Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Went to top off my sump last night and got distracted, leaving the hose running full blast all night.

I'm in southern California and there's plenty of Chlorine in the water but I don't know exactly how much. I am assuming my water is extremely diluted now and I'm wondering what it may have done to the bacteria culture. The system is a total of about 2000L of FT and the same of grow space. I salted to 1ppt this morning before heading off to work and now my three big catfish have slimy, mucous looking strings on their heads and they're moving extremely slowly.

Anybody else made this same dumb mistake and had their fish live to tell about it?

Yes did it once and killed all the fish. Catfish lasted the longest but died anyway

I've done this also, as have many other people over the years. Luckily my Silver Perch are pretty tough and survived unscathed. It's generally a good idea to use a tap timer, but I just grab a peg off the line and put it on my little finger - that way when I notice my finger hurting I remember to turn off the tap!

When my system was in the care of my father-in-law, he "topped up" with tap-water for 24 hours... nothing survived.

A simple tap timer is cheap insurance.


Scott

A countdown timer on a mobile phone is even cheaper.

Just like red lights and stop signs on the road do nothing to actually stop vehicles, pegs on fingers and timers on phones don't stop the water flow! With a tap timer, if you forget to shut off the water, it will actually shut off the water for you.

So this is a report back. Its been 5 weeks or so and I had all of ZERO deaths in my tanks. The cats are fine, as are the goldfish, plecos, algae eaters, yada yada. They definitely were not interested in eating for a week or so, they were very shocked. I gave em some salt though and they eventually started eating again. Now they're fine

Aerate the water as much as you can if it happens again and salt to 3 parts. Cheap mechanical timer is the best option.

Can you set up a tote to fill with water and add airstones to burn of the nasties. That way you will have a constant reserve of clean water.

The hose timers are great. I also like to use stock tank top up valves to automatically top up water.

good to hear the fish survived though.

Float valve attached to a retic system is the way I've gone and I'm constantly topped up 3x per week now