Aquaponics - Adding fish to your system

With much the same delicacy you might employ when introducing your mother-in-law to her new nursing home, it's important to introduce your fish into their new fish tank in a gradual manner.*

Temperature and pH are the things to look out for. We want the temperature of the bag with fish in it to be identical to the fish tank water. And the pH should be close. The easiest way to achieve this is to float the bag on the fish tank for a few hours. My fish came in a bag filled with oxygen (there was some water as well) and as such can be left in the bag for days if need be. I got mine from a man who breeds quality fish and charming children, and operates out of Meadows, South Australia. Buy fish from him and tell him "Bullwinkle" sent you. It wont help you at all, but it might make him happier about being so nice to me. He freights fish all over the place.

Your new fish will have grown attached to their plastic bag, and as such will be keen to get stuck in the corners for as long as they can. After floating the bag for a few hours open it to the fish tank in such a way as to allow the fish to wander out at their leisure. Fish leisure can seem like a long time when all you want to do is look at your new fish swimming in your fish tank. I would have thought finding your way out of a bag with an opening at only one end might have been easier than it turned out to be. In some strange way, fish remind me of emu.

*actually I quite like my mother-in-law.