Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

and lumpy, and smelly

Also, I found a little note and a small revolver beside Mr Whiskers, the guilt must have gotten to him. He was buried with the same amount of ceremony (read - none) as the rest of the fish - into the compost heap and covered with hay!

Axl, I may not be a "Hercule Poiroit"... but I feel obliged to point out that...

... it is a known fact that catfish are illiterate... and the six bullet holes in Mr Whiskey tends to suggest the possibility that it wasn't suicide....

But who cares.... the bastard had it coming to him....

Wow, I didn't realise that bit Roz, I wonder who was sending the ransom notes then???

If I was you guys I think I would plant a tree and erect a plaque next to the pile covered with hay. Say a little prayer and hope for some large and prolific fruit bearing to come forth.
Condolonces for your loss, on the upside you can go away on holidays and not worry about the fish

yeah, not concerned if we have a power outage with this cyclone now...

And we may never solve the mystery now

But of course there is the lack of stress over power outages now until you get more fish.

Sorry to hear of the disaster.

Sorry for your loss guys, that totally sucks...

the lovely stench of rotting over Christmas was something to behold

the rain seems to have eased, over 600mm so far this month

once we have finished a couple of other jobs that need to happen first the tank will be cleaned properly and refilled. we have 400 babies coming in a couple of weeks

Nah. Once fish have died and sat a few hours all bets are off: ammonia, nitrites, and stuff we don't even test for are all going to have shot up well beyond whatever they were pre-death. Too bad: it would be nice to know what caused it.

One theory is that the massive lightning storm (one bolt struck a tree in a neighbours padddock, less than 100 metres away) we had a day or so before we found them all floating fixed a lot of nitrogen from the upper atmosphere into the rain that we got, giving the system a huge spike, but that is just conjecture. The system was/is fairly mature and they were on light rations sooo....... who knows

Interesting. I've read differing accounts saying that lightning could form nitrous oxides and eventually nitric acid, but I wouldn't think it would all dump close to your place but would instead be more dissipated. Another account says the lightning forms nitrates, but that would harm nothing.

Could it have been the jolt of electricity that abused the fish leading to their immediate or eventual deaths? Even simply being near a strike can easily lead to such an event as the power spreads out from point of contact. If there is any conductive path leading through the fish tank, with one arm nearer the strike than the other arm that could do it.

we have finally finished cleaning out the fish tank omg that was horrible

We have had some soul searching about this and have decided to keep going, if only because it would take so much more effort to pull the bloody system apart. There needs to be some major renovations to the system to get it back on track.

* the tank concrete needs resealing to the tank wall. couple of tubes of sikaflex on the shopping list for tomorrow. that needs to happen first
* new fish are on order, but not paid for yet. I only hope that Ausyfish is okay with all the flood waters nearby
* the tank will need filling as soon as the sikaflex cures.
* the strawberry towers are coming out, and all the framework that goes with them. they were not successful
* the blue drums need straightening and better support. we've said that from very early on
* the roof may need some adjustment to let in more light.

the system will be able to operate on only the two big beds while we only have baby fish

Didn't see a test kit on the to-do list Jaymie...

Ducks for cover

Great to see you getting it up and running again.

Sniger sniger you are gonna be in trouble