Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Update on the wood chips experiment.

I don't recommend them purely on a water clarity stand point. The water is still quite dark though I did manage to see the one fish remaining in that thank with a flashlight tonight.

Anyway, the female that I mentioned was a bit beat up, well she was even more beat up and floating the other day so I removed her from that system. I had kept her in isolation for a day an then put her in with the rest of the fish. Then the next day I noticed she looked odd, kinda white stuff on her sides back tword her tail. It looks like between the stresses of being beaten up and moved around, she must have caught something. I netted her out (which was pretty tricky as she was still moving just fine.) Back in isolation with her after a salt bath. The white stuff flairing off the back of her sides appears to be her skin comming off and her flesh showing (I don't know if this is from the injuries before or if other fish were attacking her more.) She seemed to be doing ok in isolation. I should have left well enough alone but I decided I should give her another salt bath today. I don't know quite what went wrong but she wound up floating up and I feared she was dead. When I went to put her back in the isolation tank, she went a bit nuts and I think she did herself some more damage as I saw some blood in the water. I don't expect her to survive at this rate but she was still living last time I checked.

Anyway, I guess I should know better than to leave fish in the barrel system together. they always seem to beat each other up in there and it is difficult to see in to check on them. Even more so now with the coffee color water.

So, the fish still in the barrel system with the wood chips seems ok as far as I can tell. The other two fish from the system definitely sustained injuries from being beat up by other fish. Whether or not the wood chips contributed to the death of the one fish or the complications with the other fish, I do no know.

I will keep everyone posted as to the health of the remaining fish in that system. I will also continue reporting on the progress of the plants in that wood chip filled bed. Currently sweet potatoes, a cucumber seedling and a lone tiny fingerling potato plant.
The other beds have mint, tomato, basil, onions, and a lone strawberry plant.

Well I was expecting to see a dead fish in Isolation this morning, but dang, when disturbed she still manages to swim around. Spending most of her time laying on the bottom on her side though. Hum.

Ok, I think the poor sick fish in Isolation finally died. She had been looking/acting a bit better for a few day but definitely still sick.

So that is two out of three of the fish that were in with the chips dead. I do believe that aggression is the true cause for the injuries though it is really possible that the wood chips carry a heavier load of possible opportunistic infections.

The one fish still in the system seemed ok last I checked. Really hard to know as the water is still really dark. In any case, she hasn't floated up.

On a side note, the barrel ponics system water does tend to have bigger temperature swings than the big system. Nothing in the barrel system is buried and I notice that the water in that system gets really warm during the afternoon and I suspect that it gets rater chilly in the early morning.

points for the trial.

time to sticky it for all newbies to read?

Either sticky or make a sticky thread with links to all the other threads about different media and gravel discussions since I know there are many.

I think the wood chips will be fine for fishless or pee ponic systems where the color of the water doesn't really mater.

Personally, I don't think the wood chips are directly hurting the fish but not being able to see the fish through the dark water doesn't seem very acceptable to me.

Well I ran tests on the wood chip exp system again
pH is still up actually close to 8 this time
Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 0-5

Ok, I haven't been feeding that single fish in there very much. I did drain things down a bit after taking the water sample so I could check on her. I managed to net her and she looks fine. No visible diseases which makes me think that the other two fish became ill and died due to her beating them up and between the stress and injuries they caught the normal opportunistic infections.

So, since the ammonia and nitrite are down, this tells me that the wood chips are not breaking down fast enough to cause issues of that nature for the fish.
The One fish still in there seems ok so my local wood chips here are at least not immediately toxic to blue tilapia.

The plants in there seem to be doing ok.

Directly in the chips I have sweet potato vines, one fingerling potato plant, and one cucumber seedling.

I do not recommend wood chips for a regular aquaponics system grow bed media simply because the dark tinting of the water makes seeing the fish nearly impossible. Some types of fish might actually like this (perhaps the catfish would love it) but most people want to see their fish. Being able to see the bottom of the tank is good so you can tell how clean it is or if solids are building up and action needs to be taken.

So how long should I keep that fish in there?

It sound to me as though you've covered the bases and might as well pull the critter out.

the skin and flesh falling off sounds like fin rot, it is a fungal infection. I use Seasol seaweed extract as an addative to the water to cure it. Works well, is food safe and has many benifits for the plants too

That one poor fish did finally die.

The fish still in the wood chip system still seems fine even with the extreme temps that system reaches, the wood chips, and the very brown water.

I noticed that several fish seemed to show signs of fin rot after we did some handling and sexing of them. I added salt to the systems and other than the two fish that I think got beat up by the other one in the chip system, all recovered just with the salt.

I use maxicrop in my system, I don't know if perhaps that might have helped some too.

I suppose I will pull that last fish out of the chip experiment once I finish re-working the quarantine tank. Then she can stay there for a while before going back in with the general population.

I still have wood chips in one bed of this system though the system has been turned back over to peeponic operation.

Here are some of my conclusions about using wood chips as media.

The wood chips dumped in front of my house for fee work just fine as media in a fishless system. The only reason I say fishless is that the water is such a dark tea color that I can't see the fish.

My system is well buffered as there is one bed in that system that is filled with shells as the media. The acidifying effects of the wood/leaves does not seem able to counteract 10 gallons of washed sea shells so that system's pH has remained a steady 7.6.

The wood chip pile is free from whatever tree service I see working in the area who needs a place to dump chips. Most of it is our local live oak (or whatever oak variety) There is sometimes other types of tree shredded up including citrus, palm, or whatever. Your own local tree varieties will likely change the nature of the wood chip pile you might get. Using wood chips from a species like black walnut might not work well since they often exude chemicals that inhibit the growth of many other types of plants.

I would be very careful and run tests of your local varieties of wood chips before using them in a system with fish.