitrites because I know the biofilter wont kick in for a while.
The first system I built is working fine amonia and nitrites non existant and the watercres is growing well hopefully the remaining egg barring female will give me some much needed stock.

I seperated the male yabby’s from the females so they wouldn’t harrass and eat the berries off them I noticed one of the males was a little softer than the others when I was transfering it to the new tank
I thought it must have already moulted and had eaten its shell because I couldn’t see it any where , I checked on them today to see how they were settling in and I noticed on the bottom of the tank that it had molted and its shell was laying next to a piece of pipe , the turbidity isn’t to good as its a new system and azolla is floating on the surface wich makes it hard to see !! on closer inspection I noticed a mutilated corpse of a yabby they had canibalised it !!!
Now that I think about it when we were at mount barker females with berries and soft shelled marron were seperated from the other marron and placed into pond 3 now I know why .
(One down seven to go) 🙂

Saturday

Tour of the farm and harvesting marron

Tony took us for a farm tour , which also acted as an farm inspection and maintenance appraisal , as a new pipe coupling was required to be fitted at one of the ponds . We then loaded net , tubs , rinsing tank , all the equipment needed for harvesting Marron on the trailer and moved up to ponds at top of property . We removed the hides , netted the pond , scooped up marron into tubs , these were either rinsed of mud in tub or washed with hose connected to pond pump , this is to remove bacteria in the mud from the marron as this can kill them , it is also important to not expose marron too long and transport marron to purging tanks quickly.

Marron Purging Tanks

These tanks are oxygenated and have continual water flow. Marron were removed from tanks a small number at a time , and weighed and sorted . Egg bearing females were returned to pond Three along with any soft shell marron . Small marron under 40g were returned to pond Six .

Click To Play

Sunday

We harvested and processed 70 Trout
Equipment needed for harvesting was set up at an outside purging tank , only suitable and set up outside for winter . We all scooped trout from tank, and killed the trout with a double pronged spike , one for brain one at start of spine . These are kept in an ice slurry until ready for processing .

The trout are then moved to the processing room , which meets all health dept. regulations . Washable floors, walls, stainless steel work benches, hot water, sink etc. Proper PPE is needed for processing Trout, such as steel mesh glove , apron , rubber boots . There the trout were gilled and gutted and cleaned. They are then packed on ice ready for packaging and delivery .

Unfortunately I did not have the camera on Sunday for the trout processing, and of course I cannot go into too much detail or specifics about certain aspects of production until further study and progress into the course is achieved . It was a very interesting and enlightening experience , I had a fantastic time and look forward to the next field trip , and of course I now have more questions than when I started.

This feedback was supplied by Michael who has justed the course.