Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Not that I've ever heard of, but if they are still flashing you might try higher salt. Tilapia are perfectly happy at 6ppt, although some of your plants may not like it. You should see improvement within 24hrs.

If it is actually ich which I doubt as I have never had it, and it is a bug that causes it, then the "cure" is 2 - 5 parts salt no feeding, 20 days ... the ones that survive will be stronger than ever and most likely immune to any further ich.

mm ok then its probably just the aftermath of my poison bush.

They all seem to be doing well now, and I haven't seen any flashing for a while.

do you have fish for sale now stu?

There seems to be a large size difference between the largest and the smallest of my silvers.

I took the door off a front loading washing machine and used it to get some under water footage. I'm thinking I'll have to add a porthole to my bigger system.

My fishies look like this.

in normal aquaculture, the bigguns would be graded out. I am grading mine about once a month and putting like sizes together. The nolters in your tank are silly greedy bastards.... they will end uip on the bbq soonest! how big is the biggest one?

My little silvers vary hugely in size, and you are right Monya, the big bullys will be the first on the plate

I've been running a heater over winter because of all the problems I had, but also there have been a stack of days where they didn't get fed, and a stack more where they didn't get fed much.

biggest is 15cm
smallest 7.5

I'm happy to have different sizes, so I can get a steady flow for the plate. Isn't nature great .

I understand silvers are not vary cannibalistic, but recently they seem to be bumping each other with what looks like a bit of aggression.

If I cant add the fry in with these, I'v been thinking of raising 100 extra tiny ones in a FT in the house and feeding them only a little. This way I can pull out only the biggest every few weeks and put them in the new bigger system. And being inside, the heat it wastes will work like a lame oil heater for the house over winter.

If anyone is feeling generous, I've been struggling to find answers to these...

1.Can I add fry in with these older fish (all silvers)?
2.Are the white patches on their noses normal?
3. is there any issue with feeding very young fry only enough food so the grow only very slowly?
4. how do you grade fish when you have 50,000???

Hi Bullwinkle, thanks for posting on my discussion. Just read through your system and was struck by your tilting sequencer, I had almost the exact same design, complete with the three flows so that the system would siphon after the tilter had shifted, even made a funny little mockup using my sink. I really like that idea and I'm planning on putting something like it in my system. But I realized that why couldn't you throw out the two auto siphons and attach your tilter arm via chain with a toilet valve. If your floats were large enough then they could easily pull up a toilet stopper, and then to keep the stopper pulled up when the water level drops you could have a heavy ball in a tube attached to your tilter arm which when it rolled to the lower end, would keep your tilter arm tilted towards the correct grow bed. Then the float on the other side eventually pulls the valve up and rolls the ball the other way. Well I think it might work and I'll keep you posted on how it works when I get around to building the thing this winter sometime.

Sounds interesting. I look forward to seeing it work.

Its funny the way different people can come up with the same solution. There are a few things I've "invented" only to find them on sale at the local hardware

Has anyone else noticed the way it's as if this aquaponics caper was designed for people who like to make small scale adjustments to devices on an ongoing basis


and this ---> http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum ... ternalized

If you are having trouble getting the auto siphons to work on a low flow try an affnan style bell siphon it doesn't need much to start off. The main trick is to have the water flow evenly over the top of the funnel.
I can get mine started with very little flow, in-fact having too much flow is more of a problem to get it to shut off.

Check out my thread below (Backyard Affnan Style Siphon) to see a heap of video's on auto siphons.

Really like what what you've made

I like the use of a heavy ball to commit to a side. I made mine commit with the weight of water by putting a small dam at each end of the pivot. Once the flow had started in a particular direction, the weight of the water right at the end helped hold it there. But I think there would less to go wrong with a ball in a tube. And you do need it to commit firmly because of things like wind and kittens in the real world.

I actually don't have any issues with my siphon triggering, but just realized it might be useful to someone. (I take it you are talking about the siphon flow amplifier post) My new system has so much spare pump capacity that I think I'm going to do slow leak and a timer. Makes me sad - I love bell siphons I guess that just means I have to expand the system enough to need the pump on 24/7 so I can go back to siphons again



I just like to tinker

So my on demand auto feeder is a big hit with the fishies, but I'm not sure they were impressed with my running a stack of shell grit through their pump.

You know when you're trying to make a fish shit masticator, and you forget to put in the T above the siphon to stop it sucking back if the pump gets turned off (like you should do with the T in you FT outlet in a CHIFT PIST system), and then the power goes off? I hate that.

Picture a big, tall jar. Fill it about a quarter full of shell grit. Have you GB water flow in at about half way up the jar, but off centre a bit so you get a whirlpool. Your solid waste gets tumbled around with the shell grit and gets chewed up into the tiniest particles before it is fine enough to get carried with the current to overflow into the GB.

That's the plan, and it works, but when you turn it off, or there is a blackout, all your shell grit gets sucked back into your pump, and into your hose that diverts water to the FT, so you get little bits of grit in your system that come back to haunt your contingencyless soul.

I had a blackout today.

Which was very exciting because I have a battery backup which worked perfectly. Nice.

But my backup is for a powerhead for O2, not my pump.

i bet you only do it once . . .

Do what once ?

I still haven't fixed it