Author: Tim Hewitt-Coleman

The World can be a better place.... But how? Taking the debate beyond the political, beyond the theoretical into the real economy, into the physical and spatial dimension where cities, landscapes and livelihoods take form.

New Tilapia tank system installed.

The way I first came to be interested in Tilapia is when I built a duck Pond I figured, lets have ducks on the surface and Tilapia under the surface. Great in theory, exept the ducks made the water very dirty and I was concerned that the few Tilapia I had chucked in would either die from the toxic water or from being eaten by the ducks.

Old tanks: reclaimed industrial waste.

So I thought lets try tanks rather. This arrangement worked much better for me. I could see the fish and not just hope that they were under the surface somewhere. I used two 1 KL tanks, with a 200 l tank filled with sand as a filtration system. I pumped the water our from one of the tanks with a 100 watt pump I bought from the aquarium shop. I linked the tanks together with a syphon system made of swimming pool vacuum hose. It seemed to work OK, the water stayed clear and there was enough oxygen in the water (I could tell because they were not gulping at the surface)

see also:

 cheap, diy, solar, pumping for aquaponics

Bad News


Skipper – (our Rhodesian Ridgeback) killed the last reamaining chick. It got out of the chicken run and Skipper wanted too play with it. But we have learned a lot about rearing chicks from this excercise.

Lesson no 1 – prompt hen into broodiness by filling the nest with pre-collected eggs.
lesson no 2 – keep the chicks with their mother in a cat and rooster proof cage until the chicks are big enough to defend themselves.
lesson no 3. make sure the chicken run is fenced such that the chicks cannot get out (once they are out of the cat and rooster proof cage)
We continue.

We will see the calves again tomorrow.

We will drive down to Tsitiskama tomorrow. Nguni has been in PE this week to bury his brother and we will take him back.

We are feeding the calves with “calf grow” pellets still. We are a little nervous…like having our first child. We are not sure what to do, so we are probably doing too much! I want to get them onto eating grass only – as soon as possible, but am afraid that they are still used to the pellets that they were put onto by Gerhard.