Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hello everyone, I have been looking around this forum for a few months and have started a
small bathtub system. The system has been running now for 3 months and I had a few
issues during the cycling period which I overcame with some help from other posts on this
forum. I have had good success with the system once cycled and have good growth of
celery, chilli, basil, spinich and parsley. My system has approx 200ltr bath as a fish tank and
2 100ltr 304 stainless grow beds. I was getting good readings with Nitrates up to 40, once
the plants got bigger my Nitrates went down to around 5 and growth stopped. This is where
I seem to have come unstuck.I started with 15 small comets during cycling then once cycled
I added another 10 all was going well for about 4 weeks with 25 comets.
I will continue and hopefully get some answers in my next post.
By the way this forum is amazing and I glad I finally got up the courage to post my situation.

Your "situation" sounds like a perfectly workable setup Whisper... and welcome...

You say say that you seem to have "come unstuck" since adding some more comets.. what happened??

Thank Rupe,

My problems started when I checked the Nitrates again and I was not getting a reading so
I bought 7 more comets so I now have 32 between 30mm and 90mm in size.
After 3 days I found one dead. The only aeration I had was the 2 x 25mm drain pipe coming
from the grow beds. I thought this may not be enough with the extra fish so I put in 2
air stones. Fish seemed to love the extra air but again after a couple of days another dead.
I had previously before adding the air pump hooked up another submersible pump I had laying
around to add some air. Since adding these extra fish I am still losing 1 fish every few days.
I have done 3 water changes, changing around 50% each time. Also with the amount of rain
we are having there is substantial overflow happening.
All my water tests are fine with the following results.
Amonia. 0
Nitrate, 0
Nitrate, 5
PH, 7.6
Temp, 15
I am at a loss now with what to do.
I do have my growbeds on a galvanised stand that I made out of old square tube.
I had a thought that with all the rain in the last week or so maybe there is some heavy metal
poisoning happening. I have now made a polycarbonate peice under the grow bed to stop any
water dripping into the fish tank and I have done another water change to decrease any
possible poisoning.
If you have anything that may help I would appreciate it.
I need to get my camera working and then I will post some pics.

It's possible that the "new stock" of comets that you added were weak and/or diseased Whisper...

Salt your tank to 3ppt as a precaution... that's 3kg of salt per 1000L....

The salt.... use Sunray Pool salt... and any other 100% pure sea salt... will help stimulate mucus production of the slime coat... and combat any parasites...

Don't do anymore water changes for the moment while you salt...

Thanks for that.
I did have the tank salted to 3ppt before I did the first water change.
I will salt it again tonight.
The fish that are dying are not just the new ones or the small ones.
I had one die that was 90mm long, it was my biggest.
Hopefully can sort something out soon otherwise I will have no fish left.
I think there is only 18 left.

I managed to go home at lunchtime and I salted to 3ppt.
When I got home there was another dead fish.
This one didn't have any eyes, looked like it had been attacked.
None of the others have been like this.
I did another water test and results as follows.

Ammonia, .25
Nitrite, 0
Nitrate, 5
PH, 7.4
Temp, 12

Anything else I should do to try and save the rest of the fish.

Bugger!
You don't have Kookaburras around do you? or Butcher birds? They are really opportunist vandals with fish around!!

Cheers IanK

Yeah real bugger Ian.
No I don't have a problem with butcher birds or kookaburra, I wish I did because at least I would
know what the problem was or is.

Are they getting enough food? And most importantly what food are you feeding them?

I think so OBO. I am not really sure how much to feed them.
They are all different sizes from about 40mm to 90mm.
I am feeding flakes that I got from the pet shop. I don't think it is anything fancy
but I thought it should be OK for goldfish.
I was feeding them twice a day and giving enough flakes to be eaten in 5 mins.
I have read alot of info on this forum about food for trout, perch etc.
Should I follow the same sort of formula for the goldfish.

Sounds like you have a bit of a tough one.

I think you should borrow a camera, take a number of photos of your setup, surroundings, etc. The people in this forum loves photos and you will find that someone might be able to spot something from your photos and comment on it. Could very well solve your problems.

Also this forum does not allow the upload of high res photos anyway, so a fairly decent camera from a mobile might just do the trick.

If you are SOR around Thornlie or Huntingdale area, you are welcomed to borrow my camera. Just PM me. Not the best camera, but will take photos that you can upload (after you reduce the size of the photo). Irfanview software from www.download.com can be obtained to easily reduce the size of the photo down sufficiently for uploading.

Good luck.

I had a similar problem in my aquarium when feeding all the residents cheap flake food. With excellent water quality, I would still loose a fish or two a week. I now feed all my aquaria Silver Perch pellets (BYAP Shop) and no longer loose any aquarium fish.

I think the flake food has very little nutritional benefit, mainly because it is designed for aquariums, and limiting the amount of waste produced. The fish just starve to death.

Thanks OBO I definately didn't think they might be starving to death.
I still have a full bucket of flakes so I will try to use them up maybe I just need to feed
them more. How much should I feed if I am using the flakes. I was noticing that they
were not eating all the food I was putting in. So I thought they were getting enough.
Is that just because the food is crap. So the goldfish are OK on the Silver Perch pellets.
What about the small ones will they be able to eat it as well.

Pellets + blender = goodness

I would be curious to know if anyone else agrees or disagrees with my hypothesis?

Does make a lot of sence. I feed my aquarium fish twice a day and they are always hungry but the tank stay clean. On the new glass tank I've been giving the catfish and silvers different food and they are growing and the solids are more visable.