Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Dude its 10pm here and my mouth is watering!



So unfair.

Your just on the wrong side of the pond mate.

I know dude, I know!
The better half and I have decided that the place we would most like to live, taking climate into consideration (we like hot and humid and good beaches) is Queensland. So we are doing some long term thinking to get over there. It will be a while though, we just got here and need some time to work on getting over there. Will probably need to be here 2 - 4 years before it becomes viable for us to go over to Aus.



One day. If I ever make it to Queensland I will be calling in a silver perch dinner.
(I will of course bring something cold to make it worthwhile.)

Second stop - Tranny Place....

Nice and simple bear. Thanks for that. Pics look delicious too


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Looks excellent!

Good size Jades, Bear. Well done mate.

Trust every one had a good Christmas and look forward to the New Years.

I started this thread to record my journey through good and bad and this is the bad side of my record.

Been away for a few weeks on a road trip to Adelaide for Christmas and Blind Freddie done me a favour and looked after the system. Ran the system on constant flood while I was gone and Steve came up every two or three days to feed the fish and check PH.

On the main system he arrived just in time to stop a disaster. I run my GB drains into a 90mm pipe which feeds into the sump. I had used the plastic brackets to hold the pipe up under the grow beds and forgot about them. Steve came up and could hear the pump sucking air and checked the sumps which were basically empty. On checking he noticed the drain bracket had busted and the bed drains were just emptying on to the ground and emptying the sumps.

He supported the pipes and refilled the system which was about 2000 litres of water, checked all levels and restarted. Water wasted when not much rain falling here and I had changed a fair bit in the RAS before I left.

The main disaster was from the RAS which has been running well since I installed the new filter. Had a txt from him on Monday morning saying he checked the system on Sunday evening and ammonia was rising and should he go back up and change some water from the system. We were in Warick when I could contact him and said I would be home in 3 hours no problems. Famous last words as you can see



Arrived home to 46 lovely jades either floating or flat on the bottom of the tank. Average length about 175mm and weight 210 grams. Sudden spike in ammonia and at present I have not found the reason. Very little waste on the bottom of the tanks and the bio water was smelling clean. Will be emptying the whole system to find any build up of waste which could have contributed to the spike.

Will start the system up again later in the week and transfer some of the bigger jades from the main system over till I can get new fingerlings.

Thanks to Steve for looking after the place and adverting a disaster with the main system and with regards to the RAS Shit happens and I will start again. Some decent rain to fill the tanks would help as I consider water the most valuable gift of nature we have.

Cheers and Happy New Year to all.

No good Bear! Hope you have a good new year as well!

Sorry to hear about the loss with the fish. Were they at harvest size yet?

I came home from holidays to an empty sump, with tap constantly filling it (mother-in-law did a good job to stop it running dry). One of my underground pipes split somehow. Annoying thing to come home to after a long drive.

Sorry to hear about your loses Cc Bear.

I am going away for a few weeks in February and am debating whether to harvest my 80 odd Trout before then. They are only about 380g but I do not like the idea of loosing them while I am away.

Thank you all, Johny with expected temperature rises in Adelaide I would harvest, too great a risk.

Column that should solve the problem of the excess water you were using. Sorry that it happen and hope your Christmas in Sydney went well. Not harvest size but the first would have been harvested before winter and the rest as required. Was trying to get a constant supply all year.

The oldest ones in the main size look dam good so will be harvesting some by week end. Cheers

Sorry to hear Bear, that sucks

Sorry to hear this happened Bear.

I know the feeling Bear, but sorry to see it happen. FWIW we have had a rotten few days temp wise and high humidity, maybe your tank got too warm????

Hi Rod Steve mentioned that the tank was in the mid 20's so temperature would not have been the problem and there was plenty of air being introduced as well.

Emptied the whole system to try and find any accumulation of waste or feed which may have led to the high ammonia spike.

Fish tank 1 this had the 46 Jade perch in it, I emptied the tank through a filter sock and minimum waste collected. Remains of feed from previous evening when the spike was first notice was equal to about a quarter of the feed. This indicates to me that the fish may have already been feeling the effect of the ammonia.

Tank 2 No fish, once again emptied through a filter sock with little waste and about 3 table spoons of waste in the bottom of the tank. This I believed would have come from the bio C1 material which was dirty and the reason I changed water and installed a new filter before I left.

RFF not much out of this even when completely emptied, suspect most was flowing through to the new filter. Looking at ways to do a cone bottom as there does not appear to be any small cone bottom drums on the Australian market.

New Filter. This is a matala and shade cloth filter with a air blow back system similar to what is shown on the Koi forums. Drained the bottom and not much came out. Used the blow back system with the workshop vac and it worked a treat. Plenty of crap was stirred through the material. Unfortunately I could not get the full volume of water in to flush it all out so resorted to pulling it all apart and cleaning the matting and shade cloth.

There was a fair amount of crap there but I expected from my research that the filter would last longer than a month before clean out. Any way when it is operating again I will be keeping a closer watch.

Bio Filter, this has 100 litres of C1 which is similar to K1. The water here smelt good and looked clean, all the accumulated crap from before the previous clean out was now gone confirming my believe on the waste in tank 2. Flushed the bio out a couple of times and dug down to check the C1 on the bottom and all material appeared clean from fish waste. Refilled with water from the main system and restarted air to keep the bacteria alive. Pleased with the improvement here from the last tinkle before I left.

Sump, water smelt good and drum clean. Flushed it out ready for restart.

The only place where any waste could have contributed to a spike was the new filter which worked as expected and trapped all waste from the RFF. Water from the top of the filter to the Bio was exceptionally clean with no waste going into the Bio filter.

Conclusion.

Try to change the RFF to a cone bottom to trap more of the waste.
Small filter before the matala filter which can be easily cleaned on a weekly basis.
Closer watch on ammonia and nitrates when the system is refired.

Any other suggestion welcomed as I will transfer some of the larger Jades over when I restart.