Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi guys,
went out to the backyard last night around 6 pm to find a section of irrigation piping had blown out ( not enough silicone) and almost all the water from my 2000 L system had been pumped out of the pond. My 75 fingerlings and 30 goldfish were literally swimming in about 1 inch of water.

We leapt into action - I turned off the pump while Karl threw the hose in the pond - both acutely aware of the deadly chlorine in tap water but there was about to be NO water in there so we had no choice. Fortunately some more system water was still draining from the grow beds but not much.

There are two extra small pond pumps ( both 20 watts) in the pond so I turned them on to get some circulation and this will provide a small amount of filtration and aeration too. Karl raced off to the nearby supermarket but they didnt have any dechlorinator or anti-stress products but we did have an acid neutraliser for aquarium water which is this big white tablet. It dissolves minerals and stuff slowly into the water and neutralises ph and amonia and also kills off pathogens. We chucked that into the pond.

We then plugged up the four grow beds and filled them with tap water to try and save the plants and dozens of tiny seedlings just begginning to emerge. We also filled a 175 litre plastic tub with tap water which we planned to age for a couple of days but with the baby crying we raced inside and forgot to turn the tap off. The excess water flowed into the pond so now the fish are in about half a foot of mostly straight tap water.

Karl then had to get up onto the beds crushing lots of plants in a hurry to dry off the offending pipe sections and re-silicone. This will take at least two days to properly cure before we can switch the main pump on.

We will go get some dechlorinator first thing in the morning and plan to add more water from the tub after we've aged it every 24 hours or so.

Does anyone have any other ideas about how we can work to save these fish? I fear they may die from chlorine exposure or stress from overcrowding. We dont have any alternative set ups right now for them to be housed in and dont want to move them as this will cause even more stress.
Thanks for any suggestions.
Aeon

Hi Aeon:

That sucks. All the water in my system was pumped out once; after that experience I made sure to put the pump up on a block so that at least a foot of water would stay if something bad happened again.

Maybe someone else in Sydney can house your fish in their system until your system is put back together? I would help you if I could. Good luck!!

p.s. I would save the bacteria and fish first, and forget the plants! It might be possible to separate out just one growbed with non-tap water and keep the bacteria in that one going/alive?

p.p.s. Can you get some pond or stream water from somewhere, like a park or something?

To summarize: chlorinated water is in the tank and growbeds. There's not enough of it. That right?

Keep the fish as cool and calm as possible. Get lots of aeration going, maybe even directing one of your extra pumps upward to make a fountain. Add 1ppt uniodized salt as preventative. That should be low enough not to bother plants when you start circulating.

Is there any way you can bring any of your growbeds online? If you could do some temporary plumbing (with duct tape?) to run one or two growbeds while you let the permanent plumbing cure? While your water volume is so low, I'd actually say it's more important to run the filtration rather than permanently repair the plumbing. Or could you periodically do a manual fill and drain of a grow bed? Monitor water quality carefully. If you were thinking of culling any fish, now would be a good time. If you can get de-chlorinator, go ahead and add as much water as you can get de-chlorinated. Higher water volume will help with water quality.

Does any of that help?

Hi aeon the most importent thing is learn from your mistakes or miss adventures I did and i think all the others that have crashed have also
Allways have two bottels of ager when you empty one Get another
While its down put things in place so you can isolate different parts of the system
AS far as putting your pump on a block thats a good idea but remember from time to time you will have to vacume the bottom to remove the solids
Get a few blue drums and have them full with ager water they can be used for duck weed also plus they are strong enough to put sleepers on for a bench [more grow beds on top] these can be put a distance away [ up the side of the house behind the garage]
Suming up i think a lot of us get a bit cocky I DID and it cost heaps
reading back one of your joints blew of before now again

Aeon-
Janet is right. Fisrt get as much air (bubblers) into the pond as possible. Also, the chlorine is bad for the bacteria in the beds, aereate those if you can too. Do you have chlorine or chloramine? If chlorine, you may be okay with the bubblers. Chloramine is more stable, so it will be harder to clear. Also, cool water holds more gas (both Chlorine, and oxygen), so if it's within the tolerance of your fish, you may try cooling the water.

Aeon, I don't trust silicone and plastic. Have you thought about using a glue for potable water pipes. Christies make one. Just check the label. It's a one hour cure I think and it will never come apart. I have restarted my system after 2 hours with this glue when adding more growbeds and have experienced no problems.

Are you on chlorine or chloramine where you are. That is very important. If it is chlorine, you will get rid of it with aeration over the next few hours it should be gone. If the fish survived so far, they should be okay.

However if you are on chloramine as others have learned, treating the water will leave residual ammonia in your water so you need to monitor that very carefully. Was your system cycled prior to the dramas (ie 0 ammonia 0 nitrites, some nitrates?) If so, you will be one step closer to getting back on track, as any ammonia left by the water ager process will be converted quickly. The others are right, the sooner you can get a growbed back on line, the better. Don't let the gravel dry out for too long either. although I just had my system turned off accidentally for 28 hours to no bad result with regards to bacteria, but I am in a greenhouse so evaporation and therefore drying out of the gravel would be slower.

Good luck and keep us posted

It is likely that the bacteria will have been killed by the straight tap water. If it has - and the fish live - you can expect an ammonia spike in not too long so keep an eye on your ammonia levels.

If you are able to get some neutraliser today - I would use it - though be aware that if you have chloramin in the water - this will convert to ammonia and could damage your fish at the concentrations you will have from essentiially a 100% water change.

I agree with F&F regarding most of what he has said. The aquarium shops and supermarkets around here recently ran out of neutraliser at a time when it was damn hot and I needed to top up my pond due to evaporation and transpiration. Luckily I was able to get some the next day in the city. Lesson learnt so I bought 5 500 ml bottles (ie 2.5 litres in total). I will always make sure I have heaps from now on - at least until I have my rainwater tank up and going - at which time i will still keep some on hand, just less).

Regarding blown pipes - people will probably shiver at this - but none of my pipes are glued or siliconed. I get away with this by using low pressure pumps and gravity feed. Also - my pump now runs continuously - meaning it doesn't have that initial jolting action over and over as it turns on and off.

Thanks everyone
How can I find out if my water has chlorine or chloramine?
The fish look fine so far. I will try to hook up a couple of grow beds with some black tubing so I can then turn the main pump back on. I wont feed them for a couple of days either whilst they are in such little water.
I will have to think hard about where I can store some aged water as its such a godsend when this kind of thing happens. Unfortunately we have so little room already being in a tiny city terrace.
Will test for amonia and report ina few days.
Aeon

chlorine chlormane ring the water board

Yes i agree on the blown pipes my pipes are wedged in the grow beds just under the surface they are not glued only the top ones on the pressure side of the pump and tap are glued

20/20 hindsight - I've always had some concerns about siliconing pipe joints. I know WHY we do it, saves a lot of bucks while experimenting with pipe configurations, but these joints won't stand a lot of lateral strain - straight-line pulling when subjected to pressure or temperature differences.

I use dry joints, well pushed together, with a short self-tapping screw (or two, or three, depending on how I'm feeling) inserted through the join to keep things together in temporary setups.

Any re-arrangement or repairs can be re-assembled with the same joining surfaces - if the screwholes coincide, use them again - if they don't, just screw the joint together any how, the unused holes will be blocked by the other part of the joint.

A drop or two of leakage (which will soon seal up with algae, anyway) is preferable to a major blowout.

We have hundreds of metres of this type of plumbing in automatic pig-feeding systems.

You could try BM's type of joint with silastic. No leaks and secure.

Sorry to hear about your drams Aeon....

Do you have a little corner where you could stack a blue drum on top of another blue drum? You could fill the bottom drum then place flywire or shadecloth into the bung hole to keep the mozzies out, then stick another drum on top, doing the same with it.... This would give you 400L of clean water in case of future problems, in a very small area... It would be easy to syphon the top drum out, then remove it to get to the second one..

Good luck Aeon I've just bought another pack of self-tapping screws to fasten up all of my pipes. The silicon and the distances they have to span didn't match up. Cordless drill + self-tappers = secure pipes = happy Jaymie

Just to make sure nobody has pipe-splitting problems while using self-tappers, drill a hole smaller than the screw through both pipe surfaces and then put the screw in. Doesn't have to be really tight, just snug is fine, doesn't have to be too long either, 8 or 10 mm (5/16" to 3/8") is plenty, as long as it goes through both pipes, that's all it has to do. Normal cad plated screws should be OK, use stainless if you want.