Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

7kg salt will bring it to 3 ppt[1kg salt to 1000 litres =1 ppt]

well my `150 silvers arrived yesterday, they entered their new home at 10am. No fatalities during shiping. They have been in the tank now 20 hrs, i had an ammonia reading that went from zero to 0.5 in four hrs. I have changed i third of the fish tank volume (700lts) and an hour ago i changed another third , so now i am back down to zero. Can anyone tell me how long before i can feed them? I bought 2mm native starter x 20kg for $83.00 au, if they have difficulty injesting is it ok to grind the pelletds up? Am i correct in asumeing that the ammonia spike is due to the growbeds not containing enough nitrobacter/nitrosomas to cope with the increased fish waste. I only had about 25 goldies in the tank before and the system was not recording overly high ammonia. Should i continue to change the water until the nitrobacter can take over? The water temp is around 22 c at the moment. Im expecting the spikes may continue for 48 hrs or more is that correct? In terms of fish behaviour what shoulod i be observing? I have never kept fish before prior to my forray into ap. They seem to be very active and like the air from the stones in the tank. There was some flashing in the first 30mins of their arrival but that has stopped. I have salt to approx 3 ppm, and chuck another couple of handfills in when i change the water. How often should i monitor the water?
woot fish
pete

how big are they? they should be fine for a few days without food. The bacteria will catch up.

Congratulations!

jamie,
thay are 60mm most of them about 10 are 80mm.

leave off the water changes for a bit, the bacteria will catch up

don't feed the fish yet

ive got to go to work i hope my babies are ok, ill do a fresh round of water analysis when i get home. Thanks for the tips jamie, its great to have afficianados out there willing to help.

what is the max reading of ammonia allowed before i do a water change?

I was doing 10% water changes when it got around 1, some are not worrying until...I like to err on the side of caution id I have fish in the system

Can anyone tell me what readings i should be looking for? My ammonia is at zero and i have not fed the fish for 33 hrs. Wont they get hungry and start eating each other. They seem to be nibbling on the algae on the sides of the tank. How can i tell if the tank had cycled prior to adding the fish. Formally i had 25 goldies in there since july. That 9 weeks should have been enough time to build up a colony of bacteria.

You can probably start feeding lightly now.

Even though your system would have been cycled - it was not prepared for the big load of new fish. 25 goldies versus 150 silvers is a big difference.

The fish that size will take 2mm food fine. My similar sized silvers took 4mm ok.

Start with a spoon full of food, then ramp it up daily until they dont want any more, over a week or so. Keep monitoring the parameters of the water for at least 2 weeks, after that you should have a pretty good feel for what is going on. After two weeks they should be taking around a handfull of food, twice a day.

I doubt you will get much ammonia now - the system just had an initial shock, but if you do, change the water out slowly to bring the level back to .25 / .5 Slow water changes are a very good way of dealing with ammonia without stressing the fish or the bacteria out.

thanks ozzie they look like they are ready to be fed. Why are small changes better than larger ones?

Small incremental changes allow you to pick the point where the system overloads... probably temporarily... and needs to stabilse...

Big changes... means you migth miss that point and overload to the detrement of the fish and system...

Easy does... increase a little.. test the next day... if OK... increase a little.. tst the next day...

If you see a spike... back off the feed to the previous level... until the spike passes...

Then resume small increments... you building the system up without massively belting it...

thanks oz, i fed them this morning about a desert spoon. The latest test results are ammo 0.5 No2 0 no3 5 and ph 7.4. Ill test agian this arvo and if the ammo is at or near (1) i will do a ten percent water change.

No need Bluefin... just back off the feed to what you had before.... let the spike settle... then try again with about half the extra amount... test again... if you don't get a spike this time...

Feed that amount for a few days and see what happens... if still no spike then increase it a little...