Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Ice covering the growbeds this morning. The seedlings will be a goner. I peeked in the fishtank and one of the catfish flashed it's belly to the top. The system generally looks pretty bad right now - but expect it will look even worse come this weekend. I should probably pull all the catfish out and just leave the trout. With a few more days of this weather expected, I'm kind of expecting the worse. Will see what happens.

21F this morning...expected high of 35F. This cold spell is supposed to stick around until Saturday.

Crap - I got a better look in tank after the sun was up. All the catfish are dead.

Bummer
That completely sucks man.

I tried to transplant something last night and I couldn't dig into my grow beds, they are solid as a rock.

I feel your loss too. Mine whole fishtank is solid. We got 18 inches (snow, not rain!) last night, so we were digging out this morning.

I'm not sure of the exact temp, but the tank temp has got to be right around freezing. Does anyone know if the catfish would be ok to eat after say, 8 hours?

A couple were still moving a bit this morning, so they must have perished pretty late last night. I'm at work now, but could probably get them out and clean them by 3 or 4ish.

The high today is supposed to be 35F, so they will not warm up much if any.

Anyone?

They would be cooler then if in a fridge. I would eat them after a couple days in a fridge, uncleaned. Many times I have held fresh unfrozen fillets 3 days in a fridge.
Eat them.

OK - so I could not take the waiting any more and came home to see how bad the damage really was. I fished all the catfish out - and to my surprise, they were mostly still alive. All but one were still breathing, although laying motionless on the bottom. I pulled the largest of the trout out also, he was swimming kind of funny (almost vertical) and gasping some. I guess the DO is pretty low. Is that normal for water that cold?

So I left the three smallest trout in, and have the pumps on continuous. Looks like all the plants are a gonner - even the peas are looking pretty droopy.

I did not take any pictures (too cold and wet), but total weight of the fish was only just under 8 pounds. Still not bad for 7 fish. A couple of the catfish are so small I won't get much if any filet off of them. No time to clean them, so I took them to the local fish monger who will filet and freeze them all for me.

sucks man just keep the crap west of the ol'miss

The three trout have made it through the freeze and decided they were more then just a little hungry today...practically jumping out of t he tank for feed.

One of the rabbits did not do so well - looks like maybe his back end was wet during the freeze. I'm guessing some frost bite on the rear legs, so he will be invited to dinner tonight.

Other then that, I just have a bunch of dead plants to pull out and replant. I need to get the tomato seeds started inside this weekend also.

Dang that's rough.

Do you have any supplemental aeration going?

I would expect most catfish to survive cold just fine (unless they are really tiny like sub 3" fingerlings.) But I did kill off my 300 gallon tank full of catfish by being out of town for a week when a bad cold snap hit and the feeder kept feeding. The uneaten feed polluted the water to the point that the fish were all dead when I got home. Sigh.

Love your rain water collection.

I'm guessing you aren't running a heater in the FT? Is that even practical in a FT as big as yours? I had read elsewhere that the cycling action loses a lot of the heat anyway so it's difficult to keep it warm.

I'm new and catching up on your threads. They're a big help.

It would be possible to run heaters - even in very large tanks. The problem becomes how much energy do you want to add to the system. At some point it becomes cheaper (and greener) to just purchase the fish and produce. In fact, with the setup I currently have, it would certainly be cheaper and perhaps even greener to purchase edibles. The current system was intended only as a learning experience and that goal was accomplished.

After harvesting the catfish, I wondered if they would have pulled through. Some might have, but I have suffered enough losses already I did not want to take the chance. The fish we have eaten so far have been as good if not better then anything I have had before. Most of it is in the freezer still though. Lent is comming up here pretty quick, so no doubt we will eat it all soon.

A greenhouse here in Houston would solve the winter issues, but then the heat becomes an even bigger problem in the summer. The next system, will kind of be a hybrid. It will be mostly concrete construction with a trellis type thing over it. In the summer it will support shade, and in winter it will support plastic. The challenge is making it look good. While I think this one is pretty, SWMBO thinks otherwise. When I poor the concrete I am pretty sure I will add some radient heat mesh to both the fish tank and growbeds. That way I should be able to maintain temperature even during the cold snaps without to much enery input. If it ends up drawing to much current, I can always not use it and just run seasonal fish. Getting the sump burried and having a lot more thermal mass though I expect much better temperature retention then what I have now.

hea deja,

In my green house i have kept the water over 60deg this winter just using a 1500watt southern engineered water / space heater, not to bad on the ele bill..... you should need a LOT less down there......

I have 16 7" to 12" catfish in my outside sump tank. that are having no problem surviving the record breaking North Texas Low Temp's with about 2/3" ice on top of the tank.......

RS

One thing that would be a possibility would be to keep an eye out for a used house water heater (when I say used, I mean free, like out at the curb free.). A gas one. If you hooked it up to your gas line, like a BBQ grille, you could probably heat water a lot more efficiently than with electric. For that matter, you might be able to rig up a propane heater to add a small amount of heat to your water, and its waste heat could help the greenhouse also. A lot of time, when water heaters fail, I think its just the treaded inlets and outlets and the homeowner doesn't know or care. This happened to my neighbor. His leaked into his house and destroyed his ceiling in a room. He thought that "it had a hole in it" and set off to home depot to buy a new one. Turns out the pipe thread had sprung a leak. That water heater went out to the trash. The shell of the water heater is a pretty darn heavy peice of steel, and they are often coated inside.

I have a spare one that I was going to use in conjunction with the soalr water heater panels I have. I stripped the insulation and painted it black. I could hook it up with a very small flame under it and circulate the water. Dunno how much gas it would take, but it would likely be cheaper than electric. Shoot, you could even fire it with wood, for that matter. If you are just talking about a night or two a year.

Keep an eye out and experiment.

Just beware any metals in contact with fish water, copper can quickly become toxic to fish and other metals can too or just corrode enough to have them leaking even more.

Deja, I think you will be able to keep catfish over winter with just a little extra. I've had catfish survive 32 F water, trick is you don't want the water temp moving too rapidly and larger fish will survive the cold better (since tiny fingerlings may starve to death if the water is freezing for more than a couple weeks.)
If your new system will be a bit bigger and with the added thermal mass of concrete and being able to through some plastic over it all for the freeze warning nights, might not be warm enough for tilapia but definitely for catfish/bluegill.