Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

love the dog... cocker spaniel?

Yup. English cocker spaniel. Not the smartest dog in the world, but very endearing.



Maybe this is one of the very very very few times I say "thank god it never rains in canberra" Thanks for the heads up burnsy, I will definatley keep an eye on it.

The temperature fluctuates quite a lot in Canberra. For instance, tommorrow is Min 5 Max 22.

I was a tad worried because my water temp went from 17 to 12. But today it started at 12 and ended at 14, which is quite reasonable. I'll be happy if my temps fluctuate by 2 degrees a day when we've got nearly 20 degrees of temp fluctuation in a day.

Hooray for cycling:


And feeding trout is OH so much more fun than gold fish:




My AP hat -



And aint it wonderful when everything comes up - even the ones that you'd have given no chance:


Though not all my plants are happy - I'm not sure what's getting to these guys (and I'm not sure what they are):


Anyone help me out on that one?

Hey Gemmell

your trout look great

and i think you might have stink bugs ( common name ) they suck the sap out of the leaves of plants
they have been attacking my tomatoes over summer

I haven't seen any stink bugs, or caterpillars or anything. So I thought it might be some kind of fungal disease. I've just been picking the ugly leaves off (which is leaving my plants rather bare). Still, not all plants are affected, so we'll just see how it pans out.

Goddam fish. 50 dead.

This morning fine, come home this arvo, 50 deaduns. Nothing telling about how they died/ The pump claimed about 10 of them, about another 15 not looking so flash. Salt is at 3ppt, there's still a bit of Nitrite and maybe a tiny bit of Ammonia. The only thing I could think of is pH which was about 6.8.

Or the eco rose I added on the weekend. Or one died and sat on the bottom but I didn't see it. The water clarity is shit house - I thought it was all due to too much seasol, but apparently not. This AP thing is so frustrating. They go from OK to dropping like flies very very quickly.

bugger.

And 10 hours later..... they're fine?! Seriously, there must have been 10 of them just floating at the top last night, but still breathing, so I left them, and this morn.... no casualties, all of the recovered?

I have a few theories as to what could have gone wrong:
A) Power outage - my battery backed air pump doesn't have any batteries because I can't tell if it takes rechargeables or not (rope!). Was running fine when I got home though.
B) I took apart my distribution pipes on my growbeds and they had a bad smell to them (but not sulfury!). Maybe something in that.
C) The pump might have claimed one, because of the water clarity I couldn't see it and the decaying fish killed the rest.
D) I found a bit of food on the bottom, maybe I overfed?! Ammonia zero though....
E) pH was about 6.8, maybe trout just belly up if it starts going below that? Added sea shells to buffer it back up.

Body count of about 40 in total which is very disappointing. The lesson I learnt - keep the water clear! If you don't, you won't be able to tell if things are going wrong. I've taken apart the distribution pipes and just have it running through some aquarium wool in an attempt to get it clear and clean again.

PS. Of course I did water changes too.

Bummer Gemmel.... sorry to hear about the fish


Apologies, thought I had got back to you..... no the Otto units do not have an inbuilt recharger... they use "D" series batterries..... normal or rechargeable would have fitted and done the job...

Are there any alarm clocks or anything in the house that resets on a power failure? The simple fact that some were on the surface, but not dead, and then were fine some hours later, points to a power failure and lack of air.

Unless you want to loose all your fish at some stage - you really need to sort out your aeration. The otto pumps will not hold 50 (now 40?) trout over for more than an couple of hours....

I reckon you're right. They're fine and feeding this morning. I can't think of what else it could have been except maybe something bad in the pipes (they are still a bit wiffy). pH is still 6.8 so it obviously wasn't that.

The clock on the microwave had reset over the long weekend, but we hadn't reset it to the time so I can't tell if power went off. The 24 hour timers were still in about the right spot though....

Might see if I can't get one of those ebay air pumps like VB has - the ones with a car battery in it. Can't have 40 fish dying every time there is a powerout.

On the plus side - I bought 200 fish for this very reason - I was counting on losing about HALF, so at the moment I've only lost 1/4.

150 left. 50 in the old system, 100 in the new system. Water temps of about 10 so DO should be pretty good.

Running low on food though, going to have to source some quick smart. Time to ring the hatcheries...

I've realised that it probably wasn't a power out - the other system had no ill effects and no losses. The main one was 40 fish. It must have been some sort of contaminant or maybe a threshold for how dirty the water was getting. I have a feeling because I put in too much seasol that possibly one died by getting stuck in the pump and just decayed there, contributing to the decline of the water clarity and general heath.