Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Well its been a while since my last post because I am still trying to work out what the problem is with the system?
It ran so well for the first season and produced trout to 2kg. Since the harvest and the new fingerlings it has not worked at all
The last lot of fish I purchased all died (1 survivor) and still no obvious reason.
I have taken out all water, scrubbed and rinsed the FT's & Sump, then left dry for about 2 weeks. I then removed all piping to check for static spots (there were none) .
I then replaced water and hooked up 2 grow beds (not the baths) and left go for 2 weeks. The 2 x Yabbies, 1 x Survivor trout and fresh water musels all survived this work and were doing well. I was also getting surprisingly heathly looking plants for the very small amount of nutrients been produced. At this stage I was ready to try again so purchased 12 trout (trying to minimise the trauma of another mass casualty event) and after about 7days these had started to die, in 10 days they had all died (no marks/obvious signs & tests all OK) Except, the lone surviving trout and his mates are all fine so I am thinking that he may be a serial killer

Am now using opportunity to completly redesign and rebuild my system. This will mean I can improve from leasons learned and also make more use of the space I have.
I am reluctant to throw out my media and think I might rinse it all and soak in a strong salt solution before rinsing again and re using in new system.

This will mean no trout this season but hope to be up and ready as the weather warms and I can put in some silvers

Sometimes it is often wise to let another person [ that knows about aquaponics ]
in your area to see your system you may find theres some small thing thats not quite right

agree!!!
or at least post your design idea's

regards
Matt

Could it be the supplier?

While I have still not worked out what the problem was I am back on the horse and again enjoying my time out with my AP system. I have had 40 trout fingerlings in for over 4 weeks and so far no deaths.

I have now started a new system and hope to have it ready for fish in a month or so. Turning a negative into a postive is the only way forward.

hope you can keep the water cool enough.
good to see you back.

matt

Curious to know where you got trout fingerlings this time of year

Glad to see you back on the horse Silvertrees. Hope all works out this time around, fingers crossed.

Pretty sure Emerald and Buxton have them all year round.

Great to see you didnt quit ST.

Was a bit worried about temperature but wanted to get the system up and going again and that was all that was avaliable. I got them from Emerald as a friend was going past.

Yesterday with the help of the brother inlaw we have got the new 2800litre tank in position. Trout have doubled in size and when works are complete I will be running two seperate systems to provide seperation and hopefully this means I can avoid total loses in future.

Replacing old green tank with white tank that I tried to sell a few months ago. A wooden frame and the plumbing is the next step. Pretty happy with size and strength provided by digging into ground