Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Yeah. Natural ground WAS the height of the retaining walls. So when the builder finished a muddy pit was left. I trucked in 3 cubes of soil and got some buffalo in. It's been nearly 3 weeks not and the grass is looking great. Initially about 70% of the grass died off but with water, molasses and seasol it has come back!

I will be bordering the tanks up, putting 100mm x 100mm mesh over the tanks and then make up some decks which can open like drawbridges. So didn need the lid.

I've had a trout in the tank since day 1. Still quite happy. So must grab a thermometer to see what the temps are.

Time for an update...

Got my hydroton delivered yesterday. Took about an hour to move the bags into several locations around my backyard. Even though its supposed to be light....it aint!!!!



This is on one side of my yard where I have set up 2 growbeds.



This is the other side with the fishtank.



Everything is starting to come together.

I have a question though. Previously I had my pump at my parent plumbed "over" the lip of the fishtank. This time around, I have the pump plumbed the "through" the fishtank via a bulkhead. I am now getting a constant "hum" which I dont remember getting at my parents. I suspect its the vibration of the pump against the pvc pipes and in turn the bulkhead/fishtank. Anyone have any experience with this?

Another milestone:

FISHES!!!



So I ordered
50 murray cod
50 tandanus
10 bass
10 golden perch

On arrival, some looked a bit stressed, some swimming sideways and some not moving.

After a long acclimatisation period, I released them into my floating cage.

This morning I didnt see any floaters or sinkers...so hopefully they are all ok or with minimal losses.

HSM narrowly avoided



The dogs decided that they like the taste of the power cord and proceeded to have a chew...

So I come home to my system and the pump is off , the growbeds have been flooded for god knows how long and 2 sheepish dogs . They're lucky they didnt get a nice shock with their cord chew....

Anyways, cord fixed and now secure so the destroyers wont do it again....

HSM!!!

I seem to only be reporting HSMs but thought I'd do an update also.

Came home to an empty Fishtank. One of my pipes came loose. So a 100% water change later...fishes look ok.

Will be spending the rest of the week resecuring the system,

Oh bugger.

Glad to hear the fish made it. Not a total HSM.

yes....not a total disaster....

very much ashamed in wasting 5000 liters of water though

must be the water education working

I was also quite pleased that the tank didnt pop out given its been raining for so long...

Sorry to hear that..

Can I ask which pipe it was that came loose..?

Hope you have fixed the problem..

Juergen..

Was an elbow feeding 1 side of growbeds.

It was supposed to be temporary so was not bedded down.

Lesson learnt

Another sad report

This morning I fished out 7 dead murray cod from 80mm to 150mm.

May have been the stress of the fishtank pumping dry, may have been the 5000 litres of tap water I refilled with, may have been the cold.

Only the cod dying at the moment. None of my trout, silver perch, goldfish or catfish seem to be bothered.

Sorry for your losses.

I'm no cod expert; did you do some sort of autopsy?

Sometimes (usually?) when fish die there is some sort of sign, like discolouration of the gills, patches or blotches on the skin and/or fins etc. Internally, fish are pretty simple animals and many problems manifest themselves in the innards in pretty obvious ways i.e. things which don't look right or normal.

This might help solve the mystery about precisely what is killing the fish and allow you to take steps to mitigate individual causes instead of wondering which of a whole pile of factors might have been the culprit.

The fish looked fine....dead, but fine.

We did get to 4 degrees the other night in melbourne...

Its most likely all the issues I pointed out in my post above.

Its interesting to note only the cod have carked it.

2 more murray cods fished out this morning....

What are your water readings? Something is obviously out of whack?