Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I've got a new weather station coming with water temp sensors for both systems so I'll be hooking that up soon I hope and then I can share the data.

At the moment getting accurate and regular temperature readings is a bit hit an miss but the other day when I checked temp on both systems mid morning, they were both seemed to be about 60 F. That was after running constant flood on the 300 and the big system is mostly flood and drain (except for a couple beds.)

I doubt that one instance of temperature reading really means much but once I get the weather station and can compare air hi/lo temps with water hi/lo temps and then see what happens when I switch back to flood and drain in this system we might have some useful data.

Now if switching from F&D to Constant flood is as simple as flipping stand pipes and switching from timer to always on, then I bet some one with a greenhouse could really take advantage of this by doing winter flood/drain during the day to warm up the water and going to constant flood at night to conserve heat and perhaps going the opposite in the summer to help cool the water at night and avoid heating it during the day. With the indexing valve it isn't quite so easy to switch back and forth though as there is an extra 200 gallons of water involved.

Things still not going well. Still losing fish at a rate of about 2-5 per week per system now. Yes, the big system seems sick now too We lost 5 fish from the big system in the past week.

So there is still about half a dozen fish in the 300 gallon system.

I've salted both systems. 300 gallon at around 1.5 ppt of salt Big system still less than 1 ppt and I need to get another bag of salt if I want to take it higher.

Fingers crossed that it has an effect. The fish obviously noticed the salt in the big system as they didn't finish their dinner tonight. Channel Catfish don't like much salt so hopefully the .5-1.5 ppt range is helpful since they really tend not to like me taking it all the way to 3 ppt.

Plan currently is to harvest big time and hope new stock will handle the move with less stress being small fish and not catch whatever the illness is.

Love the system! Hope you can get rid of the illness and the fish perk up!! Sending good vibes your way...

Happy Growing and thanks for posting!

Jon

Well the fish in the big system are not eating all their dinner again but no dead ones today and I've upped the salt some more.

The 300 gallon, no dead fish today and the salt is now up to 3 ppt so I'm gonna leave them for a few days to see if whatever it is clears up.

Thanks for the good wishes, I'd say at least for today it has helped.

Hey TC

hope things get back on track......

would be interested in your new weather station.... name, etc....

will be looking forward to see how things work out on temps

jT

I don't quite have the weather station data logger software figured out (have been busy and haven't gotten back to figuring out how to automatically upload the graphs) but you can see what I have done so far here
TCLynx weather
I need to change a few things but the last two readings shown are the temps for the big tank and the 300 gallon tank and the weather station data logger is tracking all of that on my old computer so I should be collecting some good historical data for future use.

The weather station I'm using is an oregon scientific that can handle up to 10 wireless temperature/humidity sensors

Darn, lost another fish in this one. Down to 5. Chances are good that I will simply get blue gill or sun fish for this system at this point.

Have the catfish been down to those temps before TCL??

LOL, down to 5 meant the number in the tank. LOL It is getting into the warm season here now so my temps are ranging between 20-26 C or 68-78 F lately.

But actually I have had catfish survive 0 C or 32 F water though the really little ones had poor survival since they were too small to have the reserves to keep from starving to death during the really cold spell the winter before last.

I think we will harvest the rest of the fish from the 300 gallon and switch to bluegill in hopes that they will survive whatever the disease is better.

no dead fish today.

Hi TC. Catching up on all your threads. You do impressive work. Hope you get your fish deaths under control.

I noticed you use a lot of rubbermaid stock tanks. i have done that too. Ever have any problems with the bulkheads leaking? Do you do anything special to the gaskets - teflon dope or silicone? I buried my 150 gal Rbrmd as a sump and ended up with a leak that floated the sump up in the hole. I should have it all operational again tomorrow, but the plants will have been without circulation for about 36 hours probably.

I appreciate all your posts and hard work. I have learned a lot from your system threads and others here.

To Merlin
I'm a newbie to this site. I used to make aquariums from scratch and just used regular Silicone. I did not worry about using the expensive aquarium type either. Hint: just use a fine sandpaper to scratch up the surface to get the shine off it. Apply too much Silicone to the surfaces and gaskets and make up the fittings and joints. Wipe off the excess with a paper towel if you don't like it showing. Wait 24 hours before you fill it with water and fish. If you are in a hurry use the expensive stuff and you can put water and fish in it in about half an hour.
Don

I use sellys roof and gutter and normally put water in within the hr

I've not really used the bulkhead fittings that come with the stock tanks. When I get them I just make sure the fitting is tight and the plug has the teflon tape and is in snug and not leaking. Otherwise the stock fittings have been ignored by me. (knock on wood) no problems with them so far.

My problem with using the bulkhead that comes installed in the stock tank is that it is only threaded for use from the outside of the tank and doesn't allow me to thread in any fittings on the inside of the tank properly so using it to set up a stand pipe in a grow bed doesn't work well.

As far as the fittings I use through the stock tanks, I mostly use uniseals

Well all the fish have survived my being away. These guys have not been getting much food but they at least seem to have been eating what they are given again.

The nitrates are around 5 ppm

However, let this be a warning to all. If there is something you think "oh I should really do that" then you should do that now. I've never glued the pipe from the pump and I got home to find that the fish had knocked the pump off the outlet from the tank and the pump was just swirling water around the tank but not sending anything to the grow beds. I must be lucky as the plants were still looking pretty much ok so it must not have happened more than a day before I got home. I really need to add a stainless steel screw into that connection so that I can still take it apart when I need but keep it from being knocked apart again.

I guess I should go do that NOW right?