Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Luckily we caught it in time.... had to dump half the water... and switched the system to continuuous pumping for 24 hours....

This is how it looked when I left.... today it's back to crystal clear... and back on the timer cycles...

Nice save, that could have ended up a smelly mess!

what type of auto fish feeder did you choose for this site?

Hope the kids learned a lesson
+1 Good save

Need to top the system up a bit too..

Awesome project bud. Love the step by step greenhouse build. All around great stuff.

Tomatoes are starting to come on now CjinVT.... had a few problems with pH in the small standalone system... now under control and stocked with fish...

Alright! Now I can do this:

There looks to be about 20 to 30 tomatoe plants there...

Thats alot of sauce!

It's been an interesting week up at Mittagong...

Both Peter & Divonne are away overseas... and Jim, the farm manager has been responsible for checking and feeding the fish most days.

In Peter & Divonne's absence... Nicole (Peter's personal assistant) has been periodically staying in the studio at the property...

On one of the days last week when Jim was not available.... and Nicolle was back in Sydney... I dropped up to feed the fish in the evening, and found one of the larger Silver Perch dead....

Did all the usual checks... and couldn't see any reason for the death... salted the tank lightly as a precaution... and left around dark... noting that the security lighting had come on....

Not sure why... but something kind of niggled me....

Two days latter, around 08:30, when Jim usually checks the system and feeds the fish... he rang me to say there was a dead trout....got him to run all the tests, and check all the pumps etc... all working... no problems/reasons apparant...

Something just didn't seem right... but there just weren't any apparant problems...

Monday morning, about 07:30... Jim phoned me on the mobile... panicking...

There were two dead trout in the tank.. and all the rest were lying almost motionless on the surface of the water... gasping... and the pumps and air pumps weren't working...

Got him to check the battery backup aerators... they weren't working either....

The RCD and circuit breakers were all OK...

That told me that the power to the shed had been out for probably at least 10-12 hours... as that's how long the battery backup aerators will last...

Got him to head down to the studio to check the RCD on the sub-board where we draw power from... everything fine...

At that time Nicholle, who had returned earlier that evening, came down stairs and told Jim that the power to the studio had gone out around 20:30 the night before... and back on breifly... back off... back on etc...

To the point where she had retreated to the main house to go online with her computer.. which meant that the mains power was in fact on... to the house at least...

She did say however that the modem/router keep dropping out and restarting... curious...

Anyway... got Jim to start running some leads from the main house to the shed in order to at least get the air pumps working...

No sooner did he do so... and the power came back on... around 08:00 ...

About 5 minutes latter, while I was still on the mobile with Jim... making sure everything was back online... and grabbing a quick cup of coffee before I bolted up there...

The home phone rang... it was Grant the solar man... asking if I could contact Jim... as the solar system had been alarming all night... and he hadn't been able to log into the router to run the remote diagnostics...

Gave him a run down of what had happened during the night... and asked whether or not he had cut over the studio onto the solar batteries... as had been proposed, so that in the event of a power failure the AP system would continue to run...

He said that indeed he had done so... a few days ago... while Nicolle had been back in Sydney...

So why then had the solar backup system not supplied power to the AP system... or indeed, if the mains power hadn't actually failed... why was there no power to the studio and the AP system all night...

And why did everything suddenly around 08:00 all come back online...

Arranged to meet him onsite...

Now hears where it gets interesting... Grant said that he had cut the studio/AP system circuit over to the solar backup system... the day before the first fish died... coincidence??

We dumped out the log files from the solar controller... and found that the reason for the solar battery back system not supplying power to the studio and AP system...

Was because the batteries had been drained... by about 20:30 the night before.... another coincidence??

And the solar batteries had been drained... because due to a week of overcast, no wind conditions... the solar batteries were only holding about 2.5kw of charge... and something had been drawing about 2.4kw/hr... sucked them dry....

So why hadn't the solar controller switched back to mains power???.... as it was supposed to do in a "battery low" state... and why did it all come back online at 08:00 the next morning????

Anyone like to guess what was happening from the clues above???

My brain is hurting.......