Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Yeah, the farm at Mt Compass will sell small amounts but you have to pay a little bit extra.

Always pay cash for my fishies. Can't beat a cash price.

+1
It's VERY hard for the taxman to audit exactly how many fish survived after spawning...
or even how many fish spawned for that matter.

Things have progressed slower than I'd hoped. It took a very long time to drain the tanks, and there is still 1cm of water and associated sludge on the bottom of each one. I want to get as much of this goo out as possible, just in case it is home to some of the contaminants that killed my fish.

So, I don't think I'll have it refilled until Sunday night (busy all day Saturday), then I have to wait a few days for the chlorine to gas off. So it'll be pushing near the end of next week by the time I'm ready to start with any fish at all. I'm getting nervous now as the cold weather is on the brink of starting and that could mean I end up with an inactive system all winter.

The system will cycle in the cold weather, it will just take a bit longer. If you get some "sludge" from an existing system or an aquarim filter it will give things a bit of a kick start as well.

H.

Check out some of the "water ager" products. According to their labels, they "remove heavy metals" from water. A "fail safe" that you could use to start again:
* Run the system with hydrogen peroxide (bleach) for a while - this will kill everything and decompose to oxygen and water (from wikipedia: Hydrogen peroxide always decomposes (disproportionates) exothermically into water and oxygen gas spontaneously: 2 H2O2 → 2 H2O + O2 )
* Put some fresh water in there, and whack in a whole bunch of water ager to get rid of any more heavy metals that may have been left over from the first time.


I thought another thing you could try was to buffer the water to above 7 so that it didn't corrode and therefore add zinc. I don't know how effective this would be. I wouldn't risk that if I were you though.

Alright, the mud in the tanks basically dried out over the last few days, and I was able to mop the majority of it out.

I opted against chemical treatment in the end, and have now re-filled the whole system with 100% tap water.

Now I have to wait a few days for the chlorine to gas off, then it's off to the trout farm at Easter. Tooperang has a minimum order of 50 fingerlings for $30. To make it worth the trip we'll spend some time catching some big fish to eat

With 2000L of tanks, 1000L of growbed, and a 35W air pump (soon to be picked up from The Fish Farm), do you think it is safe to put 50x fingerlings (approx 10cm long) in my uncycled system?

I've had my rainbows in with ammonia as high as about 2.0 and they're fine.

According to the documentation I've read, they don't die of ammonia posioning, always a secondary infection. So as long as the water is crystal clear and there is plenty of airation (which mine has both) then they'll be OK. Of course it can damage their gills and stuff so it's best to get it cycled as quickly as possible (Urea?) but from my experience they've been pretty tough.

I will have a really honkin' air pump (35W) installed at the same time as the fish arrive, with a 6-way output (2 air stones in each of the top ponds and 1 each in the middle pond and sump). The top two ponds receive more air from the air pump, but then they cascade into the middle pond, which then cascades into the sump. So the highly oxygenated upstream water + extra splashing should mean the whole system remains heavily aerated.

Next item on the agenda will be a battery backup power supply.

pH and temperature have direct correlation to ammonia toxicity...

You may have got away with it due to favourable temperature & pH... but values of ammonia above one are detremental to fish health (or fatal) for any prolonged period of time...

Oh I'm surprised they've lasted as well as they have. Starting to show signs of stress now though - 2 weeks and the ammonia is still at 1.0

pH 7.4 and temps of 18, which isn't exactly "good" in terms of ammonia toxicity. Time will tell.

Okay...

50 large trout fingerlings went in last night (some probably close to 150mm long!). I've put them in two tanks (two-thirds went in the 800-1200L sump, one-third in one of the 400-500L tanks).

No floaters this morning which is encouraging. They have loads of aeration, thanks to the monster air pump.
However:
pH 7.8
Ammonia 1.0 ppm
Temp 13.2

(no NO2 / NO3)

Needless to say I'm not feeding them anytime soon!

I'm very concerned about the high ammonia, but I think if I can get the pH down to 7 by the end of the week (don't want to do it too quickly or it'll stress the little guys), we should be out of the danger zone. I've added a tablespoon of pH Down (phosphoric acid) and have the put the water pump on continuously now to mix it through the system.

I might duck out today and grab a bit of that "bacteria in a bottle" stuff, or even if I ask the pet shop guy nicely I could get some gunk out of one of his biofilters.

Go for the gunk. Haven't heard of the bottle stuff working. If you know of an AP system near you, some cycled media or some water will help.

Don't get gunk out of the fish shops system Jimmy, we should have given you some while you were here yesterday. Ring me if you wanna make the trip for a bit of safe gunk.

Many thanks to Monya, I got about 20kg of growbed gravel (and associated brown ooze), and have now buried half in each of my growbeds.

Fish are still alive after their first day

Will keep you all posted!