Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

my new system has been up & running for about 3 weeks, 1000ltr pond, 2 x GB's 1 CF is fully planted with new seedlings, #2 is F&D no seedlings planted yet, started with 5 small comets & 3 shunbunkins, only lost one in first week, 2 weeks later I then added 20 small comets & 5 small shunbunkins & have lost an average of 2 fish per day over the last week, I have 3 different types of pond weed for oxygenation, 1 water fountain and the 2 GB outlets, pH is 7.4, amonia level is 0 to 0.5, nitrite is 0 & nitrate is 20, last night i did a 1/3 water change and still had 2 dead fish this morning, qantity of fish is down to 12, fish look lathargic most of the time & come to surface occasionally, I only use tank water for original fill up & water change. should I be more patient & let the system run & establish itself or is there something I am missing, any help would be appreciated.
mark

Hi dubsy, sorry to see your having troubles with the fish. It's probably just stress but there are to many things we don't know. I think that's probably why no one has answered up to now. Have you salted the water in the tank (this helps the fish build a slime layer and prevents disease). What's the water temperature?

Was the system cycled before you added fish? What brand/type of test kit are you using? A picture or video would help, might get some hints as to the problem and it would take care of other questions like - 1000 liter pond how deep - Got lots of algae?

If you have another tank you could try removing some to fresh water and see if they perk up.

thanks for your feedback scotty, i have read other posts about adding salt,can I use pool salt? pond dimensions are 1500mm L x 1000mm W x 600mm D. I did cycle the system for about 9 days before I introduced the first school of fish, in that time the water went green pea soup, about 5 days after I added the fish it went crystal clear, should it have algea now? we did take one fish out that was about to die & we put it in a small established fish tank with 2 other mollie goldfish & it got better over 2 days so we put it back in the pond, we use normal house water out of the tap to fill our fishtanks, maybe its the tank water!
I will try to do a video of my system & post it.

Thanks,
mark

Hi Dubsy and welcome to the forum

You have pointed out you have a FT volume of 1000L but what is the volume of media do you have between the 2 GB's? This is important for understanding your recommended fish stock density.


Absolutely..... besides its the cheapest. You want about 1kg per 1000L of water for 1ppt. Which will help mitigate the nitrites.


When we talk about the term "cycle" Dubsy, we are referring to the natural development of beneficial bacteria, Amm=Nitri=Nitra. This process (depending on temp, stock levels, filtration etc) can take up to 6-8 weeks and requires a source of Ammonia to even begin.

Your PH of 7.6 is good so dont suspect anything there.

I would suggest that with an algae issue (which will be robbing O2) so early in your system and without any source of aeration, it could be choking your goldies, sluggish character is a good sign of this too.

Hope this helps

Pea soup to clear is part of the normal sequence, you don't need to do anything about it. If you haven't done it yet I would suggest sucking some of the muck in the established fish tank into something like a turkey baster and putting it in your new AP system (providing you don't have sick fish in the old aquarium). This will help get the bacteria going the convert the ammonia to nitrite then to nitrate.

If your tap water is chlorinated then you need to let it stand before you add it to the new system (so the chlorine dissapates). The chlorine will kill the bacteria you are trying to establish.

I usually just buy uniodized salt from the bulk bin at the grocery - cheap and you only have to buy what you need.

I'm not hearing that you have any growbeds filled with media like gravel or hydroton...
Did I miss something or do you only have the pond with no growbeds? If you don't have growbeds then skip the step of adding the muck until we find out more about your system.

Hi and thanks charlie & scotty,

thanks for your feedback



i have approx 450ltrs of clay media in each of the 2 GB



oops i have already done it, i did do a water change today added 1/3 normal tap water to see if they perked up a bit but still had one die about 4 hrs later , i was a little concearned about adding normal water to the system but it was worth a try to save the fish as earlier i put another sick looking fish into a normal small fish tank with tap water and it got better and still alive now.

process of elimination is my plan to try to resolve the problem, my next step is to go to the pet shop tomorrow & get a air pump & airator in the FT and then add some salt

i'm down to 13 fish from 33

there are a few questions like do they have any lesions around the gills or doy they have a white lump inbetween the eyeson their forhead so to speak?? where did you get the fish from, aquaium shop or from someone personal??

is it Town Tap water, tank water bore water etc??
The town water usually needs to be sat in the sun for a day or 2 and bbbled to get rid of chlorines the other 2 water sources should be fine unless the bore is not a nice drinking bore water

As for problems with the system killing the goldfish well they can handle heat cold higher ph and lower ph so I would more look at the fish problem side as there are a few diseases that only effect a couple of fish at a time then transfer to other fish when the other host dies... still only guessing so hope it helps

mate can you send a pic of your set up? maybe we can visually see the problems? maybe in the material your using somewhere?

can you describe what components your using?

Porter

there are no lumps or anything on the fish, i bought them all from a pet shop on 2 seperate occassions 3 weeks apart, tank water is harvested from the house roof into water tanks & tap water from the house is drinkable

i will try to get some photos posted up,, the FT & GB are made of poly designed for ponds, the water transfer pipes &plumbing are irigation pipes & fittings, , i believe everything i have used is suitable for fish

Good as gold mate, look forward to see it.
Are there any trees over hanging? sap or leaf matter that may be dropping in, poisoning them?
I had that very same problem. caterpillars were falling into the pond, fish at them and promptly died.

Porter

Hi porter , there are no trees near the FT and the GB,s have a covered greenhouse over them.

No dead goldfish today, fingers crossed it stays that way, haven,t put aerator or salt in yet.

Attempting to upload video

good news today, 2 days gone by without the loss of any fish, feeling pretty confident that the water may have been contaminated by either the stored tank water Or possibly the irrigation water pipes i used.


Thanks to all for you quick responses & feedback, dying fish make life stressfull

dubsy

2 day since my last post i lost another fish, then added an airator to the ft to eliminate the possibility of not enough oxyegen in the water, next day lost another fish, then 2 days on no loss of fish, tested water all levels as per normal exept nitrate is up 0 to 0.5 and noticed ther is algea startin to grow in sunlit areas of ft. added 1kg of fine pool salt to 1000ltrs .

i am starting to see the system building up, it is now 5 weeks running and am looking forward to hopefully see it being better stabilized at around the 8 week mark

plants in grow beds are growing at a very slow rate which i think would be normal as the fish population is low

i have tried 3 times to put up a video of my system on 3 different computers and failed on each occasion, havn't tried photos yet but willdo if i can't get video posted

Are you uploading your vids to a youtube account and then linking them to the post? If not then do so. When you add the link to your post put the youtube code for your video between the tags example: (youtube)g4UoG5aTF6o(/youtube)

You should use square brackets as per the post youtube button. I have changed them to () for the example.

my AP system is now 8 weeks running and up untill 2 weeks ago had lost 20 goldfish and was still unsure about what was causing the fish to die until the next one died and noticed that the fins were black and there were black blemishes on the body, when researching diseases i found one that best described my fish, it is caused by high levels of amonia, however my fishtank levels of ammonia are 0.

The best explanation i can find so far for the dying fish is that if there are fish in front of the grow bed water outlet flowing back to the FT , when th FD system releases the water, then they get a fatal dose of whats in the water, added to that the CF system from the grow bed 2 is always flowing into the FT.

I have reinstated the filter sump containing aquarium filter medium before the water reenters the FT which i was initially told to remove when i was building the system and to this date i have not lost any fish since installed 2 weeks ago.

total goldfish & shubunkins are 33 and have also added around 30 guppies, fish are happy & active, plants are starting to grow at a more rapid rate, going to add 10 more goldfish over the next week.

water test today are 7.4ph, 0 amonium, 0 nitrite, 15 nitrate

things are looking great and can hopefully only get better.

had no luck getting my AP video uploaded, so i took some photos today of my fist AP system

dubsy