Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Canberra germs, dude.
I've had all the same on my Goldies. Not looking forward to transferring the SP into the tank the goldies (2!) are in.
The ones I've moved into the aquarium inside have survived, so it's definitely something in the tank. Major water change on the way methinks.
So far I'm keeping the nutrients up by only filling the tank with the SP, and transferring nutrient water by bucket to the other 'infected' tank

Re the water test, no test for Magnesium? Odd.

I only did the test for Heavy Metals (since I was originally only interested in lead).

You got a thermometer in there yet? How much are your temp swings? Bummer that you've got it too. Maybe I've developed some super strain of fish killing bacteria which I am slowly giving to everyone else..... first you, now I've given some to Owen.....

<sigh>

What I'm going to do is start fresh and try not contaminate the original system. What I reckon you should do is isolate the tanks from the grow beds, use some toxic as shit aquarium product for a couple of weeks and then do a couple of 100% water changes. Or just keep it cycling, killing all the bacteria in the beds and then start again with some new stuff (from somewhere other than me). Of course it could also be the ridiculous heat we've been having stresses them out. I can imagine it would get hot in your shed.....

Could it be possible that our goldies are not as bomb proof as thought? My fish were several years old, so I don't think so. Possibly yours since they're new.

Are you filling up with tank water or mains water? I've done a bit of both, thought maybe the mains water might be stressing them. I've always assumed it's chlorine, might be chloramine?

Tank water, it has a pH of 9 according to the drips n' drops kit - suspect that's because it's a concrete tank and still fairly new (Nov. 07).
The same kit says pH of 7 out of the little corrugated iron tank at the side of the shed.
But I was having trouble using bore water, too.
Temps have been above 28C, I have an old door as a cover on the sunny side of the tank with the SP in it.

I'm not giving up on a simple water change & salting just yet, as none of the SP have died, and I was having goldies die in both tanks before.

I might move a few snails up to the aquarium and see if they are carriers.

Hey, just did some quick searching.

"Allow the water temperature to change as the seasons change. While goldfish don't like temperatures over 75°F (24°C), they do seem to like seasonal variations where the temperature falls to the high 50s or 60s (15-20°c) in the winter. Fancier goldfish are an exception and cannot easily tolerate temperatures below about 60°F (16°c). Be aware that goldfish will not eat below 50-55°F (10-14°c)."

From http://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-Goldfish-Live-for-Decades

This site : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldfish Completely contradicts it.

<sigh> information is so hard to find.

From your blog pictures, maybe it is that they don't like to be juggled by humans? Maybe cut back on the fish juggling for awhile

There is some truth in that though. I probably stressed them initially with the move. And then I kept taking them out to give them salt baths, but that probably stressed them even more (and possibly dislodged scales etc). That, coupled with the other factors, probably led to my downfall.

I've had ich re-infect my fish from a nice cold growbed/sump setup (winter here). The cold water seems to allow it to survive a long time without fish, but when I added 20 liters (warmed) to my warm aquarium the fish started showing signs within hours: twitching, itching, and spots. Warmer water would certainly get ich reproducing faster and kill the fish faster, so your recent heat would be a problem. One solution would be to put the goldfish in 6ppt salt water for a week or so (depends on water temp) while the growbeds and fishtank kill off their ich through starvation (no fish for the poor little theronts or whatever the free stage of ich is called).

I know you had some salt in your system, but is it still there?

Starting a clean system while either letting your existing one go fallow for months or dumping a bunch of bleach in there to kill everything (I figure it will evaporate in a couple weeks), then reintroducing goldies sounds reasonable. Or you could go semi-hydroponic and dump some fertillizer in there to keep your plants going and hope that the problem-causing stuff dies off without fish. I think I would enjoy my plants until they quit, then toss in the bleach bomb, but that's just me.

The idea of earth-coupling for thermal mass to damp temperature swings is always good in my book. That 7k liter system sounds great.

You sure have my sympathy on all these ills. What a pain. One wants to enjoy a drink by a nice healthy system, not be driven to drink by a failed one!

Thanks for the kind words. I am certainly letting this one go and planning the next one, but it's not going to happen quickly and I don't want to miss out on trout AGAIN. So I'm going to have to set something up real quick. Or maybe persist with this one, fix up the nickel and some of the heat problems (i think if I line the bathtubs with bubblewrap then HDPE I should stop the Nickel and provide some thermal insulation). My tank will be above ground, but it shouldn't be so much of a problem in winter because I have the ability to put a greenhouse around it.... hrrm.

See the 7000L pond would sit under a tree (a chinese pistachio) and I'm a little worried that if I dig up it's roots I'll kill it. Where as if I wait until winter, it'll be dormant, so any root damage won't be so bad.

True, it might shock the tree less in the winter, but my experience is that pruning either summer or winter you would probably want to remove some branches to make up for the root loss. Especially if you are in an area that is drought stressed. Note: this advice is for trees in general: I have not dealt with Chinese pistachios, although I hear they are tough.

Well now I have a choice to make. I want trout this year, which means I need to get them pronto.

Do I
A) Fix up the original system, insulate the beds and just hope that it goes OK?
B) Get a 3000L tank (just above ground) to increase the water volume (and fix the beds).
C) Just dig the 7000L pond and to hell with the tree.


I'm kind of leaning towards B at the moment. I really don't want to kill the tree. It would defeat the whole purpose of putting the pond there (and our deck). I don't intend to dig up the roots, I intend to work around them (build up 50cm near the base of the tree, dig in 1m a few metres away from the tree).

So if I do B, then I can take my time building the big pond in winter.

How big is the tree, can it be moved. And I'd go with B. While your aging the water in the tank run the the rest of the system with a high amount of salt to try and get rid of any nasties then when you hook up the new tank the salt level will even out with the water volume.

Was either going to do that or bleach.

Half of the point of placing it under the tree is to minimize the amount of summer sun it gets - there are other spots in the garden with no trees and full sun, but they're not next to the deck, and we'll get a lot of evaporation. The tree also gives our deck a bit of shade. So it's definitely not movable.

In saying that, maybe if I'm doing lots of rafts it's not such a good idea to have it in full shade? Gah. Maybe I'll extend it a bit further out past the shade of the tree so I at least get a section of it in full sun. Yes, that's what I'll do. Then I can grow lillies and raft lettuce up that way.

Ok, so I'm going option no D) I buy 3000L tank AND two growbeds, pumps etc so that I have completely seperate system.

The tank is going in my carport - the question is, do I want to thermally couple it to the concrete slab? Or do I want to insulate underneath? I am going to insulate all around the outside, and the outside of beds. From my reasoning, I don't want to use the concrete slab because it's under the carport. So in summer, the later arvo sun will still get to it, and heat it up, but in winter it won't get very warm at all (because it's under the car port roof). I guess I should insulate underneath, and then if I decide I SHOULD thermally couple, I can use some black polypipe and a pump....

Was also thinking - I need to figure out how I'm going to get through winter this year. Last year, because the beds FROZE overnight, I think the bacteria in them died. So I don't know how I'm going to keep them from freezing this year. Maybe I need a whole other resivour (maybe permanantly submerged) which can do the conversion.

What kind of an effect does frozen water have on insulation? If I grab one of those solar water heaters from bunnings (anyone seen those? $200) and put it round my AP tank, and just let it freeze (or I just use polypipe wrapped around it) does that then insulate the insides of the tank? Better or worse than roofing insulation?

You could perhaps turn the pump off during the winter nights and not flood & drain the growbeds....

Of course you'd have to supply oxygenation to the fish tank overnight...


Haven't seen the solar heaters from Bunnings... can you post a pic?

Not sure what you mean by "around the tank".... but if it's a blanket.... then perhaps you could fill the solar system with Glycol... which wont freeze...

Personally i would thermocouple the tank to the concrete then on the freezing nights run the pump all night on auto syphons flowing water should not freeze and if running trout keeping the water cooler longer will help