Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Zman,
As i understand it, If light can go through it, than it not uv stable, so it doesn't really matter what you paint it with. In saying that, if its going to be out in the weather it's probably best to sand / undercoat / top coat. since mine are inside and will not see any weather, I just got some cans of black spray paint, gave the IBC's a good clean and painted

regards
Matt

Thanks mate

Well if you didn't know I purchased 50 trout about 3 weeks ago and only had 300L of GB, so with this in mind I decided to quickly get on of my beds hooked temporally so that i can split the fish up between them. Only problem I have is i've ran out of nitrate tests so I'll have to just watch the nitrites go up and then fall to be able to tell if its has cycled. I have had nitrite reading for about a week now which have stayed pretty constant. Hopfully will not be to long now but my 300L GB seems to be handling the load quite good at the moment.

a picture of the newly planted GB.

Regards
Matt

Guy's
over the past 10 day I've been watching this little 350L GB and 500l FT cycle. I've monitored the nitrite spike and now have a good supply of nitrate.
So with this in hand I added 7 trout to test the waters. Over the past 3 days since adding them I've noticed an ammonia rise and I have not fed them. I can't really see much in the tank due to the location and water visibility. So I though that I must have a dead fish. So I scraped the bottom of the FT to see if i could scoop anything up. Low and behold I picked up a dead mouse!! (see photo)
ran all water test and need some advise if I need to do anything.

AM - 1.0
rites - .25 - 1.0
rates - 15
PH 7.0 7.2
FT - TEMP = 10
Do I need to do a partial water change? From what I understand is that water temp is pretty low so the ammonia level is still ok?? Also I have plenty of air so the nitrites are still ok??
do I have this right?? do I just take another set of tests later on tonight to see if there is any more movement.

Regards

Matt

I wouldn't change anything yet, temp is low enough, my theory has always been if fish are happy do nothing, you will get a bit of ammonia after adding fish, the mouse may also have caused a rise and have another check around to see if you have another, my rites this time last year went up to 5 and against advice I did nothing as all looked fine, I started to stress after a couple of days and almost changed water, but next day it came down, if your fish look stressed or acting abnormal then ask the question, they may need a small bit of feed after 3 days though
*frack* ing with things mostley causes more problems than the problem in my opinion

Thanks Nocky,
Yep added about 10 pellets last night, and another 10 or so pellets today after I found the mouse and monitored the fish. they came up a took the feed but not a aggressively as they do in the other tank.
I'll give it another scrap and add some salt.
anything else I should be doing.

regards
matt

I second Nocky's advice: "steady as she goes".

I would probably add 1ppt salt (as I guess you've done). I'd feed nothing for a few days or until the toxics start to drop. It is amazing how much ammonia gets released from decaying critters.

been a while,
still got 7 trout and 8 silver perch that i swapped, and system ticking over nicely.
just this one trout that hangs around the top of the water line and has so for the last 4 weeks. he still feed well? not quite sure if he is alright. here is a video.

regards
matt

here's a photo of how things are going in the GB.
have purchased the plumbing to hook up the sump tanks and fish tank,
My FT is about 200 - 300mm higher than my GB's. is this going to be high enough??
Also has about 16 trout and 6 silvers now.
regards
Matt

Well, My second system has finally had its 1000 FT installed via CHIFT PIST
Check out the Picture above taken 11 days ago and now, and compare the growth.

also here's a link to a video.

Regards

Matt

Yep, as long as the pipes are large enough I find 10cm to be plenty.

Been a very long time since I've updated my system thread
Anyhow this system has only been running for 5 months, and has performed very well raising around 30 trout.
Since my last post I've expanded the system to the 2nd 400l GB, which brings it to 800l total GB area, still have the 3rg 400l GB to add once I can be stuffed washing the gravel
The other major addition to this system that needed attention was the amount of solids that was accumulating in the FT, After reading a few members threads it was decided to add a SLO to my system, well the next day the FT was completely clear of any solids
About a month later I found a trout carcass at the GB out let, so it was capable of removing a dead fish.
Veggi growth has been awesome, broccoli, lettuce, beetroot, silver beat have been fantastic. Now I have pumpkin, 3 lettuce types, more beetroot, cucumber, onions, and more broccoli, in which all have been going berserk.
Water temp has only just reached 24 degrees now and would be about the time that I would have had to remove the trout but finished all of them about 2 week ago.
Purchased 50 SP yesterday to keep things ticking along.
no update is complete without photos,

regards
Matt

Nice stuff Mattyry...

Looking good.

Very impressive!!

Looking good.

Very impressive!!