Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

will the fish naturally sort themselves out? That is will a number die until it gets down to a point of probably half the number as you are suggesting and then all should be fine?

If you aerate a whole heap more you should not lose too many more fish, but Id definately be trying to give some away. It is simply too many for a small system to handle straight up. Not feeding for a few days will not hurt the fish.

How many fish would be recommended for that size tank?

Gaz, I would suggest that you start your own system thread (topic) and start documenting your system with photos, etc... Document anything you wish, the good, the bad, etc... Ask questions about your intentions on your own thread before you act. Very often the members here would provide advice on whether your intentions are sound, or to avoid it, or something... Mostly you get replies within the day...

It seems obvious that whoever you are taking advice outside this forum does not have a clue about aquaponics... and I would suggest you stop listening to them... it also seems that you only come to this forum after you run into problems/issues ...

We are a very helpful bunch here, and I believe all of us would like to provide advice upfront prior to you getting yourself into issues you get stressed about...

+1 Ivan - definitely too many fish and definitely the best advice you'll get is on this forum !

Amounts of fish are more appropriately based on the amount of filtration provided by the grow beds. For the amount of grow bed in your system I would say that starting out first batch of small fish should probably have been 30 fish.

Once mature, your 1200+ liters of grow bed could support perhaps 36 kg of fish but that could be pushing the limits when the fish are grown out to full size.

The rule of thumb would be 3 kg of fish per 100 liters of flood and drain media bed provided there is at least 50 liters of fish tank per that 3 kg of fish when the beds are flooded.

Trout are a bit more high maint though as they need high flow rates and really good aeration as well as cooler temperatures and good water quality.

Hopefully your fish will stabilize before you loose too many of them but there is no guarantee of that, if the water quality gets too bad, stressed fish can get sick and die even if the numbers reduce below what would have been an appropriate level. Cycling is always difficult and requires patients, if you are trying to cycle a system that is overloaded, well the outlook isn't so good. As OBO said, you might want to re-home some of those fish quickly.

Water levels are still stabilising. We have lost some fish over the last few days since the last post, but others have actively started eating. Checked this morning and no dead ones then, mind you it was early around 06.00. will do further tests tonight.

I cant put photos up at the moment as I don't have the program. once that is sorted I will definately post pics for all to see.

Had a visit from Colin last week which was nice to have a chat.

Hang in there, cycling is the part that tests patients. As long as you have ammonia or nitrite showing, you need to keep the feeding minimal or nothing depending on how high the readings are and what your pH is and all. Having at least 1 ppt of salt in the system will help against the nitrite hurting the fish.

Once your ammonia and nitrite drop to 0 or near so, you can slowly start upping the feed (keeping an eye on things to make sure they eat it all, don't leave uneaten feed in the tank and make a point of feeding less if they are not eating all you give.) As you up the feed, keep a close eye on ammonia/nitrite levels, if they start to climb again, then drop back a little on the feed till the system builds up to that new feeding level.

Good Luck.

trying to add images

2 days with no fish dying. they are all very active and feeding well.
plants are looking great

Good to hear Gaz... things are sorting themselves out...

Read this thread with interest as we also have the Maximus kit & also the video

Definitely says 1 fish per 10 litres of water and he goes on to say that in the 950 litre tank you can add 100 fish. So we added 100 silver perch to ours but soon as they started to grow we could see that the tank was way over stocked. With the constant cycling, the level of the tank sits between 1/2 to 3/4 full. We have so far harvested 20 and will need to reduce numbers again soon. While we have not had any fish deaths in this system (apart from those we ate), we do have many years experience in keeping fish (ornamentals), and that has helped with the monitoring of our silvers. I certainly wouldn't recommend anyone starting off with that number of fish. 30 to 40 would be maximum and you still would need to harvest some as they grow.

Sound and sane advice Tristin...