Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

This is my experience that I want to share, oh, hi to everyone. I had my system (1000ltre fish tank, three growbeds an IBC cut in half and a tin bath) I was putting one cap of seasol each day and I was dutifully checking PH, Nitrate, Nitrite and Ammonia daily. I had a PH of 7. and the rest were 0, and the veggies were slowly starting to grow. Great you may say. Great I said. Then I thought "Budg old mate (I always talk to myself, being old and patially mad) Budg, before you buy the 100 fingerlings that are part of the plan,why not trial the system with some good old cheap goldfish" so, off I went to the local aquarium shop and bought 10 bronzed goldfish, and, following the directions in the vid, I put them in the tank.

Im off and running, yahoo. All of a sudden one of my water pipes to one grow bed stopped flowing and then the other one did the same. I had to take the pipes apart and found bits of two of the fish inside the pipes. I realised that I didnt put a filter or cover over the ends of the pipes that extend down to the bottom of my IBC fishtank. So I had to take both of these out and I bought two caps that I drilled holes in. I was away for two hours. When I came back to the tank to put the pipes back in there were parts of seven of the eight remaining fish floating and dead. I had left the system running and the fish had all committed hurricurri.


The moral of my story is, Do it right the first time, dont rush to have a system up and running, R.I.P goldfish and dont give up.


Regards to all
Budgiegrower

Yes these things happen.
Please do not buy 100 fingerlings for your system or you will be posting more woes in the near future. Once your system is cycled maybe 25 fingerlings max

+1

I run (im guessing) about half the growbed capacity you have and my system has struggled from time to time with 22 growing trout.

Take your stock advice from the "IBC of aquaponics". Look at how many fish they recommend for a single IBC system, then scale it by how many times more growbed volume you have. I'm guess you are at about 4 times more.... this is way less than 100.

Is there any chance of putting up some photos of your system? I suspect that there may be another issue coming in to play. What worries me a little is the "tin bath" there are just some materials they are not compatible with fish I'm afraid.
What media are you using, what are the sizes of the growbeds?