Saturday 6 June 2015

MIRROR CARP UPDATE

It is two weeks since I added 15 Mirror Carp to the main Fish tank. They immediately disappeared into the darkest corner. I let them be for a couple of days and then started feeding. Very small quantities of small floating pellets. The pellets seemed to disappear but I could not observe them eating. I wasn’t sure wether the food was simply sinking and disintegrating. So I did a test. A few pellets in a glass of water. Three hours later they had swollen a bit but were still floating. So now I knew they were being eaten. The fish were by now venturing out a bit but very much keeping to the bottom of the tank. Still not able to watch them eating.
Yesterday I dropped some sinking Trout pellets into the front corner. Soon the whole shoal were having dinner! Two more table spoons before they were full.
On the side of my tank there is a small amount of brown bio-slime. This morning I watched one carp grazing on this. A balanced diet! Protein and veg!
Water measurements are all good. Ammonia just a trace; Nitrites zero. Ph is about 7.2 The Nitrates are on the low side but I have some heavy feeding Brassicas etc and now the Carp are feeding well I expect a slight rise. The warm weather over the last few days has raised the water temperatures. Averaging about 15*C with a morning overnight low of 13 and an evening high of about 17.
I finally seem to have controlled the slug/snail problem. Still finding a few on my late night sweeps but none in the, “red” zone.
The purple sprouting broccoli is starting to develop the characteristic florets and the cabbages are bunching up to form heads.
I stuck a few cutting from existing rosemary and lavender plants into rock wool cubes.These are in the DWC time will tell if they root.

Fingers crossed all good.

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