Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Gemmell is it possible that the trees are tainting the water, as I posted in my thread I think the dead stuff should be gone, I could only find claws and elbows left in my tank from yabbies, added another GB on separate pump and had that going 24/7 until water cleared

Perhaps borrow/buy a electricians conduit snake. Stick it through and tie a rag to the end.
ie http://www.wattmaster.com.au/toolsandinstrumentsproductdetails.asp?ProductID=273

One thing, that tree with the pink flowers in your very 1st picture. Does it have a dark green slender leaf and a white milky sap if you break one off?

Nothing worse than chasing a dead smell.... I think I have a dead mouse somewhere near my computer desk here, can't find the bugger though......

open up the computer case, when i was in the pc shop where i work, the strangest find was a dead mouse inside the pc, it was still stuck to the wire it bit through

funniest fix was a motherboard with a hole drilled right through the middle, a few computers were dissappearing from a remote facilty, some "smart" person decided to bolt the pc down! nice!

Yeh - it's Ollyander. Gone now though.

So here's the interesting thing:
I'm using the ebarra as a fountain, which adds massive amounts of aeration. The other interesting thing is that it seems to do a better job of creating the protein scum and moving it all to one area. It means I can bucket out the shit that's forming on top. We're now two months on from the original problem, and I've still got this protein.



The other interesting thing is that I now have about 20 trout in there. And they're fine.

When I had them in the sump of the old system I snapped some great photos, including this one.

Nice clear water there Gemmell....

A very small amount of Oleander can kill a cow, let alone a fish. Doesn't have a tendency to drop leaves but it was a possible source so thought I would ask.

Hi Gemmell,
Sorry to hear your troubles.

It may be nothing but When I lived in Canberra in the early 90's and loved it, I remember the locals saying that you can always count on it that by Anzac day you will have your heater on.
So if you had an underlying and undetected toxicity problem building up before your Anzac day disaster, would the marked drop in temperature have triggered something causing the deaths?

Dale

Dale, it's a good theory - its true that ANZAC long weekend is when it starts to get cold. It could be that some microsocopic bacteria switch off at that temperature and it all goes belly up. However my current theory is that I overfed slightly over a long period of time. The food just become a fine dust and spread throughout the system. It settles pretty much everywhere -the pipes, the beds, the bottom of the tank, and as it built up, my O2 went down down down. Then maybe there was a kick in the guts as well over ANZAC weekend, Ollyander leaf, or maybe some bacteria which was processing it died off and a different bacteria kicked off (maybe one which was less O2 efficient) and it all went pear shaped.

The interesting thing is that my water is still not great. Thats after 2 months and 2 100% water changes. So there's still something happening. The fountain makes the protein scum float to a specific corner of my round tank (?!) and I can bucket it out. Effectively a manual protein skimmer. I've moved more trout from the old system, keeping only about 10 in the sump of the old system.

Well I won't discount it because it was still there when I had these problems. I didn't realise it was that potent!


My old system is awesome. Crystal water 100% of the time, and it was supporting 160 fish (100 silverperch, 60 trout) with biofiltration of just 2 bathtubs of scoria.

Edit: Got some nice wintry weather comin' my way:
Monday Sunny. Min -4 Max 11
Tuesday Mostly fine. Min -2 Max 10
Wednesday Possible shower. Min -1 Max 10
Thursday Possible shower. Min -1 Max 11
Friday Fine, mostly sunny. Min -2 Max 11
Saturday Fine, partly cloudy. Min -2 Max 12

I got another theory for you.
My husband just told me that he went to a Pink Floyd concert some years ago and they had huge speakers on the ground. Next day all the fish were dead in the adjacent lake.
So vibrations can kill fish too. Do you get up to any headbanging on Anzac weekend?
Dale

Dale,

The thought had crossed my mind - cannons firing no ANZAC day or something like that. Obo found that an earthquake killed his fish, so obviously vibration really upsets them.

But I think that's "drawing a long bow" - more likely to be something more direct I think. We're nowhere near the War Memorial or anything so I don't think it's that.

Holy crap it's been cold - at the moment I'm happy when the Max is a 2 figure number - when you have these bright sunny days with a top of 7.5 it's not very nice.

My water temp is sitting at 4 degrees (measured yesterday lunch time). I'm getting a bit worried about the SilverPerch because it's so low, but the trout seem to be loving it.

Oh - the water is freakin' awesome now. Cleanest and clearest it's ever been. So a note for others: If you have some sort of protein buildup - grab a pump and use it as a fountain to add heaps of O2 which helps digest whats there, but you can also scoop off the "bubble mass" each evening - it essentially lightens the load on the system and removes that protein buildup.

Never got to the bottom of it though.

Great to hear your system is kicking along nicely. I was following your system closely as sometimes Melbourne weather can get annoyingly cold like Canberra.

hey Gemmell just had a look at your capital AP site, looking good, much interest as yet?

Posted this in Nocky's thread:

My water temps have reached their lowest ever. 3.3 degrees, last night was -3.5. Max today is pretty good at 13.



There was a lot more interest spring/summer/autumn - I don't think many people want to think about anything involving water when it's this cold.

I'm setting up 3 separate systems for Alfred Deakin High at the moment, and it's looking pretty good. Am finishing it off (hopefully) this Friday. Though I think I actually lost money on that venture. Ahh well, I'll get the hang of this business stuff soon