Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Im heading over 20, had several days in the last fortnight well over 30.

Trout tanks now have every airstone in the whole system in them. It's like a trout spa

22.5oC, Looks like an early trip to buy some shadecloth in the morning and water already in the freezer ready to add when frozen.

Mine water reached 21 today, I added a 4L chunk of Ice in the afternoon, and it was gone within the hour, I expected it to last a bit longer, both bubblers are now in the trout tank. Tomorrow I'll probably turn off my big GB which is out in the sun, and just run the shaded ones all day. I'll leave the big GB flooded so the gravel doesn't dry out, and add another 4L block of ice and maybe a bag of ice (left bagged) from the servo in the morning.
The forecast is now 35 degrees for tomorrow...

Wavey.

What tank volumes ar you guys running? We went to 19 degrees today in our 5000 litre tank and we are in full sun, I expect it to drop back down to at least 16 tonight. Topped water right up to increase thermal mass this afternoon. Temp is dropping Sunday and cool change and possible rain Monday so I can't see tomorrow having being a massive problem, temp will spike but only for a short time before dropping again tomorrow night and hopefully staying down

my water got to 22.2, trout were feeding fine, last year they didn't show any ill effects till it got up around 26 but even then they were fine once the temp dropped, the trout in W.A are a little more temp tolerant than trout on the east coast.

i am running 3 off 500 ltr tanks plumbed into each other and they are all under shade but i think this year i will be adding more shade

Mine reached about 23 degC... 1000L tank... added two bottles of frozen water into the tank late morning... about 2 hrs, they have turned to water... topped up the tank...

Would switching the timer to manual (ie. constantly flooding) help with keeping the water temperatures lower???

Shade and shade
15max water down here

GB's are great heat exchanges so if your media is warmer than your water, keeping the water flowing through the system will increase the temperature.

I doubt that two bottles of frozen water would make any noticeable difference to 1000 litres, Maybe there is a physicist amongst us who can do the figures and tell us how many bottles of frozen water into a 1000 litres at 25 degrees to drop one degree?

I mentioned before about putting the ice in early
to keep the water cool, not to try and cool it down.
It is possible to mist the GBs with the hose and cool down the gravel.
Better to have all of your gravel covered in greenery

15 down your way Iv...?


Man, I didn't even look at our thermometers today, I expect that by tomorrow arvo they will be pretty high in the smaller systems, especially since we don't have our shade cloth over most of the systems at the moment.

I figure by tomorrow arvo the water would have made 18.
I have the shade cloth coverall on

Just as an experiment take one of your air stones out and get an air temp that's going into your system in summer last year [yes my air pipe is buried] the air temp got to 38 deg

Would it help if you kept your aerator in an esky or freezer so the air going in to the tank was cold. Coupled with shade cloth and some 10 or 20 litre frozen jerry cans to put in the tank might extend your growing season, also as some one else mentioned keeping the grow bed lush and full of greenery will help too. If you don't have much greenery maybe some light coloured shade cloth suspended 50 to 100mm above the GB with small holes cut in for the small veggies to grow up through could help also to keep the hot sun off the stones in the GB.
I will be trying all of these things so will keep all updated.

The water temp in my fish tank was 21degrees at 7 am . I think it is going to get VERY hot. I am thinking of putting extra air into the tank. Is that a good idea? do you think the benefits of added ozygen will be cancelled out by the heat it adds to the system?