Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Bummer Z. It just goes to show, if it can go wrong, it will.

Sorry to hear about the fish zsa zsa. Chalk it up to getting the kinks out of the system - you're doing great, just fix the problem and move on

It was hard for a half a day, I was angry on myself, but you cant change it, so it nothing else to do, got to get over it. It helps that its not a complette catastrophy as most of the fish survived. You can also take that as a proof of the system design.

- It had to last a few hours. My pump requires water for lubrication, without water the ceramic axis burns, and fails. The pipes are made so, that even if the tank is empty the pump has enough water for lubrication. It didnt fail.

- There was only a tiny bit of flooding, on the blocked side, not even worth mentioning.

- The system came back to normal in a few hours, this is the power of overfiltering.

- Its clear now that airration is on the limit in case of emergency. But ist my fault again, cause I havent cleaned my airstones for long. They where full of algee, and 1 out of 4 was even hanging on the outside, not inside.

The story is simple lots of little things accumulated to a big failure.

I knew that this pipe is the weak chain of the system, and I was playing with scenarios what if that one fails. It was clear thet it could cause a dangerous situation, but I thought that the fish could still make 12 hours in the fishtank without problem. In fact such situation happend twice before, without casulties. That should be the case this time too, if only the other circumstances (bad luck, and my bad decisions) havent kick in, and worsen the situation.

I fixed the problem with a filter, elliminateing a vital chain from the link of catasrophy so it wont happen again. All is back to normal. Plants are growing, fish are fine. I have learned an other lesson, a costly one this time, but improoved the system again.

Failure is part of experiencing. If you are affraid to fail, you will never try new things, and never learn anything!

And because of this experience others like me are educated a little more on what to look out for. Great job, keep it up.

Köszönöm

Its now a week since the catfish are in, and the catastrophy. Things calmed down, trout got back to their routine after ~2 days, the catfish are slowly getting used to the new situation.

Cats are still disturbed by light and noises. The main problem now is that they dont eat.

And I 'm getting closer to face a decision again. There are several options to choose but I'm not sure which is the best. Somehow I have to teach them that pellet is food, and they should eat when I give it, not not when they would like to. As they lived almost a year wild, the task is not easy, more over they have to get used to light and sounds.

Options:

1. Put the trout and the catfish together, let the trout teach tham.
- Dont know what will happen if they meet. I fear trouts would try to taste the smaller cats.
- The trout is a visual predator, while the catfish are almost blind and the hunts based on other sences. Still it could work.

2. Try feeding some fish pieces to the cats, and mix it with pellets by time.
- This could work, but no guarentee at all.
- Teach them to eating when feed dropped in stilll could be problem.

3. Get an auto feeder, turn on and hope for the best.
- It could work, who knows...

4. Any suggestions are welcome!

Thx Zsazsa

Hey man,

i've been reading on training catfish to eat pellets, and one of the big factors for success is stress. If the fish are under stress it is less likely that they will adapt. Maybe you could try covering the catfish tanks with some shade cloth to "calm" them down and then slowly try to feed them and gradually remove the shade.
Mixing pellets and fish guts will definetly help imo.

Good luck!

How about putting one of the catfish in with the trouts, to see what happens, without risking any big problem?

We need just a little sunshine to smile again!



I got some fish from a friend:

8 grass carps, 1 small welsh catfish, 1 huge zander (Sander lucioperca) This last guy stays as a guest only and separated as its one of the hugriest predator arround.


The system is doing a wonderfull job. Outside temp is -3C +20C, inside its 15-25C, water temp 16-17C. Perfect conditions.

I have very limited success with teaching catfish to eat pellet so far, but I dont give up. The little ones last year was much easier...

English subtitles soon!

The most important part.... Well done

Damn I missed your little problem earlier this month.

Good to see you back in the saddle. Love the look of the Zander..

You're a true AP soldier Zsazsa....

Awsome, everything is flourishing and the GH is performing as it should or even better! A+ !!

My system is already showing signs of progress, pH is below 7 and the plants love it. Usually i didn't see much progress in a week's span, but now i can, and i've been only feeding like 100g to the whole system. Yesterday i've put in more plants, installed a swirl filter and now we can start feeding those starving carps properly. I have a feeling that this year is going to be a blast in my GH.
Big thanks to you Peter for inspiring me to remodify and diss that old gravel in my system!

How is the catfish training going so far?
Hmmm just got an idea, catfish, is there a hatchery near the Slovenian border, closer then Balaton? Because i'm going to be there from 21st-28th of april and i'm craving to eat some fish! Am so desperate that i'm thinking of trying some carp again

Thank you all for you kind words!

Joel@ The Zander is nice and its still in the tank but thanks to its appetite and cannibal habits is unsuitable for any intensive fish farming. If young it can be trained to eat pellet but buy time their instinct kick in and they start to attack eachother. Its like the highlanders: There can be only one!

Matej@ I feel a little progress with the cats.

I have devided them to two groups:

5 big cats been moved to the tourt tank, Im hoping that the trouts will teach them to eat. I dont know it they eat allready but at least they are not that shy. They are not hiding so much. The small catfish that I got with the grascarps, and was in the, basket juped out and joined the trouts and the big catfishes. He seems to be fine, and not frightened at all.

The remaining 36 catfishes stayed in the sump, they get fish pieces and some pellet every day. (as you could see in the video) They eat but I have no clue if they eat just the fish or the pellet too.

There are hatcheries close to the border, i contacted them for some fry last authumn. The question is if you want to by or you want to eat fish? Which town are you visiting?