New system, new fish, new to EVERYTHING

Smitty1288

Note from Moderator - Moved this post into topic since it contained some additional information and I was doing a bit of house cleaning. It was posted prior to the second post but in another thread.

Let me start with the system. First of all I am in eastern VA with very limited access to supplies. Then the virus hit and it got harder. Here’s what I have:

2 chop n flip grow bed with f57 stone inside (1/4-3/4 river rock) rinsed twice
200 gallon tank buried partially with the growbeds on top.
1500 gph pump to 500 gallon pool pump/filter (temporary due to sediment)
2 flood and drain bell siphon per BYA setup

This is all working perfectly. Did 3 partial water changes until I could see the pump. The system is in a pvc hoop house with 60% shade cloth. The rocks were VERY sandy, however since I could see the pump (barely) I assumed all was good. Initial testing had water temp at 52F and 8.0 ph. Saturday I put in 40 1-2” bluegill, using the proper method.

So far I’ve lost 3 fish to the pump (fixed) however after today’s 25% water change I noticed a fish laying motionless on the bottom. Pulled him to the top and he seemed to be ok. Have been trying Chiclid pellets and goldfish flakes, but no eating yet (that I can see at least). I am feeding at 5pm sharp every day, and I pull all uneaten pellets after 30 min. All but 3-5 fish stay at the bottom. 1 seedling in the system just to see what happens.

Today’s readings at 6pm we’re
8.8 ph, and no Ammonia.

In conclusion the fish seem lethargic for the most part, only a few come to the top, the rest seem to just sit at the bottom. No noticeable eating since Saturday and no dead fish floating. What can I do to clear up the water and drop the ph? I added a few worms to this evenings feed and nothing. How long should I wait before I worry?

Smitty1288

Couple questions regarding how to improve my setup/water quality, and more importantly save my fishies

2-IBC gb with river rock 1/2” washed twice
1- IBC FT (225 gal filled to 175)
1200 gph pond pump flowing to 500gph pool filter to GB
Flood and drain

Pre fish water: cloudy from pollen and sediment (even after washing rocks twice and two water changes
50 degrees F water
0 ammonia
8.0 ph

Added 40 bluegill fingerlings from fish wagon on 4/10 using the proper method

Attempt to feed every evening using goldfish flakes and chiclid pellets (floating 1/8”)

AFTER my 25% water change, feed attempt, and filter rinse today my PH was at 8.8 and ammonia still not high enough to register.

Fish have not eaten yet (at the surface at least) cut up a couple worms and mixed them with a few pellets I soaked/sank.

3 or so fish will swim near the surface but not eat. The rest chill at the bottom. One might not make it as he is on his side relatively motionless.

What am I doing wrong and can I fix it?

skeggley

Hiya Smitty, welcome to the forum.
First off do you have chloramines in the water source? If so you need to off gas it.
Was your system cycled before adding the fish?
Do you have aeration in your ft?
I would suggest running the system constant flood for a while to clear the water.
pH will drop over time but you can adjust your top up water with hydrochloric acid and slowly lower this way.
And, perhaps add some salt to the system for the benefit of your fish.
Post some photos of your system.

Rcmaveric

Did you cycle the tank and how new is it?

They can go pretty long with out eating. It took my bluegill a few days to start eating. They still refuse to eat at the surface unless it's flakes.

What kind of food are using and what size is it?

If it is too big to easily fit in their mouth, they won't eat it. Take the cichlid pellets crush them up and moisten them. Then make a small crumble out of it so it sinks slowly and is small enough to fit in their mouth. My bluegill are picky eaters, but once some start to eat the rest will quickly soon follow.

For the one inch fingerlings flakes and micro cichlid pellets worked the best.

For the 3 incher and bigger making a crumble or cracking the pellets into 4th the size of the pellets works pretty well now. I don't need to moisten them now but they have to be cracked small enough. It makes a mess in the tank but I vacuume the bottoms about every 3 days to get what the solids lift doesn't get.

You might try the sinking mini cichlid pellets.

That PH is going to be a problem for the plants. Don't do anything though until the fish are stabilize d and eating.

Ammonia you may or may not get readings depending if you cycled it or not.

Cloudiness will fade in time. May take a few days.

Not familiar with using a pool filter. I use a solids settling filter. I don't flush my filter unless ammonia starts creating above .5ppm. I will flush my filter.

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Rcmaveric

Made this from a Bluegill Aquaculture article.

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Rcmaveric

Owe, stay calm and have patience and welcome to the forum.

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scotty435

Note: Merged this post in from another topic so I'm sure there is some duplication of suggestions - my apologies for any repeats :headbang:

Sorry to hear your having troubles. Lots of things going on from what I can see but doesn't sound too bad. Basically waters too cold for the fish to eat much and you need to look at some other things. I've tried to sort it out for you below. Cheers, hope this helps.

1. The water is too cold. Fish can go for a long time without eating but I'm not 100% sure about fingerlings. I think they'll be OK because of the water temp - they won't be using much energy. Bluegills will eat some food under about 55 F but not much. Their eating picks up quite a bit at around 60 F. It's usually only at much higher water temps that you'll see them come up to the surface to eat. Giving floating pellets a soak in water and then squeezing them will cause them to sink and the bluegill will eat them on the way down. If you're worried about them being hungry but not eating you could try hard boiling an egg and chopping it up to feed them (bluegill will eat worms and eggs when they don't seem to want anything else). I use a sous vide immersion heater to do this so that I don't have to peal the eggs - I basically break them into a ziplock bag, scramble the whites and yolks together and cook them at 165 for one hour. If they aren't interested just store it in the fridge till the water warms and try again. You do want to get them on commercial pellets though - Trout pellets work better for the plants than game fish chow but I've used both (FYI, I use a lot of reject eggs from my chickens as well, it's tough to get them back on the pellets once they get used to the eggs)

2. With one exception I would not be concerned about the cloudy water, it will eventually clear. The exception is caused by ammonia and unless your test kit is broken, it doesn't sound like this is an issue here.

3. Your pH at 8.0 is pretty high, it will come down eventually but you'll have to use an iron supplement for your plants. Fe-EDDHA added to the system water will work at that pH or you can spray apply a lot of different types of iron and avoid the pH lockout issues.

pH of 8.8 is too high. Check the pH of your top up water right out of the tap and then again after letting it sit overnight. You can adjust the pH of the top up water down using hydrochloric acid (aka muriatic acid) before adding it into the system (use caution and follow package instructions). When adding this top up water try to change the system pH slowly, no more than 0.4 pH units at a time to protect the fish from stress. Bluegill can take a lot of abuse so they'll probably be fine even if you mess up quite a bit - still don't get too careless.

4. The fish on it's side near the top sounds like it might be injured, sick or in shock from transport, same with the other three near the surface although they may be alright. Sometimes this has to do with the transport conditions - If the three near the surface start to lay on their sides I'd worry but otherwise if you just lose the one, that's not too bad for bringing in new fish. If you haven't salted the water to help the fish with stress that would be a good idea. Use one part per thousand of un-iodized table salt that doesn't have any anti caking agents added (Strawberry plants are sensitive to salt so if you plan on having these you probably shouldn't do this, otherwise I would). Make sure if any die that you remove them immediately. Edit: It's also possible that the fish on it's side was injured in the pump as you mentioned about some others in a different post (I'd still salt).

5. Does some of the flow bypass the pool filter? What kind of filtration is it?

6. I'm going to assume that the system isn't cycled because of the water temp being this low. Be cautious as the water warms and make sure you aren't getting a build up of ammonia or nitrites that could be lethal to the fish. Cycling takes longer at lower temps, figure two weeks to a month and expect the bio-filtration to be fragile for about 6 months. Don't top up with chlorinated water initially. Once the biofilter is established most people can get away with a 10 to 20 percent water change that's chlorinated - older systems have lots of organic matter and I think that makes a difference.

Smitty1288

scotty435 wrote:

Note: Merged this post in from another topic so I'm sure there is some duplication of suggestions - my apologies for any repeats :headbang:

Sorry to hear your having troubles. Lots of things going on from what I can see but doesn't sound too bad. Basically waters too cold for the fish to eat much and you need to look at some other things. I've tried to sort it out for you below. Cheers, hope this helps.
Answers in red
1. The water is too cold. Fish can go for a long time without eating but I'm not 100% sure about fingerlings. I think they'll be OK because of the water temp - they won't be using much energy. Bluegills will eat some food under about 55 F but not much. Their eating picks up quite a bit at around 60 F. It's usually only at much higher water temps that you'll see them come up to the surface to eat. Giving floating pellets a soak in water and then squeezing them will cause them to sink and the bluegill will eat them on the way down. If you're worried about them being hungry but not eating you could try hard boiling an egg and chopping it up to feed them (bluegill will eat worms and eggs when they don't seem to want anything else). I use a sous vide immersion heater to do this so that I don't have to peal the eggs - I basically break them into a ziplock bag, scramble the whites and yolks together and cook them at 165 for one hour. If they aren't interested just store it in the fridge till the water warms and try again. You do want to get them on commercial pellets though - Trout pellets work better for the plants than game fish chow but I've used both (FYI, I use a lot of reject eggs from my chickens as well, it's tough to get them back on the pellets once they get used to the eggs)
Agreed on water temp, but once the weather warms the water should average 80 here

2. With one exception I would not be concerned about the cloudy water, it will eventually clear. The exception is caused by ammonia and unless your test kit is broken, it doesn't sound like this is an issue here.
Have not seen ammo is to date... still testing multiple times daily[color=#BFFF00][color=#FF0000][/color][/color]

3. Your pH at 8.0 is pretty high, it will come down eventually but you'll have to use an iron supplement for your plants. Fe-EDDHA added to the system water will work at that pH or you can spray apply a lot of different types of iron and avoid the pH lockout issues.
This is the tough one... the media I purchased seems to have alkaline stone mixed in, and quite a bit... not sure if adding limestone will help?

pH of 8.8 is too high. Check the pH of your top up water right out of the tap and then again after letting it sit overnight. You can adjust the pH of the top up water down using hydrochloric acid (aka muriatic acid) before adding it into the system (use caution and follow package instructions). When adding this top up water try to change the system pH slowly, no more than 0.4 pH units at a time to protect the fish from stress. Bluegill can take a lot of abuse so they'll probably be fine even if you mess up quite a bit - still don't get too careless.

4. The fish on it's side near the top sounds like it might be injured, sick or in shock from transport, same with the other three near the surface although they may be alright. Sometimes this has to do with the transport conditions - If the three near the surface start to lay on their sides I'd worry but otherwise if you just lose the one, that's not too bad for bringing in new fish. If you haven't salted the water to help the fish with stress that would be a good idea. Use one part per thousand of un-iodized table salt that doesn't have any anti caking agents added (Strawberry plants are sensitive to salt so if you plan on having these you probably shouldn't do this, otherwise I would). Make sure if any die that you remove them immediately. Edit: It's also possible that the fish on it's side was injured in the pump as you mentioned about some others in a different post (I'd still salt).side guy didn’t make it, and is in fishy heaven

5. Does some of the flow bypass the pool filter? What kind of filtration is it?Flow does not bypass the pool filter... it is a paper media filter. It has helped TREMENDOUSLY with clearing the water and will be removed soon

6. I'm going to assume that the system isn't cycled because of the water temp being this low. Be cautious as the water warms and make sure you aren't getting a build up of ammonia or nitrites that could be lethal to the fish. Cycling takes longer at lower temps, figure two weeks to a month and expect the bio-filtration to be fragile for about 6 months. Don't top up with chlorinated water initially. Once the biofilter is established most people can get away with a 10 to 20 percent water change that's chlorinated - older systems have lots of organic matter and I think that makes a difference.Not cycled, however it was running for two weeks constantly while I adjusted media, bells siphons etc. Testing twice daily while pulling the 2 or so dead fish that are on the pump inlet

Now for the update. Water temps and PH have stabilized (55/8.0)since the one spike however I fear the damage is done. I am down to 14 survivors from the initial 37 I got. Still no ammonia present a week later. I think I need to revise my pump intake, and possibly my grow media due to the alkalinity of some of my media. I cannot really afford 28cu ft of hydroton now. And my local stone place is who sold me this. Any ideas?

Rcmaveric

Have you tested the media for carbonates? Pull a handful and douse it with vinager to see if it reacts.

If there is something in the media I wouldn't just ditch it. It will need that buffer in about a year when your fish are bigger and that nitrogen cycle is cooking off your PH.

I used to loose fish a lot. Stress is the number 1 kill of fish. It all starts with how they were caught, stored, to how they were transported and depending on how they were added to the system can be the end of them. Honestly, this last time was the first time I added 40 fingerlings and didn't loose a one. I used the drip method for the first time. If you floated and dumped expect to loose some. Often in my experience there is 2 die offs after an introduction of new fish. The first week are the really weak and stressed ones (their little hearts just can't take it). The second one is the second week of the fish that for a weakend immune system from the stress and get a fishy cold. After that they should be no more die offs unless something bad happens to the system.

I would check the Ammonia once a day. Untill you feel comfortable. How ever I would also start checking the ammonia every day when you take the pool filter off line. Depending on good of a job it is doing it might be doing all the filtering and when you take it out it may cause a mini cycle.

Honestly never heard of someone using a pool filter, so that's new to me. I use a 5 gallon buck settling filter. It catches most of it and what it doesn't is just really fine that won't hurt my pump or grow beds.

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scotty435

Don't like the description of this media but you need to do some testing on it and on your water to figure out what's going on.

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