Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I have introduced myself in the new members page and thought I should start my thread here.
I have a small bathtub system which contains approx 200ltr water 200ltr grow beds and did have 30 comets until I lost 13 of them and still have no idea why they are dieing.
Since my problems with dieing goldfish I have done as Rupert suggested and salted to 3ppt.
I have also spoken to the guys at BYAP and will look into feed and possible infections.

Can someone give me some ideas on how much to feed goldfish. Are the formulas similar to
the other fish. I have seen other posts re feed quantities.

Mal5000m might be your best bet Whispers... he's been involved in goldies, comets and other ornamentals for ages...

Sounds like a good idea.
I will see how things go tomorrow after salting yesterday at lunchtime. So far so good.

Goldfish can survive quite a while with almost no food. Do you have test results for the system? Ammonia, Nitrite, Nitrate, pH and temperature?

Can you put up some pictures so that we can ascertain location, sunlight, plant ratio and growth etc.
You know what they say a picture paints a thousand words.
Goldfish can be finnicky things at times, not like rainbow trout

Yes I will get some pictures on the weekend and post them up.
Since I added the salt the other day I have had no more deaths yet.
I am hoping that this was all that I required. Although I did have the tank salted to 3ppt
before the fish started dieing so not really sure. I have also started using different food.
So I will check things out over the weekend and send some photo's and an update then.

When using just goldfish are the calcs for stocking densities the same as other fish.
If so what do you use as a standard mature size.

I managed to get home at lunchtime today and was watching the fish. I saw a couple of them
flashing on the bottom of the tank. So maybe my problem is really ich. I have not seen any evidence of the spots on the dead or alive fish. Is it possible to have an infection without
any physical evidence. I salted the tank to 3ppt on wednesday just as a precaution but now
that I am seeing flashing should I salt higher.
Test today were.
PH, 7.4
Amonia, 0 or .25 I can never tell
Nitrite, 0
I have taken some photo's but can't upload them from work so will do that tonight.

3ppt should take care of Ich... but you'd have to keep it at that level for 2-3 weeks..

I thought it would need slightly higher level.
How long should it take before the flashing stops.

Here are some photo's of my system.

Here are the latest test results done at lunchtime today.

Can someone let me know why there is a black dot on the message flag against my
system thread. I seam to be the only one who has this dot, is this a bad thing.

Hi whispers....

that just means you have posted a message to that thread....

as you post more you will see more dots.....

jT

Galvanised steel rusting and dripping into the water anyone? Might be a zinc toxicity causing the deaths.

Yeah. The rusting steel over the tank does not be good. Plus you would probably use salt at some stage, if you have not already done so, the salty mist may cause more rusting.