Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

2am now , no deaths since 8:00

changed about 10 - 20% of the water , that may have something to do with it - dilute whatever was killing them just below lethal level ?

the flood/drain cycle finished for the night 3 hours ago so no water flowing through the growbeds , that may have something to do with it - something buried IN the gravel that I cant see that is dissolving and killing them ?

I found a sealed 10L container of glen forrest perch food , smells good ( well , it smells awful but it always did , it doesnt smell off )
If theyre still alive tomorrow afternoon I'll change theirfood to that

if they start dying again in the morning once the cycle starts I can assume its something actually buried in the gravel thats leaching out . in which case I can't think what the hell it could be, and how the hell I'd find it and get it out other than by emptying 2400L of gravel and all the plants ...

IF they survive till tomorrow , dont die from eating the different food and I still feed the perch in the other system the tout food , I can assume that they just couldnt handle the too-high protein .
Im more inclined to think its somethingthats built up to a critcal level and affected them .
Now that the pumps are off I ust have to wait and see if they die as soon as water starts flowing through the beds again
I REALLY hope not , thats a BIG job to get done before trout arrive.
If thats the case I can shut off pumping to half the system at a time to try narrow it down to which bed the problem is in

There's no snail baits around , there's no rat poison around at the moment ( no rats either , I killed em all ) but i suppose its possible a rat or mouse could urinate into one of thetanks , passing poison through into it ? pretty unlikely at this point

really wish it was something simple like a Nitrite spike

More likely drink from the tank since they will be looking for water.... and maybe fell in???
Sorry I know I am not really helping but next time... consider using this for rats and mices...
http://www.ratzapper.com.au/ no poison, just a zap.. and you don't need to hunt
for the dead body...

mice and rats cant get in - theres lids on all the tanks

more deaths :

10am ,right two GBs had cycled and left two were cycling when I saw three dead . I shut off the right two to stop them cycling

an hour later 7 more dead after the left two had cycled

I just shut off the left two and restarted the right two.

no deaths all night till the pumping started & looks like it might be something in the left two growbeds , not in the water itself ( otherwise it would flow through all night and kill them )

I removed one peice of 20 year old jarrah length that was holding up one of the inflow pipes to the growbed . its wet in spots but not rotten . try and cancel that out

There was a slight different smell to the system for the last week, less of a natural pond smell and more of an up-north wet season waterway smell

it smelt like the trunks of the two cape goosberry bushed that are in the far left growbed . theyre spongy and waterlogged and mushy at the base where they go into the gravel , but theyre not rotten or dying - the plants are going crazy .
wikipedia says goosberries get root rot after the second year and/or if in waterlogged soil..

going to research goosberries now

hah

internet says :
"All parts of the plant, except the fruit, are poisonous"

just found out its a nightshade aswell , probably not the best thing to have getting waterlogged roots in my growbed

Doing a water change now , and ripping out the gooseberries & we'll see if any fish survive till I've done all that

cape gooseberries removed & bed cleaned up a bit

the system is now seperated into two seperate systems and water has been changed , still two of the remaining ones lookign to be on the way out . Ive checked inside the pumps and air lines , it HAS to be something from one of the growbeds as none died overnight while the pumps were off , only the oxygen running ( that means it cant be something in the airlines / air pump )

Ive tried an attempt at testing water hardness ( probably doing it wrong )
plastic cup of tap water sinks 2mm below the surface , same with rain water , Im thinking that may mean my water isnt too hard ( no way to really check cause one of the trout ate the top off my floating thermometer / specific gravity thing

Im probably getting that completely wrong , or it may have something to do with the surface tension

tiny snails in the isolated / cape gooseberry section all dead

tiny snails in the rest of the system next tank across from the silvers are fine

ammo 0
nitrite 0
pH 7.2 - 7.4 and stable

I have been growing cape gooseberries now for almost a year, and have had SP in there all the time. I did loose some SP but put it down to low protein diet and water too acidic, 6 and below. I did loose some fairly big trout without a reason, maybe they needed more air, however if it was the cape gooseberries, I would have kept loosing them. No losses when I pruned the cape gooseberries quiet heavily either. I think you may find that tomatoes would fit in the same category as you have placed the gooseberries. Rhubarb has very toxic leaves and the list prolly goes on.

the gooseberries have been in about 2 years - wikipedia entry on them says that they tend to get root rot at 2 years which is why gooseberry farmers plant every year , plus they dont like having wet feet - mine were pretty moist around the trunk , at about the same point where overgrown / seeded celery tends to go mushy

now that theyre in the dirt garden theyve dried out

found a mouse hole in under the decking between two tanks - theres no way he could get from there into the tank , but atleast Ive found another spot to check for mice if my capsicums keep getting hammered

No deaths since I did the water change today ( only about 10 - 20% ) and seperated the whole thing into two seperate systems

Im pretty sure now that the big ones died from a combination of whatevers killing the small ones and a lack of oxygen .
The tank they were in still smells weird, not ammonia spike or nitrite spike smell, some other wierd smell that I cant place .
Kinda like almost-stagnant waterholes up north

In any event , now that the system is seperated I can scrub out the first two tanks and do 3 or 4 bore water changes over the next month . Once thats done I'll throw some fish in to see if its habitable , then clean

Perch in the completely other system are hammering the trout pellets , so Ive cancelled that out

if none of the small ones die tonight or tomorrow I can say for sure that its something in the 2 isolated GB's - if it was something in the 2 isolated tanks ( left half of the system ) it would have been killing them all night while the cycle pumps were off

No great loss - Im glad it happened now and not when te trout are / were in, but I really need to figure out what it is and clean the hell out of it before May

HI Boris01
I have the answer for you come down to Margaret River
Clean water breed trout all year round and paint to your heart's content what more could you want see you soon.
Cheers Eagle

I'll pack my bags while the other half is at a concert tonight , find a babysitter and get in the car

they'l NEVER guess where I am heheeheheh

Hey Boris01,
Your posts are reading like a 'Whodunnit'.
I hope we get to find out who the 'fish killer' is very soon.
We will all learn from this mystery unfortunately at the expense of your fish' lives .
Thanks for keeping us updated.

well , no deaths overnight with the systems seperated in half , all remaining silvers looking better ( even one that was swimming upside down is nw swimming almost normally )

I threw a tiny amount of food in to test their apetite & a couple were mildly interested

The wierd smell in the other half of the system is still there , barely noticeable though

I really hope it was the cape gooseberries , otherwise Im at a complete loss on this one.
another idea might be the small snails - all the ones in the "toxic" part of the system had died , maybe from whatever the smell is . There's not a huge amount of them and theyre pretty small , but maybe dead snails pump out a poison ?