8 months! 1lb! That's it and now I can focus on everything else

So, I did it. 
From start to finish, those fish grew and were harvested.  At just over 7 months they were about 1lb each.
The first batch were not terribly tasty - i'm going to try just letting them soak in an overpowering marinade and see if that makes them better.
The second batch smelled good at least - haven't gotten around to eating any yet.  Likely because of the higher quality pellet food I was giving them.
Man, though.  They have hard heads!  It was a tough job knocking them out, and then beheading.
I've got a few pics, including their teeth.  Pretty interesting stuff.  At the size they were, they became fairly docile as they were the last in the bucket.  Probably as a result of oxygen starvation.

So, improvements for next year
 : definitely get hydroponics attached.  It is way too hard to keep them alive in clean water without something taking the nitrogen out.
 : better heating system.  Very dangerous, precarious setup that ultimately failed in the last week and cost me a 300 watt heater.
 : better food.  A good part of their flavour is the crazy vegetation they eat - nuts, etc.  So, get some home made food into them.
Warning - Gruesome pics follow.

 Got a little excited and missed one of the measures

From the demonstration of our friends Dayna and Chad, so I'll remember how to clean a fish in the future

Learning by doing

Not a bad size

Check out those teeth!!!

First cull was less than delicious, must harvest the rest soon

Temperatures are now getting down to 4C and lower at night, which means I need to harvest them all quite soon.  They didn't eat their pellets yesterday, which is a pretty sure sign of cold waters.

The first cull meat was poor tasting.  I'll try just making it a vehicle for garlic and butter and try again, but we'll see.  I hope the food I fed 2 days ago didn't just muddy the water and make this next batch taste like garbage as well.

They've been on a trout pellet for the last 2 months, so the meat should taste different, at a minimum.

20kWh week inside, and fish have been moved!

The fish are outside!  How great is that!  I put one in on Friday to confirm it wasn't toxic water, and it survived till Monday, so they all got moved last night!
Not great for them; they are pretty freaked out.  I'm trying to quickly source some structure to place in their tank so that they can feel safe and relax a bit. But they're out there!  Huzzah!

The tank they were in was unable to keep up with the bioload, and for the last 2 weeks was cloudy from high nitrites and nitrates (and likely, as well, ammonia).  But they soldiered on through it!  So now it's about sourcing a cheap source for pellets, and ensuring the filter is getting enough water through it, which doesn't look like the case right now.

The indoor part of the setup, with 1 heater and 3 filters, 1x4' T5HO fluorescent light, and a supplemental light for the plants growing in the filter, takes 20kWh of electricity per week.
In Manitoba that's about 7 cents/kWh, so, quick math says about 30$ so far. 
We've been enduring a heat wave that has kept temperatures quite high here, so the heaters in the IBC have not been going hard to maintain temperatures.  I'll get a monitor out there ASAP.

Interesting note from the transfer process: fish don't like to be netted, brought into the air, and then put into a bucket that is just barely bigger than them.
Also, some fish can make a 3 foot jump from 10" of water.

Some pics!

Me with a lot of water on me.  Those guys can SPLASH.

See the tails (a little beat up) in the middle of the pic?  They're in the IBC!

This is them pretending they're flounders and lying on one side to keep an eye on me.

Preparing the exterior aquarium

Still gotta wrap this in plastic and seal it up as much as possible to insulate it, but here is the exterior aquarium as of yesterday.

Running a 300 watt heater that I am sure works, and a 300 watt heater that might work to heat things up, it may be slowly warming.  I may use the end of some spray foam cans to seal and glue it all together.

I plugged the power meter into the downstairs tank on Sunday at 5pm, so in one week I will be able to estimate the per-week cost of running this setup.

Prepping for the move to the outside tank

Maybe 3 people will ever read this.  Huzzah!
So, the IBC is full of water, and the heatwave we're experiencing is really helping by increasing the temperature of the water.  Now, I have to come up with a way to maintain the heat.
1 - Insulation!  I will surround it with an inch(ish) of styrofoam, including the top, and leave a hatch for feeding
2 - Heating!  this is the problem.  The fish will smash any glass heaters, the heaters will melt the side of the IBC, so what do I do?  At the moment I'm thinking about floating a glass heater with it's plastic guard in a piece of styrofoam.  My hope is that would be sufficient: one 300 watt heater.  With the insulation, it should be sufficient, right?

I realized yesterday I can move one or two first, lowering the nitrogen pressure on the downstairs tank, and literally testing the waters of the outside tank.

This may still work!

Let's just be honest

I have not, and may never, do 2 water changes in a single week.  I'm not that good a person.
Things have been crazy with having a kid on the way, and getting the house ready for that.  I'm barely keeping up.

The fish just eat and poop, and get horrible wounds.
This one guy - it was so gross - did something weird - seriously, so gross - and burned or tore open half his face - no shit, super super gross - and so it's got this big white half T like a gross half handlebar mustache of ragged flesh.
Super gross.
And, just after it happened, while some of that flesh that came off was still attached, (guys, its so gross, stop reading), it would kind of spit the skin out, while it was still attached and (stop reading now) suck it back in, chew on it for a bit, and then spit it back out and suck it back in...
SO GROSS.
The fish are huge now.  10+ inches for about half of them.
I may have posted this photo before.  HUGE.  Water parameters are still stable except for Nitrates (100ppmish).

So, filthy water

I am going to have to change to twice weekly water changes, if I don't get the hydroponics going soon.  They get up to 100ish ppm of nitrate in a week.  They eat so much.  They clog several filters.

Man.

There is some pretty significant differentiation by size of these kids.  Some are over 6", some are about 5".  They are all starting to get beat up from being in the small, scratchy space I've given them.  Unfortunately, as this past weekend has shown, I can't be sure that the outside will be warm enough for them right away.  We had over an inch of snow, and winds of 80km/h for the weekend.  That creates some interesting design challenges.
Gave a presentation on the weekend about my setup.

Disaster averted!

Not many things are worth reporting, since I don't have to submit for grades.
Just imagine, should you desire it, that every day says "they eat a lot.  They may be bigger.  I can't count 17"
Except Sundays/Mondays - "Changed the water.  It was filthy.  about 30 gallons."
Except Yesterday (I was late on the water change).  I went to change the water and found that it was quite cold.  Sure enough the thermometer had the temp at 70F.  It made matching water temperatures pretty easy.  Unfortunately I did not investigate whether the heaters were plugged in, or if only one was.
Regardless, post water change they both are, and the temperature normalised fast.

In hindsight, they had not been as voracious in the past 24 hours, and there was more food just sitting in the filthy clumps of beard algae. 

That food is still getting stuck makes me think I should reposition the feeder, though it is not super convenient any where else.

Regardless, easily 6 inch alphas, over 5 inch everyone else.

...And now they eat Hygrophila corymbosa as well

Water change yesterday - the pH may be doing a little swinging.  I measured yesterday and it seemed like it might have gone as low as 6.5.
The fish are huge, verging on triple their original size.  No fish is smaller than 5", nose to peduncle.

So, yeah. Vegetarians.

They discovered they are vegetarians.
But they don't like their broccoli equivalent - Hygrophila corymbosa.
Before:

So pretty!

Now:

So mowed.

The set-up - Which I should have started this blog with.

Pictures detailing this will follow, at which point I will delete this little bit of text.

The Pacu are currently living in an 75 US gallon tank - 48"x18"x20" high.  It is filtered by a sump tank (about  14 US gallons) with lava rock and plants (with a 24" T5HO light on it), as well as an AC 70 HOB filter, with just sponges.  The sponges on the HOB are just to pull particulates out of the water column, as that was a pretty big problem right from the start.

There is an automatic feeder set on the AC 70, that pours food into the outflow 3 times a day, 6 hours apart.

the lighting on this tank is a 48" T5 HO (May not be HO) corallife fixture.  I would recommend against them if you have contact between the bottom of the fixture and the top of the tank, fyi.The plastic "shield" for the bulbs melts a bit.  There is a 24" 2 bulb t5 HO on the sump, to help the plants that are in there to grow. 
In the sump is lava rock, and a few bioballs, as well as Anubias, Hygrophila, and some java fern, perhaps.


There's a bunch of slate in the tank, to make spaces for the pacu to feel comfortable.

Pool filter sand substrate, and there may or may not be any Malaysian trumpet snails left in the tank.

 

Terrible news, everyone!

The science prof I had lined up to give me free credit just bailed, because he is too busy.  He also said that, for this to go forward, I would need an animal care certification, which takes about 4 months.

So, that's a setback.

I'll continue on. It'd be hard not to, with 17 voracious fish living in my basement.

Water change yesterday. There are at least 16 of them, but my count.
Algae growth is a bit of a concern, but I'm Not keen on introducing a pleco to that group.

Crap, now I've got about 60 problems. 60 parts per million that is! It's nitrates. That's the whole joke. Sorry.

Picked up some water test strips at the LFS and, yep, runaway nitrate problems.  This is the thing that having hydroponics attached is supposed to solve.  about 60ppm nitrates, but pH is good, as is the water buffering capacity and the nitrites and ammonia are at 0.  Still no corpses!


So, the plan for the weekend is to discuss what my partner is comfortable with in terms of hydroponics in our basement, and then try to get it started.
Also, start some seeds ASAP.
Also also do 2 water changes a few days apart, and bring that 60 down to 20 or less.  The math irritates me.  That means two 50% water changes to bring it down to 15, while the fish are still pooping.
DAMN THEM.  I hate 50% water changes.

Ooh!  Brainstorm.  The current plant shelf is right up against the aquarium, between it and the stairs.  I could put that on rollers, and use the space under the stairs as a hydro room.  It could work!!!

I've got 99 problems and a fish is one.

Not much new to report. Water parameters are apparently steady.  Temperature is rock solid.  I performed a 15+gallon water change on the weekend.  I did a test for Ammonia - 0ish (colour match test).
I'd like to get a constant monitor in there for nitrates, so I can keep an eye on that too.
I'm still trying to get a hold of the prof that agreed to supervise me.  I've asked the department secretary to let him know I'm trying to contact him.
Bah.

Still 17 alive, and they're (to my optimistic sight) noticeably larger.

Amazing!

Only 30 more weeks with the same number of problems and I'll be eating Pacu!

Interestingly, and disgustingly, my decorative tank has a problem, for the first time in probably a year.  One of the plecos has sloughed off a patch of skin about 1"x0.75" from his belly.
Only thoughts I have on it : Slept on the water heater, and was burned, or the introduction of some fish last week infected him with something awful.
I'll wait to make a decision on euthenasia.  He could pull out of this just fine.

They're here, they're a little creepy.

The pacu are in their baby tank!

Pacu being drip acclimated before transfer to tank

Okay, so that's not their actual final tank.  It's just a bucket, but still. 

On the, thankfully, waterproofesque scale

 We had to weigh each one individually, at which point I found out that my scale is not as exact as I would have liked.
The important thing, though, was that the scale was zero-able, so once the container was in place, I just had to dump a fish in there, and get the measurement.  

The tank as it is now, beautiful, before the learn that they are vegetarian

Of 17 that survived travel to Canada, Ich, and then travel to my home, 3 have noticeable injuries.  One of those appears to be significant, and may end up killing the fish.  It's an odd wound over it,s left eye that may have fungus now.  I'll keep an eye on the filter intake for the next while.

Everyone is eating voraciously, though, so that's good.

An auto-feeder has been placed to provide them with food every 6 hours from 8am to 8pm.  I'll up the amount of food that they are fed in a couple of weeks.

Notice the interesting spotting on the sides, and the lack
of a pronounced underbite, as opposed to piranha

They are rather creepy in their feeding.  They immediately began gnawing on snails shells.  I'm not sure if they were successful in their efforts but, if there are snails left in the tank, I don't see any anymore.

No deaths to report, 4 days in, which is a great thing, indeed.

Weights : four at 3 grams, five at 1 gram, and eight at 2 grams.

So, time to count the chickens.
Pacu have come in, they look healthy so far, and I'm getting excited about this again.

I'll be able to pick them up once I get back from a trip to the Sustainable Cities conference (London [Ontario.  Don't feel too happy for me]).

So, as soon as I land, I've got to get the tank nice again, which means cleaning a filter that is probably more than 50% blocked by now.  The flow rate was crap when I left, which means it'll be worse when I get back.

But, and somewhat more importantly, I'll take a picture of the tank.

See, the tank is beautiful.  The flow rate is lowish, which means the plants have flourished, snails are climbing the glass, the sand and rocks look great...

There is life everywhere.

Then I will introduce the "Omnivorous Piranha".  The plants will last MAYBE a week, I suspect.  Luckily, that also means the algae will likely be devoured.  The snails?  Can they stand up against a fish whose teeth are made for crushing the shells of nuts?

I am become death, etc etc.

The tricky part is going to be that I'll want to put them in  the tank toute suite, but I've got to remember to weigh them first.

Anyhow, nice to have a positive update.  I hope it is the first of many.

Edit: I can pick them up at the end of the week, and they're still healthy so far (on Monday).
Squee.

Still no fish... The tank is lonely.

So, funny thing about this is how much people are behind the idea.  Over the holidays two gentlefolk have passed my name on to others so that we can talk about aquaponics efforts in the city.  Who knew?

The fish are still not around.  It was a 100% die off at the fish store.  He kept saying "it was my fault, I didn't think they were that fragile".  I did not disagree.

At any rate, we may switch from Pacu to Oscars, which is funny, because the full-grown Oscars may be worth more per pound as pets than as food.

TOO BAD FOR THEM THAT THAT ISN'T SCIENCE.