Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Lots of stuff to report!

In addition to my 100 small trout, and my 8 (yes, 8, not 7!) larger trout, I now own 50 "brook trout".

Apparently these guys are less aggressive than rainbows, and it certainly seems to be the case. They were about 5 inches long, so almost a full 2 inches larger than the rainbows, but they act completely different. When I take off the lid the rainbows are all up at the surface swarming, the brook trout are in a separate school sitting on the bottom.

The second news is that my aco-03 died in a big way. I was away over the weekend and a friend reported it making a horrible noise. When I got home from the weekend away the power was off - the aco-03 had died and tripped my overload. I'm wondering whether I need to replace it at this stage.

i'm new to ap but what are those mussel for. do they help clean the water. also what type of mussels?

Dunno what type they are - got them from aquablueseafoods.

Crap. My fish have ICH. Photo's to come.

Mussels do clean thier environment...they sort of polish the water...make it cleaner

Hey Simon, some questions...
Those mussels are supposed to breed in spring/summer. Do you think they could cause a problem later by blocking pipework?
How many months/years did you get out of your pump? Any reason for it failing... such as its location.
What ratio of salt will you be using to treat the fish for ich?

lol, and another ... will there be another open day coming up at Alfred Deakon High School?

Strip it down, they're frequently quite repairable !

Any chance of a photo or 6 of those brook trout Gemmell ?

Dunno what happened to the air pump, but the way it's "clanging" I don't know whether I'm up to fixing them. I did read about the fixes using silicon baking trays, but I'm not sure whether their symptoms are the same as mine. It makes a hell of a racket if I switch it on - surely it can't just be those seals...

A photo of the brook and rainbows mixing. The brook look like they have nose tape on...


Photo of a brook trout with ICH:


This is a video with the brook and the rainbows.






Pipework: No, I'm not worried, pipes going up are 40mm, back 80mm. Good luck blocking that. Also nobody has seen blockages or even these mussels breeding as far as I'm aware.

Pump: I got about a year and a bit out of the pump. No idea what part made it fail, the seals were already gone though. If I get another, I might invest in a better on. However for the moment what I'm doing is using my ebarra to aerate every now and then (on a timer).

Salt: put in 3.5kg - it's hard to tell on the refractometer, but it's between 2 and 3ppt.

School: One day, probably spring.

Nice looking Brookies Gem, I recon they are the best tasting of the Trout that I have eaten.
I had an air pump with symptoms the same as yours and when i opened it up it was just that one of the screws holding the diaphragm plate on had come undone. Took 2 seconds to fix.

Yep i had a screw come out to

Thanks for the feedback re: the air pump. I used a silicon cake tray to fix the seal, it was a little thick for my liking and the air pump is not putting out as much as it should, however it's working again so that's a positive.


It looks to me as if the ICH has cleared up, it's been at ~3ppt NaCl for the last 2 weeks (from 25th March until today, 7th April), which seems about right given that the water temps are 15 degrees or below. Certainly the white spots seem to have gone, we'll see if they come back.

I suspected as much

Nice one Simo - very quick

mines only loose . .foir the moment