Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi Guys,

First time poster here.

Little over three months ago I started my 1st aquaponics system. It's in the basement and is made up of an old door as a growing bed and bathtub as fishtank. We've been growing lettuce, chard, basil, and many other leafy greens and have been pretty successful. The fish in this system are both tester goldfish and perch. When the perch were introduced to the system they didn't eat very well and shortly after they became very aggressive eaters.

All was well until....

I started my second system. The fish I used to start the second system had ich. I wound up using a siphon to do water changes and the chemical malachite green on the system. Worked great on curing the ich. However after the fact of reading the hazards of the chemical the system is now more of an ornamental system (it's in our living room). I'm attempting to filter out the malachite green with charcoal and eventually probably starting all over.

Anyways... Like an idiot I used the ich contaminated siphon on the basement system. I thought I had cleaned the siphon really well and apparently it wasn't good enough. I had a trip to go on and was gone for a weekend and came back and the fish weren't eating. Instantly I came to the conclusion the fish also had ich. I did a ton of research and did the salt treatment with them.

I grabbed a container and put the fish in there with the suggested salt solution and for a week did daily water changes on both the ap system and hospital tank. During the water change I placed the fish in a salt bath and eventually all of them started eating again. After the week I placed the fish back into the ap system and things appeared to be back to normal.

It's now coming on to the 6th day of the fish back into the ap system and the perch haven't been eating for two days however the goldfish are eating like crazy.

Do you guys think the fish have ich still?
Do you recommend I go back to retreating the fish for a longer period of time?
I'm almost at the point of tearing the system down and starting from scratch again.

What are your thoughts???

Can you get a photo of the fish? Can't tell if they have ich without seeing it. This will look like tiny dots the size of a pinprick.
What temp is the water?

Welcome Ripshade!

Yeah what temperature, and what are your other water parameters doing? Ammonia, nitrite...

welcome..i've got yp too.. they seem to get kind of skittish, unless you see visible signs of ich, just give them time..

Ammonia is less than .03 ppm
and the nitrites have been hovering around .03 and less than .03 ppm.

No real visible signs of ich on the fish, just drastic behavior changes that have me concerned.

Here's some shots

B

They may be stoned... looks like a gunja dungeon to me...

it could be internal injuries as it looks more like bruising than an infextion.. the fish is probably pretty stressed out...
salting for diseases and such is ok,, but i've also found that yp don't like prolonged salt treatments over 3ppt..
make sure that if you handle fish, your hands or gloves, or net are clean, and wet..and handle them as little as possible