Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Ok so I came home and the fish water where I am holding them looked crazy cloudy so I changed water and now all the fish are acting funny the cat fish are literally twirling and the perch and laying on the bottom. What can I do or are they dying?

What would have made the water cloudy. Pump as much water as possible through the fish tank and add as much air as you can and chuck in salt to get it up to 3ppt

They are in a holding tank right now my ammonia in my ap is still to high I will try the salt

Yup... Out of 55 fish one survived for now so that really sucks.

Sorry to hear about the fish.



I'm not sure why your water went cloudy but it's not necessarily a big deal if it does. Next time just let it happen unless the fish are obviously stressed. Changing some of the water is OK (like about a third at most (preferably less)) but changing a large amount of the water changes the pH, temp and a whole bunch of other items for the fish in a very short period of time, if they can't adjust fast enough

I'm not sure what your ammonia level was but it could have killed the fish, the water change obviously had an affect and may have made the ammonia more lethal.

Salting won't help with ammonia only with nitrite.

Pardon if this is too obvious but when you do a water change is it from the tap? and do you treat it for chlorine/chloramines?


I have found channel catfish to be the most sensetive to chlorine. Tilapia and bluegill have a fair amount of tolerance but catfish have close to zero tolerance.


brian

I had treated the water for Chlorine and Cholrimens I am pretty sure it was still that there were still chlorine and chloramines in the water. Yes it was to much of a shock to the fish, it was a smaller holding tank and the water was cloudy because they didn't eat any of the food I had gave them. Problem was it was a sinking food and they were all clustered around it the night before and I thought they had eaten it but I was wrong. I am going to try and get my levels balanced in the AP set up and get more fish hopefully this weekend. Trust me wont make that mistake again. Also I am just hoping my AP levels balance out sooner then later.

What's your tests looking like now CRF? And how are you getting ammonia into the system if fish are in a holding tank? Apologies if I missed this discussion somewhere...

were you running any kind of filtration on the holding tank?
ammonia would have built up quickly if not..