Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I only lost them when temp was below 10c I set 13c for a bit of a buffer so you should be fine.

What are you guy's using for heating???
I've been researching for ages on a good night-time heater unit bn,,, may have finally cracked it.
Will be trialing a reverse cycle air-con unit soon.

I am using a 300w aquarium heater to heat a 200L system but we had -3.5c last night and I could only hold the water to 10c. I need to try insulation and shut down pumping at night hopefully that will be enough.

Definately add some insulation and a good insulated TOP cover.

If you are going to shut down over night plus covering you will need air stones stick a thermometer up the air hose and measure its temp all those bubbles running through the water will have an effect

Just checked the temp of my air pipe its 8.5 deg
Water atm 10 deg

Well it turns out that the insulation was not much help, so on further investigation I discovered that the heater light was going but not the element
I changed the heater to a new one and now it comfortably holds 16c, I had to break the glass to open the old heater but I found that the element was not connecting properly at the join to the circuit board so the light was on but not the element.

I checked my FT temp today, 10.8 Deg C out side temp bloody cold. My FT is in a hot house which helps a bit. My 100 Cod fingerlings seem to be doing OK, no deaths as yet. They are very shy and are bottom feeders and seem to like to feeding at night under a grow light. I also give them a treat once or twice a week with frozen brine shrimp or blood worm and grated frozen pilchard. They love the pilchard.

Is it expensive to feed them these? Where do you recommend getting them from?

Pilchards would make an economical feed ,, but much cheaper when purchased in 10 kg frozen blocks ,, check your local fishing bait supplier.

I only use grated pilchard as a treat, their normal feed is barra pellets although I haven't seen them coming to the surface to get them. Chappo is right, the cheapest way to get pilchards is a frozen block at a fishing bait shop.

A link to good info on keeping things warm ..... http://www.gov.mb.ca/agriculture/resear ... 4-534.html

lost most of my cod temp 8 deg most had a fungas on them i have treated system with salt hopfully keep the remaining few alive sniff

I lost several the last 2 days they had fungus on them. The new heater is stable now at 18c I have increased salt and hoping for the best. The new system is spiking in nitrites so I should be able to increase feeding soon at 18c they are probably hungry.

It might be early days but I recon that the UV water sterlizer that I have running may be keeping my cod healthy.