1) The bleach killed all the bacteria, beneficial or otherwise, so the system must cycle again. Also the bleach may be soaked into the media and take time to dissipate. Perhaps you should check for chlorine.
2) Once added, salt never goes away unless you perform a water exchange, so advice to add salt repeatedly is bad advice. Add salt once and check it regularly. 1 to 2 ppt is a good range to help your fish. Use pure salt with no additives. I use a mix of potassium chloride, sodium chloride and epsom salt. I get the chloride salts from Home Depot. They have Solar salt and potassium chloride for water softeners, and it does not have anti-caking, anti-rust, iodine o=r any other additives. I hear that pool salt and aquarium salt re good sources too. One kg salt to 1000 l of water is 1 ppt.
3) After 5 years your grow beds are probably full of fish waste gunk. You likely have anaerobic areas, especially if you had issues with pumps, air pumps, etc. You may need to clean the media. This stirs up a lot of gunk so should be isolated from the main system during cleaning. Any anaerobic areas will create hydrogen sulfide which stinks and is toxic to fish.
Please send some photos of your system so we can see what the grow bed construction is, the fish tank, etc. Maybe the lining you used for the GB was not cleaned or is not fish safe?
At this time, with so many problems, it sounds like time for a complete reset - clean everything, start with fresh water, treat for chlorine / etc. with Prime or similar water conditioner, fully cycle using clear ammonia and API test kit for monitoring, etc.
As you can see shortcuts usually are only shortcuts to dead fish. With fall setting in and temperatures dropping, it may take some time for the system to cycle, especially after the bleach treatment.
What are your test results for pH, ammonia, nitrite, nitrate???
Lets see a couple photos and some test results, then maybe we can be more help. I hope you get things turned around.
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=1ppt.