Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Good stuff Jen, but eventually you will be obsessive compulsive it happens to us all, (did I say eventually )

heh... I am obsessive compulsive.. no I haven't been diagnosed as such, but I know all the signs, I guess I'd have a very mild form if I read my books right. But yeah, already there... don't worry

Well if that's the case Jens... I'm sure you'll do everything necessary to become a full blown compulsive...

full blown...heh... this is a major hobby that I'm gonna live for the rest of my life so if that's not obsessive then what is?

anyway, HSM today... having read some of you guys posts I'd say you would call it a major one. But I'm thinking positively here... it's not so major because I was able to put it back together in 30 minutes and it's now running fine.

What happened - I'm not entirely sure, but what I do see is the back fence seems to have been blown back! like fallen backwards onto the neighbour's property! and I had some plumbing attached to this fence.
It really surprised me that the fence was actually sort of hanging from the pipes that was attached to the system. I must have really made the pipes watertight.
It still pulled the pump pipe out of the water so that it was pumping water out everywhere but the fish tank.
When I got home, the sumptank was nearly empty with the pump still running, the growbeds were empty too and only the fishtank was full...

To make matters worse, today was the day I got my 30 trout fingerlings from Troutman. ... so as soon as I saw the mess, I turned off the pump and changed the plumbing with a couple of quick fixes as I was gonna do that anyway (been planning to change the system for a week now.)
Then I added water and restarted the pump. Gah I was so happy to have been pumping for a week. now I've stopped it ... bleh.
I also checked the elements... the pH is still around 7.6 to 8 which is normal for this system, I'm planning to buy shell grit and an air stone this weekend. The ammonia is barely a 0.25 parts per ton and the nitrite and nitrate are both zero. So I reckon it's all still A-OK.

whew...

thanks Troutman for the fingerlings! They're a bit bigger than I expected but considering how late I got them off you I guess that'd be right. Just ... was an unexpected sight.

Have you got a lid on them?

lid on what?

Next HSM might be in the morning after the trout have tried to jump to freedom. We really need a smilie of a trout jumping out of a FT onto the ground.

no!

alright.... now I've covered the tank with shadecloth... lucky I was using this for the cubby house

So the pump still worked after it's ordeal?

If so, I would count that as a minor HSM. The major one is when you already have a load of fish in, the pump drains them down into barely enough water and then dies on you and you don't have enough conditioned make up water to easily put things right.

However, any HSM is worth comment and the ones you are able to avert or fix quickly with no major repercussions are worth chears Yay for CHIFT PIST since it means you didn't run the fish tank dry and seem to have only had a minor spike in the ammonia which should be gone in several hours so long as the gravel didn't get to dry out completely.

Best I could do on short notice, lol

very very very good!!

Its supposed to be rainbow trout

Showing some pictures of my HSM

I had to change the growbeds around a bit coz of my fiddling with the siphons to make em work!

The trout fingerlings are as big if not bigger than the goldfish thought they'd be smaller. And there of course is my handiwork on the shade cloth to keep the trout in. I also fed them this morning - never seen fish eat so fast!