Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

That is the thing, I did check. There was nothing in ether the pipe or the pump. That was why I have no idea what was up with it. Thanks for the thought though. Time for me to add "columnaris" to my growing list of things to research. At this rate, I'll have a novel length list of items. I went out today to put in some of the fish emulsion. I was standing there trying to figure out how much to stick in there. I got to the point of "I'll just poor some in and find out what happens". That is what I did. Probably not the best way of doing things, oh well. I am going to test everything tomorrow and see where I stand. Off topic, my Salinity Refractometer arrived in the mail today. I am also going to get to play with that in the morning.

As of now, I still can not get access to fish. I did put in some fish emulsion, there are no noticeable effects yet. I am thinking that if I can't get fish soon, then I will have to pull up the plants. It would get way to expensive to fast, if I continue to use the emulsion. *Sigh* It seems like it's one of those "hurry up and wait" sort of things, because I am now in the waiting stage.

How much fish emulsion did you use? How expensive is this fish emulsion?
If you can't afford to put in a few cap fulls of fish emulsion daily, how do you expect to feed the fish daily? Fish food is likely more expensive than fertilizer?

Sorry I could not get back to you earlier, its been a hectic couple of weeks at college. To answer your question, TCLynx, the fish emulsion is ten dollars a bottle. I did not realize that I was only supposed to use a cap full. I... kind of dumped quite a bit it there. So much so that the ammonia is off the chart. And now it does not smell... pleasant. Oops. Anyway, last weekend I did a lot of work on my system. I had dumped the old water out into the vegetable garden. I had two tadpoles in there, they were both about two inches long and they were growing their back feet. I stuck them into another bucket. No other fish. I rinsed out the fish tank and in the middle of it I saw some weird bugs. They were about a centimeter long, red, and had a segmented body. They also looked similar to mosquito larva, but as I said, red. I am confused as to what they were. There were about 75-100 of them in the bottom of the tank. Any ideas?

I also had to pull out all of my plants because they were dead. I then rinsed out the rocks. I did not use any cleaner on anything, just water. I then put that plank of wood that was holding up the grow beds on cinder blocks to get the weight off the sides of the tank. It also allows me to raise the water level about six more inches. Yay. I'll get some pictures later. So new water and the fish emulsion is now in the water.

Some good news though, the Fish wagon is coming back in three or so more weeks. So I am going to get some minnows along with my catfish. Some of my class mates has told my of a place near where I live where I can get some catfish pellets. They only come in 50 pound bags though. Does anyone know what minnows eat?

crush some of your catfish pellets for the minnows