Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

hey guys,
its going to be getting hot soon and i'm wondering how much heat can my goldfish handle?

i'm in texas and our inground pools here heat up into the 90s in late summer.

also, what about the plants? can they take those kind of temps. or will they succomb to pytheum?

around 38 degrees c So they should be fine at 90 degree f

Agreed with OBO. Goldies are VERY resilient.

I have a few in my system right now that I took out of my watergarden... They are between three and seven inches long and have survived the last five years of my 'experimental' watergarden. Water quality at times has been perfectly HORRIBLE. Temps have varied from a surface covered with ice to over 95º F in full sun. Algae, ph as high as 8.6, etc... You can't kill 'em!! My only regret is that they aren't edible... LOL!

CB

cool, thanks!

will the plants be ok though? i know in hydroponics, you cant let the water temp. go over about 74 degrees.

They'll be fine.... AP systems are much more oxygenated than most hydro systems.... particularly when temps are hot, and by nature oxygen levels drop....

I thought Goldfish are carp which are edible?

In fact, it occurred to me that I'm completing an AP circle of sorts. My great grandmother would buy live large carp and keep them in the bath tub in order to make really fresh gefilte fish. This was very common 100 years ago, at least on the Lower East Side (of Manhattan, duh).

I do make gefilte fish once a year (coming up on Monday) but I use salmon because you can't buy carp at the supermarket. So maybe next year I can use carp if I can catch some big ones from my pond.

A quick story about the resilience of Goldfish
I had an old pond on our block that for safety reasons was to be filled in, had about 25 gold fish (75mm to 100mm long) it was always neglected the only maintenance was occasionally topping up the water level. The pond had a large peppercorn tree hanging over it so was always full of leaves and crap. I siphoned all the water out removed all the goldies and put a crowbar through the old liner to drain the excess out, about a month later a friend was digging out the muck and leaves for garden mulch and of course you guessed it found 3 gold fish, how they survived in an inch of stinking putrid mud is a testament to their toughness.
I do have another story of how I killed 35 Goldfish but save that for another day!

Oh man - you can't leave us hanging - that is worse then now sharing pictures.

OK the dead fish story
Years ago emptied the pond that I am currently using for my AP system put all the goldfish in a large pot while the clean up was being done
Was topping up the water one day and as we were leaving my partner asked "did you turn off the tap?" and my reply "OF COURSE I"M NOT STUPID" this was followed by a silent drive to our local supermarket and Alice being Alice you tend to know a lot of people and shopping can take twice as long.
And yes you guessed on our return I had left the hose going.
I felt so bad

I imagined the fish would have enjoyed swimming with the current for a while but would have tired very quickly of the fun
there were lots of floaters and over the next few days all were in the "octopuses garden"

For days if not weeks I was known as the Goldfish killer

Oops...
I guess you were on tanks too.
We have a starfish garden