Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

...in different websites with message boards covering the same topic?

Not sure exactly what you mean... but if you're asking the same question on another forum...

Can't see a problem... other than possibly the advice you might get...

And you'll get the best advice here on this forum...

You do get a verity of advice here... a balanced approach as there are several opinions as to the best way to approach AP on THIS forum - and people don't seem to mind sharing those opinions...

Posting the same question to a lot of different threads is not liked. Most regular users hit the View active topices and the View unanswered posts so new posts don't need to be repeated.

As Duff said, within a single sight, asking the same question in multiple places just causes confusion and should be avoided.

If you are talking about asking the same question here on BYAP and then going and asking the question over on some aquarium site and on another AP site and on garden web etc. Go for it if you really want. Understanding the basic methods of most of the people on some of the other sites might be useful. However, this site has been the most active forum for AP I know of.

Ya, I go to another aquarium and gardening site. I know neither the basics of gardening and fish keeping.

I would advise you to disregard almost anything you get advised on aquaria forums...

Edible fish... and aquaponics... have different requirements... and many of the treatments, and other advice you may receive on such sites are NOT applicable to aquaponic systems...

Most definitely Rupertz. I'm not planning on eating the goldfish though (it's pet goldfish from superpet). Not sure whether the meds will contaminate the plants. This first system is for educational purposes. And maybe I'll get serious after I graduate if I'm a successful Aquaponicist.

Anyways, the way it's going to work for me is to have a separate quarantine tank to do all the healing.

Probably best to just avoid all aquarium chemical medications. Full stop.

If you are getting cheap goldfish, it probably isn't worth the money to try to heal them if you get diseased ones.

salt is the only treatment most people with aquaponics use. Instead of trying to treat diseased fish, you might just keep new fish in a "quarantine tank" that is salted. Problem is, any quarantine/hospital tank will need filtration and water changes or it is just more likely to kill the fish than save them.

Now if you start keeping costly fish, then you will probably have to look more into aquarium culture and try to learn from people involved in such things, what fish treatments can be used without killing off bio-filters and such but still you want to keep all aquarium medications away from any system you use to grow plants for food since many of those chemical aquarium medications are very bad for people and would also kill off your bacteria.

Got it.

But just clarifying - so assuming I choose to use fish meds some time in the future, if ever, even if I do the medicating in a separate quarantine tank, the treated fish would carry over... I don't know "left-over medicine chemicals" in its body into my AP system?

If the fish are never going to be eaten
And you do the treatment in a separate quarantine system
And you do a water change to clean fresh water in the quarantine system and keep the fish in clean water for a period before returning it to the AP system
Then it would probably be just fine.

The purging time in clean water in the quarantine system might not be mandatory with all medications but some aquarium medications can quickly wipe out bio-filter bacteria so you want to make sure they are kept well away from your quarantine. Other aquarium medications are really bad for people and those ones you want well purged from the fish before it goes back into the AP system.