Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

From Brian's thread:

We went to the trout farm today and brought back a buncha trout. We had a noisy-as-hell air pump on the back to aerate the goods.. We had one HELL of a lot of air going in. But we still lost a bunch of them. And the temperature was quite low. I guess it ended up at max of maybe +18degC when we got back.

Is there anything we are doing wrong? How can you transport fish without losing so many (upto 10%) of them?

I know you get special medicine for livewells designed to calm the fish. It is made for bass (for catch&release fishing). Will this work on trout? (or will it kill the trout) Will lowering the temperature by adding ice help at all?

Guessing the temperature will do you no good. If you had plenty of air and plenty of water, the only likely reason your fish died is because of being too warm. Trout transportation requires air, and a thermometer, especially if it is done during warmer weather. Keeping their water around 15 deg c usually means 0% losses. Medicine is not required or recommended.

I have transported over 2000 Trout over the last couple of years, with each trip being over 8 hours long, sometimes on days where the ambient temperature is over 35 deg c. Ice and air saves the day every time.

How many fish, of what size, in what size container, for what length of time ?

You need all these variables before you can start getting any decent feedback.

If that noisy airpump was pushed up against the container holding the fish, that will stress the fish to a fair degree.

Also, as OBO suggests, go crazy and lash out on a thermometer. Eliminate the guesswork.

To put it in context, Melbourne to Ballarat trout farm takes about 90mins.

The trout farm will pack 40 50mm trout in a bag filled with O2. The bag is about 50L with a third water and two-thirds air.

They also had larger trout...I think 6 inch. They recommended 20 trout per bag.

Thanks for the feedback so far..

Here are the information I left out..

I had about 90L of water, and the temperature of the water when I took the trout was reportedly 11°C. Did not take along a thermometer (stupid I know).
The noisy pump was not up against the tank during transport. It was one of those 12v jobbies they normally use to inflate tires.

I had 40 trout in the tank of 150gram each. 6kg in total.
They were in the tank for maybe 70 minutes or so.
The weather was mild. Say 20°C and overcast.

The tank was handled a tad roughly when I unloaded. 90kg is rather heavy. I put it down, attached a screw cap and then put the tank on its side and slowly rolled it to its destination.

When I opened it, some trout were already wonky. They appeared to be gasping for air, so I did not want to take too much time in getting them used to the new water. The FT and transport water appeared to about the same temperature, and I knew the PH was close too. So I put the transport tank inside the FT and opened the cap. Allowed them to swim out as they chose.

any thoughts?

In one of your other posts you mentioned doing a water change from a farm dam on the way home. My thoughts are that this could have been your problem as otherwise everything else seems fine.
My only other thought was that the air pump you used if it was designed for inflating tyres may not have been oil free and could have contaminated the water.

I am guessing lack of oxygen somewhere and farm dams can be oxygen poor and polluted with all sorts of things

It was me who did the farm dam water change. BM and I got fish together. I then dropped him at his place and drove another 100 km to my place.

We spent about 20mins avoiding a police roadblock as we had no paperwork for the fish and I was a bit concerned.
This did not help!

I had 16 kgs of fish in my 200 liter tank with about 150liters in it. About 100 fish of 150 grams. Also had another 150 liters of water from the fish farm in another barrel.

When BM discovered his fish where croaking he gave me a heads up. I did about a 50% water change. Some fish did not look to good at this point and the water was very foamy and frothy. I drove on at full speed for another 40mins or so and then spotted the nice fresh looking farm reservoir and decided to take advantage. I did about 20 liters and then got the fear the farmer may have dumped something in there so stopped.

I drove to destination and started doing gradual water changes from my system to adjust pH while aeration furiously by air pump.

I lost 8 fish. The weird thing was all the other fish seemed pretty perky and where splashing around in the new environment.

I think stress may have been the major factor here. Noisy truck. Lots of bouncy roads ammo buildup, bad handling at the fish farm. PH shift etc etc

I don't think it could have been the farm dam water cause the fish that died wher pretty much a gonner before I did the farm dam change. It was also at a windmill and was coming straight from the ground water into the reservoir and overflowing at quite a rate. Very clear water but who knows.

Dunno about others, but I see 2 things there guys;


I reckon that's pretty high - I've currently got 50 silver perch of 10g each, in 200 litre aquarium with a good cannister filter attached and it's nearly keeping me awake at nights.


As with Troutman, I think this is a significant problem - those things inevitably will push some oil down the line due to their design.

Yup.

Thanks OBO


What I mean here guys is it's probably a combination of not enough oxygen and ammonia buildup - there's no capacity in 150L to cope with 16kg of biomass.

I did wonder about the air pump and oil contamination and even pulled the stone off at my first water change stop and held it to my finger for a minute and smelt it to investigate but no oily smell or oil on the finger. Its a diaphragm pump so I was guessing oil free.

On the water volume thing, it was actually more like 300 liters of water that I had. They started in the 150 litres and then I changed out about 80 liters at the first stop about 50 mins in. Then drove another 45 mins and then used the remaining water from the backup barrel plus the 20 liters of farm dam water.

The numbers are a rough estimate as I was doing it all in a bit of a rush!

I used a shortcut through scarywoman's tomato farm next door to me and of course she bust me and I then had to spend more precious time explaining why I was trespassing on her land and it was an emergency and I really needed to go with a promise of a fresh trout as toll. The short cut eliminates about 10 mins and a long and very bumpy dust road.

The joys of AP!

Hmm..

Come to think of it, that was not quite a diaphram pump. It is a piston pump indeed.

But I doubt it was an oil problem. Also checked for oily smell etc and it appeared rather clean.

So the consensus:
* use ice. Lots of it.
* be sure of oil contamination by the pump
* Have more water (what would be a workable max?)
* As little as possible "mechanical" stress.

Anything else?

regards
Carel

"Scarywoman's tomato farm" !!!

She got really upset at you?

Wish I was there..