Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I believe my goldfishes and kois have been dying one by one over the past month due to high water temperatures. In fact only kois remaining...

To save me explaining on my setup again, here's the link...
http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=6275

The system was put together in Oct and the goldfishes and kois were fine until the heat wave arrived. Also had issues with algae in the water and have covered the tanks for a few weeks already... Algae has cleared... Water tests were all good with nitrate about 20...

Another koi died today... 34degC water temperature... The alley way gets pretty good morning and early afternoon sun and at this moment, since the chilli and capsicum seeds are not doing so well... 2 of the pots have their gravel pretty much exposed to sunlight during this time...

I have reduced daylight water cycling to once every 4 hours to reduce heat exchange... hopefully the plants will make... tomatoes are growing well at the moment in one of the pots...

The worst part is that in that alley way is where the reverse cycled air-conditioner unit is... hence on a hot day, this alley gets hotter as well..

So I am not sure there is anything much I do to improve the system, except some shade I suppose... But are there fishes that can take high water temperatures and still survive the winter temperatures in Perth??

Can yabbies take high water temperatures??

WOW.. 34 degree water... maybe a big tropical fish? can you better shade and insulate the system?

I have had yabbies in 250L tanks in the wheatbelt (dalwallinu) during summer and they survived.. but not sure on water temps. Tanks were above ground and under shade cloth

when i had trout for the remaining few days i put 4 bags of ice in everyday at lunch to knock off a few degrees.. but that gets expensive. can you freeze some big ice blocks??

It is a small experimental (quarantine) system I put together just for fun... did not think far enough that water temperature could really get that high... but since I have the system running right now, I would like to see if I could keep it powering along with some fish or yabbies that could take those temperatures... without putting ice in the whole summer... I had done my fair share keeping the trout alive for the transitional month before summer... not really fun...

Maybe I should put some yabbies in there and see how they go... not sure if they will provide enough ammonia though...

I thought I typed and answer to this thread but it isn't there!!!!

You might add some extra shade and protect the planters and fish tank from sun hitting the plastic directly as that is probably heating things up a lot.

Is there extra aeration to that system? I expect the koi/goldfish could survive that temp provided they have enough dissolved oxygen. Remember that the warmer the water the lower the amount of oxygen it can hold. Leaving the system off for much of the day might not provide enough aeration to deal with the high temp.

Perhaps look into letting the system run continuous through the hottest part of the day instead of shutting it off. The planters would stay flooded which could keep the media from getting as hot and it would still provide aeration for the fish.

Well TCLynx, your post ended up the in the system thread instead... Anyways, I have about 8L/min air pump running continuously so aeration should be fine...

Well I will try to leave the system running continously tomorrow in the day... and check the temperatures in the evening...

Tried running the system to continously flood and I believe it did help... Although water temperatures at the hottest part of the day could peak to 32degC, but mostly the water is 28degC and lower... And kois are certainly much happier, except probably one that is swimming around without much strength.... I think it was probably quite affected by the temperature from last week, and may not fully recover...

Anyways... I will do more by sorting out some shadecloth for the exposed gravels tomorrow...

Thanks for the help...

By the way, what temperatures can silver perch take?? High temperature like 32degC??

Must agree with TCLynx (as usual).

You also might consider that evaporation will cool the water, so a fountain, splashing, fan or whatever might really help with cooling and O2.

1ppt salt always helps stressed fish. You might even put the worst one into a very oxygenated system with 3ppt salt and see if that helps it recover.

Yes I have salted to at least 1ppt... Well I tried putting an earlier fish in a make-shift tank, oxygenated with 3ptt salt... but work got in the way and ammonia rised to about 1ppm within two days... naturally the fish suffered and did not make it... so I think it would probably be best if I left the fish in the system... at least the water is filtered by established bacteria...

Yea, a quarantine system only works if it has enough filtration to make the environment for the fish less stressful rather than more stressful. Sometimes for injured fish a quick salt dip or a slightly longer salt bath can help but you don't leave the fish in such a situation for long. For the dip you just put them in relatively high concentration salt water for a moment to 30 seconds and then back into the main tank. For a bath it is a medium concentration of salt for up to 20-30 minutes but you attend them the whole time because if they start floating funny, it is time to put them back.

For the stressed fish your best bet is to keep an eye on em and hope they recover and avoid stressing them further unless it is time to put them out of their misery.

I'm currently dealing with the opposite temperature problems and we seem to be having an extreme year. We are breaking some record lows from 40 years ago.

Yes... well I have not lost any fish after I changed the system to constantly flood... and because it is a CHIFT PIST arrangement with standpipes, I am actually able to top up the water in the sump to have more water volume... well sure if I lose power the sump would overflow but that's a small problem...

Same here in Texas - we just do not have the clothes to keep warm in these temps...SO COLD! The heater has been running nonstop for days now. We are well insulated, but the house is 'U' shaped and has a lot of surface area and lots of windows. It is almost 11:00am and it is still below freezing. I lost all my potted plant, even though covered. Not sure if the 2 year old fruit trees will survive either (also covered). Even my root veggies have perished. Heck - it looks like only things that will survive are the things that had gone dormant awhile back - grass, trees and shrubs.
There have been lots of broken water pipes in the area also.

Mark

Was wondering if anyone had anything to do with guppies before?? Are they able to take water temperature of 30degC??

I know they don't produce much ammonia but if I could breed them, they can multiply and make more ammonia, plus I can feed them to barramundi. In winter, I could either heat the tank or throw 1-2 trout in my smaller system and let them clean out the tank... got to move my remaining kois first if there are any surviving by then...

Any input would be great...thanks...

I have some Jade Perch (also SPs and YBs and 10 Sleepy Cod) the JPs are the best eaters of all and growing quick, feed them COS lettuce as a supplement and they clean it up in no time. I got mine from ausyfish.com and I know Bruce has more avail right now. here are a couple of site to look at.

http://www.aquaculturequeensland.com/jade_perch.htm

http://www.ausyfish.com/australian_perch.htm

There is another site I found that gave the temp range, was quiet low and up into the 30s. will continue looking for you.

Here is the other site.

http://www.dpi.qld.gov.au/28_13333.htm

dont like temps under 13deg

I thought increasing cycle rate would be better?

I thought by flooding your growbed say hourly would allow more evaporative cooling from it, keeping it cooler, try flooding your grow beds above the gravel for the hotter days as well.

Anyway just my thought