Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Well, thank you all, you have bolstered my confidence to continue doing some more videos as I have the time (when it isn't raining.) This unnamed tropical depression is doing more to us than all the named storms combined so far this year.

I can feel your pain TC.... its been raining here since monday.... so far 15" of rain..... with another 6-10 because of tropical depression 16...... we were 15" behind.... now were ahead.... cant wait for the sun again

JT

No real pain, the rain was a good thing, though some of my chickens may think otherwise since they rejected their nice covered perch.

you can send some of that rain down under "PLEAEAEASE"
love the vidio

Ooooh, yea, if I could do that I'd be RICH!!!!
At least ya got aquaponics to be able to garden and save water. Sorry I don't know how to send the rain down under.

So over on the Aquaponic Gardening site I have started making noise among the Florida members to see if anyone wants to come to my place for a "workshop"
I know we have a few people here who might also be interested. I'm getting some tips from JT since he did those workshops when re-doing his system and greenhouse so I thought I might follow suite. This workshop will actually be expanding my 300 gallon system so it will add 3 more grow beds to make it into a 2:1 system.

Anyway, here is a link to the post over there if anyone is interested
http://aquaponicscommunity.com/group/tclynx/forum/topics/dates-for-the-workshp

just saw and heard the video, you sound as good as your system looks :]

Great job, looking forward to seeing, and hearing, lots more.

Wow TCL,
I have been monitoring this site for the past few months and am in the planning phase of building my first system. For the past two days I have been going through your systems post, and I am left very encouraged. The possibilities are endless. Please post more video, It puts the vastness of your system into perspecitve. Moreover, the time and thought put into it.

Thank you,

Eric

Well I got home a few days ago (was out of town for the week) to find the biggest kill off of fish (other than tiny fry/fingerlings) I've ever experienced.

Pulled 7 out of the big tank (Several more looked to have the condition as well)



And of course some excess food was floating due to the taint of several long dead fish!

Ran water tests right away but only a slight trace of ammonia and nitrite. Nitrates are kinda high, had to run a dilution test to know they are about 100-110.

So, looks like something must have stressed my fish and they got sick and 7 dead with about 4 more I don't expect to make it.

I caught two of the sick looking fish with a horrible gill wound and gave them a quick salt dip then placed them in an isolation bin which is now hooked up to it's own grow bed.



I have salted their bin to about 1.5ppt and mixed fresh aloe gel from a leaf into their water to see if it might help any. I don't really expect them to survive, I don't see how they will heal that horrible gill wound.

I've also salted the main system to about 1 ppt (catfish don't like much salt so I don't salt the whole system beyond maybe 2 ppt ever anymore.)

This week I expect we will catch some more of the big fish to process and eat/put in freezer.
I will also probably try and catch the other two that seem to have this gill infection if I can do it without stressing the rest of the fish.

I've also noticed that quite a few of the fish seem to have fin injuries that I've been assuming were from fighting or being bitten by bigger fish and a couple of the big fish have what looks like an injury by their mouth at the base of their big whiskers. Seems to me this could be a huge source of stress to the smaller fish. I hope the fin injuries will heal and that they are actually injuries and not fin rot. I would expect fin rot to affect more than just one fin on a fish and include the tail. The fish with the fin damage don't appear tattered on their other fins, only on the injured one with the exposed barb. So, Seems that putting small fish in with the big guys may not be the best choice and I'll try to avoid it in the future.

Sorry to hear that TC.

I had a number of very different size cat fish in my last tank, never seemed to be an issue.

Hope the survivors continue to do so.

Dui

I expect most of the healthy looking ones will be just fine. I will likely cull the sick looking ones just to avoid any more floaters tainting the water.

I have experienced illness before with catfish that were stressed. I've learned not to keep the 10+ inch ones in too small a quarantine system since it seems to stress them out big time and it seems banging and scraping against the sides of a tank along with the slightest poor water quality leaves them wide open to disease. Extra handling only seems to make things worse for them.

Last year when I think I had a bad outbreak of columnaris (sp) disease, we culled most of the worst looking ones and the rest of the fish recovered. Hopefully whatever this condition is, will work similarly. It definitely looks different from last year's skin condition.

But there is good news. I've been doing some research into ways to protect the catfish from columnaris (sp?) and I think in the future I'll try some sort of salt/aloe dip for them when moving or handling them is necessary. Catfish don't take well to handling since their skin is so sensitive and easy to scrape with nets and such. I try to avoid netting catfish unless we intend to harvest them.

Now don't worry much about me here, I'm using this as a learning experience for me and sharing it to help others. You are only likely to seem me really glum and bummed out if I have a complete HSM fish kill. (Then again, I would probably use it as an excuse to get a new fitted tank liner for the big tank so I don't have to worry about gross stuff getting caught in the folds of the current liner.)

On a brighter note. The bananas doing well!

Wow that banana looks awesome.
Don't think my new system will be big enough to support a banana plant, but the 4th system will be

Sorry to hear about your loss. Good thing you caught it when you did! I didn't quite follow your post, though. What do you think caused the fish to be stressed to begin with?

It was probably a few factors that caused stress to the fish. First, I've had a mix of sizes in the tank for a while and expect that the biggest fish may have been trying to beat up on the littler guys. Then not long before leaving town we harvested some fish and any time I swish a net around in the tank I risk scraping some fish and stressing them out. Finally, I moved about 20 fish from the 300 gallon system over to the big tank and I expect those were the most stressed and on top of that being in a new big tank with bigger fish to scare them.

And then me not being around to notice something wrong and remove dead fish ASAP before they taint the water and increase the chances of other stressed fish getting sick.

Harsh luck TCL, but that banana tree seems to be going great guns, so got to take the bad with the good I suppose, chin up and all that.

Do you have a cover for your tank? Maybe an animal or a bird got in while you were away and hurt the fishes?