Who does self-sustaining quail?

[KayByrd]

Regarding your mealworms and the self-sustaining bit, I think if you do some experimenting you may find they can thrive in something or other you scavenge from your existing resources. Try a few in some bins of leftover leafy greens, weeds, old bread, etc.

At some point in time I inadvertently dropped a few mealworms in my dubia roach bin. When I say a few, it was no more than 2 or 3. I left them there, assuming they'd just die and be roach food, and now I have several hundred - if not thousands - of mealworms that have colonized the roach poo in the bottom of the bins. The roach food is in a container that the mealworms can't reach, so I know they're living on virtually nothing but roach poo and roach carcasses. I was pretty surprised by it.

 

[ohiogoatgirl]

This thread is super awesome. I wish i was more of a bug person and do this stuff. But other than flies i dont want to deal with them, stay away from me and i will stay away from you. If its in the house and a problem i can deal but if its big i am probably gonna run and make someone else deal with it.. at most i will throw stuff at it from a safe distance.. lol.

But the duckweed and minnows i can do!

 

[ohiogoatgirl]

I wonder... someone could probably have plastic totes as ponds and keep minnows and duckweed indoors year round. Maybe under a good sunny window or a greenhouse or with a growlight above.

 

[James the Bald]

I wonder... someone could probably have plastic totes as ponds and keep minnows and duckweed indoors year round. Maybe under a good sunny window or a greenhouse or with a growlight above.

Do you mean, "fish tank"?

 

[Quail Jailer]

I wonder... someone could probably have plastic totes as ponds and keep minnows and duckweed indoors year round. Maybe under a good sunny window or a greenhouse or with a growlight above.

Do you mean, "fish tank"?

Lets not forget that 25 gallons of water is going to weigh in at roughly 208 pounds
thats a lot of stress on a plastic tote that is unsupported on the outside (not in ground).

 

[KayByrd]

I haven't dabbled in duckweed farming yet, but from what I've seen in the wild, it only needs a scant few inches of water depth to grow in. If you leave the fish out of the equation, could you not grow duckweed in shallow trays like fodder? And have a rack system - like people use for fodder growing - with multiple levels? That way you could maximize your production relative to the amount of space you're using.
As soon as I get some free time and get caught up on everything else, I'll start playing around with duckweed. So...maybe next year, maybe never.

 

[salsan20]

I am fascinated by this thread even if I dont totally understand it all? Are the minnows for the quail in which case you would definately need some kind of breeder trap as almost all fish (apart from some SA cichlids and other interesting tyoes) will eat their own young, I imagine minnows are egg scatterers so then you have the added difficulty of the eggs being lunch as well as baby fish, if there is no substate at the bottom the eggs are obvious and eaten instantly but gravel etc and falling fish poo create bacteria that stop the eggs hatching..

Most danio breeders which I think are pretty similar to minnows use a breeding system with marbles across the bottom so the eggs fall in the gaps and then the breeding fish added during a time when they are' ripe' (the females get huge with unfertilised eggs) and then removed a day or so later before the eggs hatch. I guess to make it self sustaining if I was designing a breeding tank with the fish in all the time I would section a tank in two with a reasonably fine mesh that larger baby fry could fit through. I would also do a cross section in the egg section with an even finer mesh at the bottom as adult and juvenile danios and presumably minnows like to be at the top swimming in currents whereas the babies stay low. So the idea would be eggs would hatch, babies would originally stay stay low then get bigger and braver and swim to the higher section until they grow too big to go below and eat the eggs. As they get braver at this point they can cross the larger mesh on the right where the bigger ones are although I cant think of a way to incentivise them to stay there as they grow bigger? Maybe this side lighter so more duckweed growing? Either way the adults could breed there, lay eggs which would fall on a steep slope leading back to the finest mesh where the eggs are.

That would theoretically be the only way I could envison breeding reasonable quantities of minnows,jjust imo.

 

[abbadackerygirl]

Not sure about minnows, but guppies are live bearers. They breed on their own, and also stay small.

 

[salsan20]

Oh that is a good idea, they breed ridiculously easily, very cheap to pick up and relatively easy to setup breeding trap breeding arrangements! Deal with more variety in temp changes too

 

[luvburds]

Is the prawn shop keeper flexing his mussels intimidatingly?

no he's a little shrimp, no mussels