Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Thanks Janet. I estimated 3% at this stage of their life from some articles I have read. I expect that to drop as they grow. I do watch the numbers. Yesterday I measured ammonia = 0 & nitrite = 0.1ppm at the 180 grams per day feed level. I am sure my nitrate test kit is bad - need to get another. I have read nitrate = 0 from day one to present. Finally got suspicious and made up a fertilizer solution from 10-10-10 and it read zero nitrate. Bad test kit (expiration date is Aug 2008).

I am trying to find a strategy for automated feeding so we can take vacations. By watching for leftovers we can do things fine ourselves, but how do I automate that? Best strategy idea so far is to clearly underfeed while gone. I tried a camera over the internet...not enough reslolution in the picture. Probably an expensive camera would work better.

My tomatoes, salad greens, and other plants are dark green and growing rapidly. The root mass hanging in the 9" deep water trough is amazing! The tomatoe plants are 24" tall and have flowers...no tomatoes yet. I seem to be having pollenation problems with summer squash and cucumbers. I did not have a circulation fan to simulate wind. Just got one and hope that blowing the leaves around a little will spread the pollen. I have not yet done any hand pollenating with a swab.

Plants like grasses and corn are wind-pollinated. Tomatoes pretty much take care of themselves, but a little vibration or movement would help. Cukes and squash will need an assist with a swab or paintbrush. I have been using a paint brush on my cukes, and am getting cukes but they are not fully formed. My skills as a bee need improvement, perhaps.

Doug, silver and jade perch seem to be gutses and will eat until they pop. I've been steadily increasing the amount of food mine are getting. I had a look at the FCR/weight spreadsheet the other day and weighed some food and realised that apparently I'm way underfeeding our fish I've been increasing it a little quicker since then. Still need to have the bacteria catch up with the nutrients.
Out tomatoes are fruiting madly so that should take care of a lot of the nutes.

I have big problems! My fish are dieing in batches.
[background] 525 fish delivered to my tanks on May 3rd, 2007 as follows: 250 hybrid blue gills, 200 channel catfish, 50 yellow perch, and 25 hybrid stripped bass. On May 8th I started losing bass & perch and a few bluegill(bg). By May 16 I had lost all bass & perch and 50 bg. This appeared to be from pH problems. I had 8.5 in a new concrete tank which was leeching. The fish came from pH 7.0 water at hatchery. The sudden pH change was blamed. From May 16 to June 7th the remaining fish were eating hardy and putting on weight. At this point no catfish had died (I figured they were too tough to die).
On June 8th their eating fell off dramatically. I was away from June 5th to June 9th. When I looked on June 9th, there was a lot of suspended particles. On June 9th pH=7.77, 66.5F, TDS 422ppm, EC=449microsiemens, ORP=134mv, Ammon=0.0, nitrite=0.1ppm, DO=5.2. June 9-13 lost 10 fish, mostly catfish & 2 bg. June 14-19 lost 120 catfish & 10 bg.

So, as you can see, I am losing all my fish. Still have about 125 blue gill and 30-40 catfish. The bluegill are eating well and have not had any die in a long time. But every day dozens of catfish die. Today, June 19, I removed 20 dead catfish (no blue gill). Water quality DO = 7.5, pH=7.98, 70.3F, EC=752uS, ORP=170mv, TDS = 410ppm, ammon=0.0, NO2<0.1ppm. Fed 49g at 11:20am & 61g at 5:20pm.

So, with the bluegill doing well and the catfish dieing in large numbers, what can I check or do to help this situation? BTW, the vegetables are growing very well and have excellant leaf color (no veg problems). Any suggestions will be most gratefully received.

I dissected two catfish and plan to put high res pictures on my web site tonight and post the connect info tomorrow. What I noted was that gills of dieing catfish have nice color. No lesions, fuzz, or discoloration is seen on freshly dead or dieing catfish. Fins are in good shape. In other words, it beats me what is wrong.

With the blue gill doing well and the catfish all dieing, I think that might be a clue to the problem, but I do not have the knowledge to decode it.

Help!

What I have done to try to end my problems. I changed 40% of my tank water (1800gallons pumped out & 2200 gallons remaining) twice. Installed a swimming pool sand filter between fish tank and bio filter before grow bed. Vacuumed bottom of tank to waste four times. Water is very clean now and so is bottom of tank. BTW, I used new zeolite in the sand filter. The filter is 25 years old and spent last 15 years sitting in my barn. Boy was it a challenge to get it working again...but it is done and I just use my 10gpm, 60 watt pump to run the water thru, so I have not violated my low energy requirement. I do run the 220vac pool filter pump when I am vacuuming to waste. That really moves water out fast thru the 150mm hose (need to move it out fast to get 1800 gallons out in a reasonable amount of time.

gee Doug, I'm very sorry to hear about these continuing losses.

So, the bass and perch are all gone, some of the bluegill too, but the catfish are dying rapidly? I know you did heaps of research before getting these fish species, but are there any parameters that differ between catfish and bluegill? Do they need slightly different conditions?

Has the fishes behaviour changed at all? Are the catfish huddled in a corner looking miserable or do they just stop living? Do channel catfish have scales or skin? I think I've heard that fish with no scales are more susceptible to diseases (?)

Sorry Doug, just asking heaps of questions in an attempt to help out in any way. Maybe some of the answers might jog a solution from someone else.

Strength mate

Doug
Double check your ammonia testing probe or re-test by hand ..I thought you would've some kind of a reading for ammonia with all the fish load and suspended particles

LB

Channel catfish are scale-less, and are therefore more susceptible to stuff. For example, if any fish in a tank is going to get ick, it will be a scale-less fish first. I'm actually surprised the catfish were not the first victims, but I'm not surprised that the bluegills are the toughest.

I second Jaymie's request for description of behavior (flashing, sulking at the bottom, gasping, leaping from water...), and LB's thoughts on re-checking ammonia (although the zeolite and water changes really should have that in check). Also re-check for any possibility of contamination. You are testing for water parameters that I don't even know what they are, but I really go on circumstance and fish behavior.

If you can quickly set up a stable aquarium or place to quarantine some fish, it might help figure out what is going on if you remove some fish entirely from the current set-up. If they do about the same, then maybe it's an internal disease, but if they stabilize and live, then maybe it is environmental.

Gosh this is hard without being there. Any chance of consulting with the fishery?

Oh, and adding 3ppt salt might help soothe the fish a bit. Good for what ails 'em.

LB, The ammonia test kit has been in constant use since March. First for an aquarium, then the AP tank. It indicated as high as 6ppm when I was cycling the tank with ammonia. I believe the kit is OK.
Jaymie and Janet, I did not know about susceptability of fish without scales. I do believe the differences between the blue gill and catfish are a key to the puzzle. Tomorrow I will call the fish biologist at the hatchery where I bought the fish to ask for help. They are very helpful and I appreciate it very much.

I really do not know what has happened, but a possibility is that I had a pH problem first that killed the bass and perch and 15% of the Blue Gill. Then developed a disease which is taking the catfish. The disease could have started when the water quality was affected by having some aneorobic activity in the sediment on the bottom of the tank. By the time I did the water changes/vacuuming/sand filter the disease was in charge. That is only a conjecture.

As to symptoms, the catfish swim lethargically and sometimes near the surface and perhaps gulping and with tail low and mouth near surface. The bluegill are evenly distributed thru the middle layer of water and face the current (they look great and eat like piranha). The catfish eat eagerly at the surface when they were well, now I do not see them feed.

What would I see if it was ick? Will 3 ppt salt kill my vegies? I should try salt. I only have about 40 of the 200 catfish left and I have had that many die in a day. Does not seem very hopeful for them. Not much time to fix the problem before they all surcome.

I may just raise the bluegill until next spring. Next year the system should be mature and stable. So I would try the same species again I believe.

Doug, do you have a tank you can use as a hospital? That way the salt wouldn't affect your plants at all and you wouldn't have to add as much.

Ich can lead to bloody marks around the gills and tail, like baaad bruises. Have a search on here for Ich, there are lots of links.

Your conjecture sounds like a very strong possibility.

Good luck

doug, do oyu have the tolerance ranges for cat fish to DO, PH and temp?

on the surface it seems like a DO problem or a nitrite problem, but both of your measurements are fine. Am just wondering if the temp or PH range is out of their range?

you'd most certainly see ich looks like little white pimples, as janet said scale less fish will get it first.

3ppt salt has the potential to affect some plants like strawberries, but probably won't hurt most of them.

I'm thinking you have some kind of internal infection in the catfish, and your theory about the pH problem starting it all is probably correct.. I killed many fish in my aquarium days, messing with pH. I agree that you should re-try the same species next year with a stable and mature system.

If you can set up a hospital tank for the catfish, you could run even a higher level of salt if you aren't connected to your plants. I'm not sure what the salt tolerance is for catfish, but maybe the biologist can tell you.

Very odd, I would have thought Catfish were the toughest fish around. Heck they live in mud and eat junk dont they?
It seems no matter how much we think we know about fish they keep surprizing us. My tank has a lot of floaties not severe but its no pristine lake either, and knock on wood all fish are fine.
It's a stumper for sure that the cats would die off at such a high rate with the BG's surviving. Could there be different levels of O2 in your tank?

Doug.. system pics, are they posted in the sticky thread? I would like to look at your entire system again but not wanting to sift through all the posts.

I think you are leaching something toxic because your readings all look within reasonable. Catfish eat, then don't eat tells me something changed in the water at that time. Ich is VERY obvious and sounds like it isn't present from your desription of gills and fish.

What could your system be leaching?

Also I wanted to know, have you observed your bluegill behavior closely? They can be quite aggressive chasing perceived predatory fish. Could they be harrassing the catfish at night when catfish are active?

Well I got my high res pictures on my web site www.thebasbergs.com under photo album/greenhouse/sick fish.
Thanks for the ick description. No bumps or anything but healthy looking corpses.
MF, I was a believer in catfish being tough. They went thru the week of pH deaths without a single one dying. All other breeds had losses. Then everyone was healthy for two weeks. Then only the catfish died in big numbers. Almost all dead now. The only thing that changed was putrifying food and fish droppings at bottom of tank. That went anearobic in the muck but top water stayed at DO=5.5. The cats are bottom fish but do fine in our lake muck. As far as aggression, I have seen none. When I had 200 healthy cats, they got to eat first (the blue gill seemed intimidated). The cats swam up from the bottom and controlled the surface until they had enough. Since the cats stopped eating the blue gills feed more&very aggressively. The cats are twice the size of the blue gills.
The biggest tank I own is 20 gallon and the cats are about 30 grams and 7" long. Probably can not handle many. Maybe set tank up with 20ppt salt and put the cats in for an hour or so and then return them to main tank? Or what is best given a 20 gallon tank?? The tank is not in use, so it is start from scratch.

There are system pictures at my web site. A diagram and description of the system is one of the first posts in this topic.