Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi

I am just about to get some new Trout (after having Barra), and was wondering is it important to disinfect the tank first?
I was planning on hosing it out and cleaning it, but does it then need to be disinfected? If so what do people use?

Thanks

if barra looked like your avatar yes. if not im shure it would be fine to put the trout right in.

if you NEED to disenfect i would use LIGHT mix of bleach. and thats it, i use in my small fish tanks when i get them used from someone else.

Generally we don't do much in the way of sterilization in aquaponics systems since we don't want to kill off the bacteria in our bio-filters.

This is the reason that many of us have separate "quarantine" set ups or separatable sections of our systems to keep new fish in quarantine in case they have some sort of disease or parasite when we get them, hopefully we don't wind up having to strip and re-start our entire systems.

If your system has been cycling without fish since the previous barra and it is quite clean, you probably don't need to do much special. If it's been sitting stagnant or if there is a lot of gunk in the tank, you should probably make sure to clean the gunk out of the tank and make sure you have clean/well aerated water going through the system before adding trout.

If there was a disease problem, that might be another story.

Thanks for your replies.

Yes I changed the Avatar it may have been tempting faith a bit

There was no disease issues. I had left it for a couple of weeks with some water in the bottom so it got quite green and slimy. But I emptied, and washed it out last week end. I have pulled out all the plants in the grow bed, there has not been any water going through the grow bed for 2-3 weeks, I am expecting that the bacteria will have died back but should recover quickly, is this generally the case?

or tempting fate!

The bacteria should recover quickly... refill it, turn on the pump for a few days... replant, add some seasol... and away you go...