Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

just checked wikipedia , they can grow up to 1.8m long

My Brother inlaw sent me the email, he said the picture was scanned out of the Westen Australian Newspaper ??? Looks like a barra to me

I had a floater this morning but haven't been able to determine the cause.

I took water readings and no significant readings of NH3 or Nitrites or change in pH found.

I did notice some blackish/brown sludge on the bottom with white slime spots through it. Scooped it out and attached a photo to see if anyone knows if this was the likely cause or not. It had an off smell to it as well.

I had noticed this dead fish hasn't grown much in 2 months, probably only from 8cm to 11cm now while the other barras are alot bigger ranging on avg from 15 to 18cm. But didn't see any marks that looks like the dead one has been attacked ?

Also other fish appear to be happy, as I fed tonight and when I put cover back heaps of splashing for the food.

Salt level is ~5ppt - but salinity meter seems to vary a bit.

Also had been for awhile now not cycling cycling from midnight to 6am to keep water temps up. Now in summer I could cycle more at night if this should be part of the cause.

Any thoughts.....thanks.

photos didn't attach for some reason

sludge scooped out of the bottom

Not sure what the sludge is... but get it out of the tank...

And yep... increase your pumping cycles...

I think the sludge could possibly be fish poo that has been gathering at the bottom of your tank... I had that before in my tank... I believe the problem is the pump is not sucking them up and transferring them into the growbeds... You may have your pump located at one end and the water flow movements aren't strong enough to push the poo towards the pump suction...

You can either regularly push the sludge towards the pump so that it sucks them out... or what I did was to put an air hose coupled with a strong air pump across the problem spot... although heavier crap still gathers in that location, fish poo are bubbled up and suspended in the water, hence allowing it to be easier sucked out by the pump... and no more gathering of poo to form a gross looking sludge...

That would make sense Ivan since my pump is on one side of the tank where the build up never occurs. Will try moving the pump and air stones to the location where the build up keeps occuring to see if that helps

No new floaters today, increased night cyles, fingers crossed it was a one off event.

thanks for the help