fish in a barrel, low tech.

[Mike]

I wonder if duckweed can be harvested and dried like hay for winter use?

In Pendleton, annual precipitation is 14"/year.  It accumulates mostly in the winter as rain and snow and ice.

http://www.wrcc.dri.edu/htmlfiles/westevap.final.html
(link shows annual evaporation in many places)
Pendleton's annual evaporation is 53.71".  

Most of New Mexico has higher evaporation rates, per the table.

The table is of 'open pan' evaporation.  The dot-edu table is forwarded with 'multiply by .8 or .7 for estimated evaporation rates for natural damp surfaces.'

I take this to mean that pan evaporation is a standardized method for comparison.  And that natural conditions lead to a lot of variation.  And so there must be a lot of good mitigation schemes out there.

Evaporation is a problem and mitigating techniques are needed.

For the fish, I would think the barrels need to be mostly buried (or insulated) with little or no surface area and artificially aerate the water.

For the duckweed, shade should help.  But I think we will have to resign ourselves to less and less area of production as summer wears on.

So I wonder if duckweed can be harvested and dried like hay for winter use?

[silverseeds]

 yes duckweed can be harvested and dried for later usage. Although things like vitamin c and some others will probably be lower or gone. Ive dried some before. Pretty easy to do. being a water plant it dries down fast after it is out of the water for awhile.

  I havent given much thought to evaporation. Now that I think of it though I could probably use the methods of a dew pond to better retain water. I had intended to incorporate such techniques into my future pond plans, but now that I have this larger tank, it may be worth doing something with this as well.... Which are basically method to keep the water cooler as you are saying....

  within the industry some folks will use glass balls floating on the water. since I do indeed have artificial aeration at this point I could cork up some bottles and float them in there or spend a bit of money and buy something stylish. 
 
    But I kinda want the set up to be adaptable to if I didnt have aeration so I do like having a lot of surface area if possible... Your right though, I should be thinking ahead about evaporation as well..... It is rather considerable. So I can use the floating bottles to mitigate evaporation now, and take them out later if electricity becomes an issue. One thing I didnt mention was playing with a few oxygenating plants as well. I only got them recently, but they are especially efficient at oxygenating the water. carp happen to eat them as well. Ive got some tests in mind for that. I had them growing but it was in a tank that previously had algae and I didnt clean it well enough. It got swamped, going to start it in another tank soon. Also starting to look into other plants for my own usage, and to diversify the fishes diets. I intend to have a grow tank or three devoted to those things. Also I have lots of 2.5 gallon containers with cattails in them. they soak up a lot of fish waste themselves but also offer some things for the fish to swim around, and the roots will completely fill the containers. they are edible and nutritious, as are other parts of the plant. I intend to keep dividing those as I am able, and even keep them in the other tanks when possible. the reason being that they will be helping the system at the same time Im building all this root biomass up, which I could eat if need be.....

     the sun is another factor in evaporation. I could benefit greatly from keeping direct light on the fishes water. direct light more so then heat will cause evaporation. I forget the explanation on that. also wind..... I had already planned to set the tank in a new spot accounting for those two factors this winter.... But I was thinking more about keeping light off the tank so it lasts longer. I was also going to bury the tanks in. but I was thinking of that more to help mitigate winter freezing.

      So they take some time to grow in, but deciduous trees are probably the way to go for that. block the sun all summer and let it in throughout winter..... I have a good spot in the front yard but I dont want the tanks up there. i like them in the back.

[Mike]

Containers:

A nearby neighbor has 55-60 gallon opaque food grade drums.  He rescued them on the way to a landfill.  He had to take them all.  I bought 4 at $5 each.  Subsequently I sold them all.  I should probably go buy everything he has left.

They were originally from a mustard manufacturer and had vinegar (still do).  I wonder if they still send them to the landfill?

Here is a guy who sells 55 gal food grade barrels for $15 each.
http://eastoregon.craigslist.org/for/2484555605.html

Another possibility is a dishwasher turned over on its back.  They are about 40 gallons.  There might be a hole or two that needs to be plugged.  They always come with an ac water pump and a lid on hinges!  Discarded dishwashers should be 'free' from places like Sears  that install dishwashers. 

[silverseeds]

               In that same vein Im sure old fridges would work also. old bathtubs. One thing to keep in mind is anything metal would NOT be good. (which by the way anyone thinking of this I can send ideal zooplankton for the price of postage. you can keep a population or three doing in containers of anysize with little effort until your ready)

               $5 bucks for food grade drums??? Id of bought them all as soon as a saw them. all kinds of possible uses, and they last decades.

[Mike]

At what temperatures do the zooplankton stop growing?

At what temperature does the duckweed stop growing?

What temperature is optimal for carp growth?

What temperature is optimal for tilapia growth?

What kind of Carp would you recommend?

[silverseeds]

At what temperatures do the zooplankton stop growing?

Not positive but they will survive in your fridge. their metabolism slows down in cold weather, they should live as long as the water doesnt freeze. Up to 6 months. optimum? I dunno havent thought to much on temps honestly. but glad you brought it up since im already redesigning to help with evaporation as I restructure over winter.....

At what temperature does the duckweed stop growing?

Well that is a tricky question. Rugers university has something like 6 or 700 varieties they consider distinct. Its very adaptable and spread from very warm regions to I think zone 3. so that depends on what you have, and also probably how youve been growing it. I do not yet have the ideal variety honestly. but no real easy way to get it. Im actually planning a trip to collect it up into colorado if need be, (though just realized perhaps I can vince beeherder to find me some for a few bucks) I grew it in my very chilly window, very productively all winter.... It will sink as it cools down in winter, and survive on the floor of the water, and surface in spring... im thinking letting some of it do this would be a good start towards adapting the varieties I do have. Two of which I only got last week so havent really tested yet.....I also found a large leaf one, which was from minnesota grown outside, so Im thinking that one might work well.....

What temperature is optimal for carp growth?

the warmer the better, with there being a high temp you dont want to go over. I forget the maximum actually because it was much higher then I would ever be dealing with. I moved mine outside this year while it was still freezing at night and they were growing well. honestly Im probably not going to bother with an temp issues for the warmer months. There are a lot of other factors to regulate already, and they grow very well at the temps I have already. However freezing water in the winter can be an issue. so I have plans for that. Its sunny 300 days a year here, so Im contemplating what would be the best design of a solar water heater for me to heat the water mechanically rather then electronically. Perhaps as I move farther into it, I will also bother with optimizing summer temps, but Im not really thinking I will bother. everything above freezing is acceptable. Good enough for me. They really do grow fast as it is.

What temperature is optimal for tilapia growth?

well, this depends somewhat on species. blue tilapia can go down to 45 degrees and survive. nile tilapia can go down to 50 and survive. although on forum for those fish Ive seen people say that the nile is better at handling the 50 then the blue tilapia is the 45.....

That said you dont want them to get anywhere close to those temps if possible. these are strictly warm water fish. I believe some parasite over takes them because their immune systems shut down at those lower temps. They can be permanently damaged even when they survive in colder temps. I forget their maximum temps to, but its well past anywhere Id heat the water to if I had them. above 100. they grow well in the 80 and above range.

I got rid of my tilapia when i found out I needed a permit for them so I dont know a ton about them. I dont want to mess with possible issues.

What kind of Carp would you recommend?

mirror or israeli common carp
Well this gets interesting... But to keep it simple the common carp has been farmed for 1000s of years. So just like other types of stock animals there are some selected for superior meat and other qualities.

In europe and asia there are a few other selections then you will find in the states. Mirror carp as they are called are a selection made by monks in europe. they selected for a better quality meat, less scales and better bone structure. they also grow faster then most other common carp....

when america stocked carp in the states we got them from a few sources but most of them were variations of mirror carp usually. they reverted to a much wilder form in most of the country, but some places they still retain a form more like their domesticated ancestors.

So anyway, israeli carp came about when israel which is a country that eats a ton of carp, collected mirror carp from many sources.....

they re breed it to grow even faster, be extremely disease resistant from all major carp issues, able to handle even heavier densities, even better bone structure, even better meat quality... food conversion all of it.....

So for efficiencies sake if you could get a single variety of freshwater fish for this specific use you want israeli carp. which since we live in a country that doesnt eat carp or raise them, you wont be likely to find them. I do however know a place you can order them, and I found them by a fluke because I had settled on buying koi, picked one random seller off of ebay, we got to talking as I was ordering koi I grew up 20 minutes from him. He then tlls me he had israeli carp which I had searched through thousands of sites trying to find a source. Then randomly found him. He sells it for bait!!! doesnt list it on his site. Because who in the world raises carp for food these days.

He has many types of tilapia ad carps and all types of other fish of course as well. These FAR outgrow all of them. He said most of the tilapia will outgrow the koi rather universally. But these israeli carps will far outgrow all of the tilapia. he also just now explained why mine werent growing that fast.

I was feeding them as much as they would want to eat. He told me to purposely over feed them. They will stuff themselves, then expect that much from then on. Ive been doing this only a few days and they are eating much much more now.... 

so anyway Ive got a source. this is what he does, so hes good at shipping them live. tilapia and other also. I just ordered some koi and more israeli carp. the koi just to make it all look more ornamental..... also got 2 dozen catfish. shipping is steep but live arrival guaranteed. prices on fish are very low. He doesnt have small israelis now, but was willing to pull some full grown ones out of his lake for a great price. especially because these should be breeding next spring..... fingers crossed... but even though Id have fish to send at thaty point, getting them there alive is a skill needing lots of supplie sI dont have. So youd want to get them from this othet guy.... PM me if you want his website. but youd have to call him or email him for the israelis carps because he doesnt list them on the site.

[silverseeds]

         Well this was a side project really. as i was saying above I perfected using a floating algae to filter the water. Takes a few days per 60 gallon tank. I had something interesting happen before I had set up to use algae though. A green water algae, too over the tank. So I took the opportunity to test the water. It was 100 percent clean!!! Well as far as ammonia and nitrates etc are concerned that is.

           this can be dangerous in a way.... It will pump oxygen into the water when its warm, and suck it out at night. I forget the exact the full explanation. This is a known danger when growing tilapia and using green water which tilapia and several of the "asian" carps can eat. for me though I simply switched out a good chunk of the water put in new, and am growing heaps of daphnia with the greenwater. Many ounces a day for the fish. also if you dont somehow use this greenwater whether for daphnia or fish or clams can filter it to... it will start dying, and also screw up the tank that way. so its great stuff, but basically you have to watch it, and manage it if you want to assure no possible issues. My clams have slowly been dieing off and never reproduced. I dont have enough to handle this load.... But Im thinking of keeping some in a mesh sack. this way I can let the green water take over (the clams would halt it from taking over) and then filter it out..... then take out the clams and put them back into where ever I keep them in the meantime. gotta get them to breed first though....

              I had trouble keeping the green water going last time so I could grow daphnia with it, but Ive got it in several tanks for now so I can try to initiate blooms of it in the main tank as it becomes dirty. this works for the entire tank at once, and is faster then the other algae..... I will be setting up to do either option though, and others....

              I FINALLY got around to starting to study other water plants. Im just cracking this ground actually since I thought duckweed was a bit easier to work with and would serve my needs until I had the time for study.... turns out theres a lot of other good ones. So im really re thinking this here. there are hordes of water plants out there, so its not so easy to study actually. but water hyacinth and Anacharis are both looking good so far as well as water cress to a lesser degree. the last I can eat as well as the carp.

              Anacharis is a great oxygenator!!! grows fast, is good for spawning fish, and they love to eat it at an age!!! Pretty sure i have this actually, got it with my shrimp and its in my shrimp tank with a flouresant light. Ive since put it outside but it isnt growing yet anyway.... Im going to order it from a few northern sources though since its hardy to cool zones and ensuring I hopefully get a selection ideal for me and i can be more sure Ive got the right stuff....

              water hyacinth is for warm regions but i can over winter it indoors and it will spread fast in the warm months here. the carp love it, it grows fast and is a great filter itself. It can be invasive but hardly matters in my cold zone and since im in tanks anyway....

               water cress isnt nearly as prolific as the other two, and needs soil to grow in, those others can be floaters so easier to deal with. But it will ad diversity to the carps diet, and is good with either cooked greens for myself or a few leaves in a salad. So im going to grow it also. Id like a wide range of foods for my fish...

                still looking for more water plants..... im sure there are other good ones. Im pretty excited about the Anacharis and hyacinth though. From what i understand having a 1/3 of the surface covered with hyacinth will keep a pond clean, and that didnt define the bioload but that sounds promising. One issue is it would only grow well here for a few months a year, but should be useful in that time. Ive got lots of windows to overwinter it. also with Anacharis i cant wait to see just how much oxygen it can add. I dont have the equipment to test oxygen levels but Im thinking I can just stick a few fish in a 60 gallon tank and figure out how many fish it takes to force the fish to breath on the surface. (something carp is capable of) At that point I can play around with exchaning that water out daily with water from a Anacharis tank, or some test along these lines and see just ho powerful this can be. Either way it should increase the amounts I could raise if I had no electricity for oxygenation.... (something Im going try to breed for after my fish have bred a time or two and I have some fish to play with... carp can breath on the surface, presumably some are better capable of handling low oxygen.... I can breed whatever fish grow best under conditions pushed just to the point of them not needing to go to the surface. I intend to do this slowly over decades if it proves even slightly to be a selectable trait.. not that its the only trait Id look for of course and no I wont be growing all fish under such conditions unless i had to... good thing is if worst came to worst i could keep solid breeding populations in a small space and little hassle)

             

[silverseeds]

http://www.aire-dynamics.com/garden_pond_aerator.html


i always wanted a windmill for aeration, but they only make them for lakes. Cheapest models I ever found were 600 dollars, and those were adaptors for decorative windmills so it didnt seem to trust worthy.....

this one though is only 300 bucks, and its made by a company with a decent rep for larger windmills. this just made it near the top of my must haves list..... Its nearly always windy here, though i might need to move the tank for the best wind exposure, thats not an issue since I was intending to move it anyway..... So this really should be workable!!!!

If this thing works and with some replacement parts for key components I should be pretty well off. As it is aeration was my only concern with loosing power as i have other ways to clean the water as ive been explaining some of my experimenting with that....

I working at lowering electric needs anyway, so this is great. Because most of my cuts in energy needs have so far been offset by aeration costs. which arent excessive, but still something to consider....

--another thought Ive had on low tech oxygenation lately deals with plants like water hyacinth, and parrots feather and water lettuce. all of these grow pretty fast and will add oxygen during daylight hours. Most of them however also take oxygen at night!!! which is why algae can be kinda dangerous as ive probably said in the thread by now.

But those i just listed and some others are all floaters, and decent sized. so what I was thinking is I could put them with the fish in the day oxygenating their water... then move them out of the fish water at night when they are oxygen robbers. something I cant really do with algae. I dont have a way to test dissolved oxygen so i cant test how much of an effect this would have but I thought id throw it out there anyway, because based on what Ive read id think this could be rather powerful. to many plants can rob so much oxygen so as to cause fish kills over night. So presumably since they put in oxygen in the day its likely atleast as much as they take which must be considerable to take a perfectly fine pond to fish killing levels of dissolved oxygen.

---

[silverseeds]

   On another topic Im also looking at parrots feather and some other plants, this time because my fish will NOT eat them. the reason being is I can cover part of the surface of the pond with them, the fish will leave it alone it offers cover and all that, while filtering the water.... this apparently grows pretty fast and is easy to manage. makes a great place for spawning fish, and over winters right in the pond. Im sure there are other good plants for this....

    but thought Id put this thought out there also.... I can always pull some out and mulch with it if I need more of the bioload to be growing the food plants.

 ------- also for growing the floaters plants the fish will eat, i was thinking i can drill holes in buckets. grow the plants in there. the water will freely go into the bucket but not the fish. much cheaper then those grow rings they make that allow you to grow floating plants without the fish getting to them. I figure I should be able to scoop out the plants and stock the tank for the fish as they grow. a different type of plant in each bucket. also offers additional obstacles for the fish to swim around although of course takes up some of the space.

there are designs ive seen to make the floating type much cheaper then retail but they would still be much more then buckets.

another thought Ive had is having buckets with the top cut off straddling cinder blocks in the water. In this way I leave more space below the buckets for the fish to swim around and through the blocks (around for big fish through for smaller). cutting the buckets of course so they srent so high out of the water..... as I understand it a 1/3 of the surface covered in water hyacinth (didnt see numbers for others) will handle pretty steep bioloads and Id be using that and other plants. i believe I could cover half the surface without cutting to much space for the fish or a large capitol outlay. If that works out okay, it would make managing this a lot easier. and i just thought of this now, but I could then move the plants at night pretty easy if I wanted to, and moved the buckets to another tank so as not to rob oxygen at night, which isnt an issue at this point but could be....

[offdalip]

I was at this Dr.s house we got invited to for dinner the other night here in northern OR.
He bought this house up in the hills maybe 1000 or so above MSL.
Snows in winter a few times and cracks 80 and dry in the summer. He bought his
house 8+ years ago and it came with a carp pond setup with the original CARP still
swimming around in it!
They are really really big carp. He doesn't eat them, just pets   
Says that during winter they just sink down to the bottom and wait for spring.......

[silverseeds]

  offdablip do you know how deep this pond was?   

 

[offdalip]

black plastic lined about 3-4 feet

[Mike]

http://www.newwest.net/topic/article/how_i_learned_to_love_carp_clarence_worly_fishing_fish_idaho/C41/L41/

The quote is from the comments to the story:

An exception to the situation of man creating carp habitat by agriculture, dams, water removal, et al, is the Malheur National ?Wildlife Refuge south of Burns, Oregon. Carp in Malheur Lake have eaten all the native plants in the lake, and it is now a clear, almost lifeless body of water with no feed for waterfowl. Yep. The once most productive waterfowl lake in these United States is rarely home to waterfowl not that carp have eaten the lake vegetation down to where the water is clear.

This spring there is a wall of snow melt headed for the Lake, and it will perhaps fill once again into the sagebrush and grease wood flats. But the carp will just expand to meet the challenge.

What the Lake needs is a shit load of carp removed from it. Killing them with rotenone is not possible due to environmental issues. As it is a NWR, all sorts of legal obstructions to taking out the exotic invaders have resulted in a status quo of no ducks and lots of carp.

I would think that there is a commercial fishery there. One that targets carp in those shallow waters by leads to fish traps. That way the carp are removed alive, and can be transported to ethnic markets alive where there is a lively and interested market for live fish, especially in the Asian population and those people who have to kill their meat in a certain way. But on a NWR? Probably not.

I have never gutted a carp for consumption, so have no idea of what the "mud vein" is. As for bones, has anyone smoked carp fillets? As the ocean white fish biomass has been hammered, and NOAA has greatly reduced the opportunity to fish for white fish, a carp fishery done right with flash freezing of properly handled fillets, probably has a great potential.

I often wonder where the Native Americans are on some of these issues. On the Columbia, into which most of Idaho water flows, seal, and two varieties of sea lions are decimating sturgeon and spring salmon. I would think, since all coastal middens are primarily made of pinniped bones and shells of clams, mussels, and oysters, there would be available a claim of harvest rights to those pinnipeds, and the sale or trading of the meat would have a market with Native Americans in Alaska who are limited as to how many pinnipeds they can harvest just due to weather and availability. A load of frozen sea lion from the Columbia, all butchered according to how Alaskan natives want it to cut, and then flash frozen for summer ship delivery of refrigerated containers of frozen sea lion meat would serve multiple purposes. Using a similar facility to process carp and walleye from the Columbia, as well as small mouth bass and large mouth bass, northern pike minnows, and other "scrap" fish would be a way to increase salmonid runs. And, increase the economic opportunity of the Columbia River fishery tribes. All of it outside the appeals of the eco-obsessive far let constant whiners.

Lemons to lemonade. The American Way. Besides, it would be fun to watch sealers operating on the Columbia River. Summer work the Columbia River fishery tribes could contract to their brothers in Alaska. Sort of like Astoria Slavs going to Bristol Bay to fish for reds. In reverse. Inupiat people going to the Columbia River in spring to harvest sea lions. It would be an entirely appropriate mitigation for global warming reducing the sea ice and bowhead whaling opportunities for success.

[silverseeds]

   
       http://www.koivillage.com/koiid/pg1ad.htm

     this info is for koi and wild carp or israeli carp would be much more tolerant of a wider range then koi, but the sweet spot for temps is probably the same..... 

     i know the wild ones easily take temps much warmer then koi apparently can.

[silverseeds]

   ive been working with the plants the last week. Going pretty good so far. will update as I know more.... still only a side project so cant devote as much time as I should.