Its been a rocky ride and its finally stabilised (massively overstocked at first)
Ive got about 20 - 30 Rainbow trout fingerlings in 1000l
As far as i can work out my levels are still to high, but i havent had a fish death for weeks
Also the fish arent showing any signs of stress
Ive got
Temp 18C
Ph 6.4
ammonia 2ppm
Nitrite 1ppm
nitrate 10ppm
Ive salted the water to 1 ppt also
so what should i be aiming for with my trout?
and are these levels still dangerous?
Thanx!
Author:
bunson [ May 28th, '12, 07:40 ]
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Re: Whats the perfect levels for rainbow trout
What is the volume of filtration i.e. GBs?
Author:
chillidude [ May 28th, '12, 08:21 ]
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Re: Whats the perfect levels for rainbow trout
As Bunson asked, what volume of growbeds do you have as part of the system?
At 20-30 fish you're still almost certainly overstocked - the system just looks stable as the fish are only small at this point. The larger the fish get, the more waste they produce and room they need.
Author:
Lyndon346 [ May 29th, '12, 19:32 ]
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Re: Whats the perfect levels for rainbow trout
carl01 wrote:
so what should i be aiming for with my trout?
Aim for, at least 750l of GB volume/filtration, maybe more with only a 2 month old system
Author:
carl01 [ May 30th, '12, 15:29 ]
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Re: Whats the perfect levels for rainbow trout
Ok what chemical levels in ppm are trout ok in
Author:
Charlie [ May 30th, '12, 15:32 ]
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Re: Whats the perfect levels for rainbow trout
You want your amm and nitri to be a zero, you could get away with slight amm but zero is your aim.
Author:
carl01 [ May 30th, '12, 16:02 ]
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Re: Whats the perfect levels for rainbow trout
charlie your a gentleman thankyou
Author:
carl01 [ May 30th, '12, 16:07 ]
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Re: Whats the perfect levels for rainbow trout
i have about 300L of filtration
50 of these are a kind of homemade canister filter so i think they will offer better filtration than a normal growbed
i know im overstocked but i will monitor levels and do what i can to make it work, water changes remove fish etc
right now the fish are so small its still ok
and to promote bacteria growth i want the watses in there so long as thier non lethal
i also rent ... so more system expansion just isn't an option for me
Author:
bunson [ May 30th, '12, 16:44 ]
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Re: Whats the perfect levels for rainbow trout
What's the filter media in the 50L canister?
Author:
carl01 [ May 31st, '12, 04:01 ]
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Re: Whats the perfect levels for rainbow trout
Course smooth river pebbles then scoria reducing in size toward the top then at the top there's clay noodle and some plastic mesh
Author:
bunson [ May 31st, '12, 09:22 ]
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Re: Whats the perfect levels for rainbow trout
The canister filter you have made performs one of the filtration techniques required in AP systems, the removal of solids. If you regularly clean the filter (daily or better) you will remove these before they can start to break down (mineralise) and generate waste products of their own; this is good; if you're not cleaning regularly enough, the wastes collected in the canister will just add to the ammonia problems.
Regardless of the cleaning regime, the problem remains though, you have insufficient surface area of media for sufficient colonies of bacteria to perform their bio-filtration activities. Other than reducing the loading on the filtration by reducing the number of fish (get any friends/family to whom you can gift the excess fish?) you need to increase the bio-filtration capacity; either add more growbeds, or specific purpose bio-filters.
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In terms of capacity vs volume, moving bed (fluidised) filters using Kaldnes K1, bio-balls or other similar high surface area media are excellent (but can be pricey, look on eBay for the media as you can find it cheaper!) The next option is to use something homemade, like plastic bottle tops, drinking straws, PVC pipe rings etc. Whichever media you are using, add these loosely packed to a large container with an aerator. The water going into the filter should be pre-filtered but as the water flows through here these filters are not prone to clogging and are in fact self cleaning.
You can make static filters by taking a container and filling with scrunched up shadecloth, fishing nets, flyscreen mesh etc; anything which has a large surface area. This water must be pre-filtered else the material will become clogged and you'd just end up with another large solids filter instead of a bio-filter.
A video of the manufacture of a simple bio-filter: (No, I'm not interested in arguments about galvanised screws or water levels etc... please just use the video for inspiration)
What K1 media looks like in a moving bed filter:
Whatever you decide to do, you'll need to do it soon. Everyday the fish grow, they will be increasing the load on the system.
HTH
Scott
Author:
ruikp [ Jun 7th, '12, 17:20 ]
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Re: Whats the perfect levels for rainbow trout
Bunson, thanks a lot for the info collection. Very important and explainable
