Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

LOL! Thats exactly what my dad would have done!

Dad pulled out three of the red cabbage today, they both hadn't formed any heads. Funnily they were ones that had been planted two per netpot.

OK update for food and fish!

One the fish died. another one is probably near death. What theylook like is the have a few circles on them where their slime coat is gone. not fungus or anything, just light patches that if you feel do not have the slime coat on.

Most of my little silvers are now dead, i think the reason is the dame as for both, lack of water and thus large temp swings. i filled my IBC up yesterday, it only had about 200L left in it. my "out the back" hose setup broke and couldn't get water there easily, that and lazyness.

In dads case he has a bout a 500l pond it had dropped to about 250L due to him not having any rain water atm and not having any water ager. picked some up for him yesterday, and the sick fish looks like he may get better, and the others are much mroe lively. 3 of his goldies also carked it but notne of the small silvers from TT's supplier.

thats interisting i havent lost silvers that one with the marked tail is still
there i lost a trout today very small compared to the othersall the rest of the system seems ok plants powering on

nah, not blaming the fish at all, dads system is still quite young.

All the old stuff going to seed, and while mum wants a few left i removed the others as the tommies are struggling for nutes with dads 25 odd fish being so small. i have also put 5 australian bass and two convicts in there to help the situation.

The blue barrel is no longer bald and has a full head of vietnamese hair thanks to F&F

Amazing the root structure you get in an AP system.... even compared to hydro they seem much larger.

So, an update on dads system........................

if any one is going to use 100mm PVC pipe for nft then they should run some angle iron under the pipe so its supported.

dad had 3 brackets along the 6m length..................1at the start, one at 3m point and one at the end......................

summer was not kind to the pvc, it has bowed quite a bit.

silvers that he got at about 2.5cms have grown quite a bit and plant growth has been good.

However it has now turned cold and the fish are off their food so the plants are really suffering.

Today we dug out the stump of an old hazelnut tree and re-located the spa bath from my place to his.

plumbed it in, stealing water fro the flow to the 200L bio filter via a valve into the spa, and overflow feed back to the pond via a inverted U arrangement.

pvc gled the pressure fittings and siliconed the low pressure drains............which worked well for me..........but i guess 10 minutes drying time was not enough filled the spa and water leaked thru the silicone................drained the spa back to the rain water IBC and re-siliconed.

Tomorrow will be going to get trout from macclesfield at 10am, returning and filling the spa again and giving the trout a new home........

will prolly get about 75 trout, 50 for me and 25 for dad.

will post pics just after lunch.

PS will be reducing the NFT down to 3 runs of 3m and adding a BYAP growbed. this work will be completed within the next week or two.

Steve

How'd ya find your spa Steve.... borrow the neighbours lawn mower?

update on dads system:

plant have been going nutso, bags of snow peas.

Dad started pulling trout out to eat 500g to 750g

a couple died the same week end as mine so put a little cap drilled with 6mm holes on the water supply pipe for extra turbulence (keep this fitting in mind)

Also suggested he shade cloth the spa and put an air pump in it and he should be fine for at least another month.

was happily driving back from glenwaters fish farm (more about this in my thread) when i had a call from my youngest brother: "all of dads fish are dead and the water stinks"

next call was from mum saying dad was upset, and that i told them they would be fine, and that they didn't need to put ice in the tank. and, and, and!

(they had left for the caravan last night.)

driving back i'm thinking "there is heaps of O2, yesterday was just as hot, cant be the water temp"
arrived at their place to find around 19 trout (a couple upto a Kg) in a messy state.

water was indeed stinky and scummy. water temp was less than15C.

found the problem within seconds. remember that fitting to make the supply water flow more turbulent? blocked with string algae.

15kg minimum of trout had been living in 200L of very well oxygenated water which effectively had no biofilter. dad reckons it was ok last night, but on further questioning he cant be sure of it. Plus the food he put in there at sunset last night was still floating, so they were not eating yesterday. deaths would have been from ammonia. buried the LOT as i couldn't know how long some had been dead at the bottom and the scaled had started coming off some of them.

I'm sick of it being my fault. Murphy is always at the ready with your AP system. Check it twice a day is my suggestion. oh, and dont blame your son, he's liable to tell you to *frack* off.

HEY f&F, just realised dads spa is a CHIFT-PIST.

As soon as I read the bit where you put the cap on with the 6mm holes, the first thing I thought was is that wise - prone to clogging. Sounds to me like it was your fault you may have contributed a little to what happened Steve

No need to thank me for all the support

Your poor old man hasn't had a lot of luck with the AP has he. It's a wonder he hasn't asked you to pull the whole thing out. It sounds like he got some good veg out of it though