Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I started my system in dec. of last year. I cycled it till the beginning of march. It froze over the winter. That's why i cycled it so long. I added so gold fish in the begging of March then planted mid March. It has been running fine. I added 7 rainbow trout at the end of April. They were doing just fine. Other then not eating. I added my new ibc yesterday as my new fish tank. I moved the trout to the new tank. stocked with the same water from the other tank. When i moved it to the new tank I finally got the trout to eat. I plumbed it all in to the sump tank and grow bed. my fis started floating at the surface and gasping. so i added another venturi. thinking it was a lack of air. This morning i woke up to 5 dead trout and 6 dead gold fish. Now I only have 3 gold fish. I cant figure out how to post pics. Any one have in tips on that. I will ad pics once i figure it out.

Have to resize all your pics...pain in the butt. Give us some water quality readings. My guess would be either something in new IBC or possibly a problem with water quality.

When I try to post the pics it say the pixles have to be 0. That would one small photo but Ill try to resize them. The PH. is 8.3 Ammonia .25 Nitrite 0 Nitrate 10. The 3 gold fish i have in it are swimming like normal.

Yeah, it does say that. It's a bug. You have to resize to not bigger than 800 wide and 600 high.
I added a quick tutorial on uploading and inserting images. Hope it helps mate.
Cheers.

Well the obvious thing that was added -

But I'm thinking it's not that simple. You filled the IBC and added fresh water from somewhere, then you connected it to the sump and grow beds. The fish were eating in the fresh water before you connected the two so something wasn't right about the original water. pH is 8.3 currently, any idea what the pH of the fresh water in the IBC was before you connected them, or the temp? Might have just sent them into shock. The Ammonia could be at toxic levels depending on your pH and water temp right now, you may want to check the chart here - http://ibcofaquaponics.com/information/tables-and-charts/
As an example at a pH of 8.4 and temp of 20 C, a Total Ammonia reading of 0.21 ppm or above will be toxic to the fish.


Hope this helps.

Yep I know that chart very well. If I'd paid attention to that chart (and other good info like sensible stocking levels) when I first started in AP I wouldn't have killed 50 Jades. I reckon expanding a system is one of those risky times when many of the things that can go wrong with a new system come back into play.

You said you transferred the water from the old system. How much new water did you add (%)

Thanks for the tips. I will look in to this further. My PH in the sump before i added more water to it was 7.8 i believe. The water temp was 69 f ish. I added 150 gallons of of tap water its the same water i started the tank with. I pumped the water from the sump tank 150 gallons. to the new fish tank. Then i added some fresh water to the new tank. then cut and pumped in the sump and grow bed. Lastly i topped the system off. They did not show any signs of trouble till i finished topping it off. So maybe to quick of temp and PH change. I'm wondering if the ammonia went up since i had so much dead fish in my tank for about 8 hours. I'm not sure but the other gold fish are sill doing fine. I'm going out tomorrow morning to catch some yellow perch. I have heard they are a lot better with the water quality changes the rainbow trout.

Here is the fish tank.


I will be adding more grow beds later.


Not a very good pic but i have the inlet runs through a venturi and the outlet runs through a slo.

Hmm. Ok a few thoughts:
I'm not focusing on the Ammonia level (0.25) you measured because, as you say, that is after the fish deaths, so we don't know what it was before they dies. But that level is very close to toxic at ph 8.3 and temp 69F.
You said temp about 69F (20.5C) and ph of the water in your existing system about 7.8, but was ph 8.3 after the additional water. So looking at the ammonia toxicity chart Scotty gave the link to, we see that at ph 8.3 ammonia is more than three times as toxic (in terms of ppm) as at ph 7.8. So you don't want the ammonia level in your system to spike. That looks like a very small amount of GB media and it looks like gravel (small surface area compared to something more porous), so I imagine that's a fairly small bacteria colony. So again, you don't want an ammonia spike. And you said the fish (10?) just started eating.
So a couple of possibilities come to mind:
Possibly the ammonia rose suddenly due to the fish starting to feed, and the fairly small and relatively inactive (hasn't had much ammonia and nitrite to work with recently) bacteria colony was unable to convert it quickly. And the colony may even have taken an additional hit if the water you topped up with is chlorinated.
These are just musings and I'm no expert. I'm sure my theory has lots of holes in it. But it is the sort of stuff you need to consider in trying to figure it out. Good luck mate, and stick with it!

Sorry for the long wait on response. I have been busy. The ammonia has risen to .50 the ph has dropped to 8.2 not much. Nitrite has risen to .25 and the nitrate is at 40ppm. I collected 55 gals of rain. Just got done draining off 55 gallons of the tank water and replacing it with rain water. My tap water has a ph of 8.2. I tested the ph of the rain water and it is at 7.6 so hopefully i can slowly flush out my tap water from the system and replace with rain water. It would make things a better for the fish.