Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Better safe than... soggy...

So how long should new fish be scared out of their mind at their new environment?

I purchased 4 Koi 4 days ago, put them into their new home and they all immediately found their way down behind the pump that is in there, they haven't moved from there yet. Every day I shut off the air pump and move the pump around to make sure they are all alive, but they haven't come up to feed yet and they won't swim around at all unless I move the pump around and then they kind of flip out and start swimming as fast as they can running into the sides at pretty high speed, etc, as soon as I turn the air back on and stop messing with the pump they all go back to hiding behind it.

Is this normal? The last goldfish I got acted like that for about 24 hours before they started venturing up to see how scary I actually was.

Quick question. My tomatoes are currently exploding, they are growing at least 1.5 to 2 inches a day, in a few days they will probably be outgrowing the height I have available in my setup. With my bonsai trees I have when I want them to stop growing vertical and start filling out I cut the top set of leaves and then it starts focusing on filling in what is there. Will that work with tomatoes?

Now for the updates.

The Koi are now just as greedy as my goldfish and you wouldn't know they were ever scared of anything. Turns out there is a trick, after I had them separated for a week to make sure they didn't bring anything bad home from the pet store I put three of my goldfish in with them, within minutes they were up and eating. As far as I could tell they hadn't come up to eat in a week since I got them, they just needed other fish to show them it was OK.

I have been doing an experiment with my lighting and am getting some interesting results. I have 2 fluorescent lights in my system, for the last month one of them has been running very expensive growlights in it while the other has had "daylight" bulbs which are really cheap. The daylight bulbs have like twice the lumans coming out of them, but they of course are not the same spectrum. The interesting thing is that the plants seem to be doing better under the daylight ones than the grow lights. I am going to keep both sets in there to see how fruiting goes, etc. However right now it looks like the grow lights I have are not at all worth the extra money.

Also thought I would update the pics of my Goldfish, I was really excited as the picture I posted below is by far the best one I have gotten of them yet, couldn't believe I actually got a good picture with no glare.

Hi Mw - I dont know why no one responded to your Apr 29 post, but yes, that sort of behaviour is normal. Pretty much all you can do is wait.

With the tom's, just bend the main trun off to one side, then send some shoots off to the other side. Strip any other leaves off the tree below the fruit.

Nice fishies

So I figure its time for a system update.

First the bad, I ended up losing all of my koi and goldfish that were in my one bin, no idea why. If you are interested check out the thread I started having to do with it: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=5666. However we must move on. I have a new fish tank with a dozen new goldfish, and hopes are high.

Now the good, my tomatoes are machines, I decided not to clip the tops of them as I just wanted to see what they would do on their own, this is after all a trial for a larger system I am planning to build. So how high did my tomatoes go? About 6 feet before the top tipped over (I have the bottom half supported, but it grew up and out of my system by several feet )

Also decided to post a pic of one of the dinners we made partially out of the aquaponics, its chicken with a pesto sauce made from the basil. Our basil is out of control, we have one basil plant and we need to do pesto about once a week to keep up with it, I have never seen a basil so out of control.

Looks like there are wooden boards in your system. I have a vague memory of that being a bad thing.

Can anyone chime in on what wood does?

Are your still using the "grow light bulbs"?

or are the daylight ones working better?