Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

We changed the water! I transferred all the fish into one tank and we emptied the first. The garden was the beneficiary via some buckets. Must remember to put a gravity hose on those tanks.

Transferred them all to the clean water in tank one and emptied the second tank. Phew! Now they're all in the same tank, with clean water and we have tank two full of clean water with no fish. pH is the same in both the old water and the new water. Temp almost the same.

I do my voluntary job tomorrow and DH will be alone so all he has to do is to transfer the fish over to the clean tank. Do you think it should be done again tomorrow? While I'm out, I'll buy an ammonia tester.

Is there anything else we should be doing?

Sounds like you've pretty much got it covered... I wouldn't worry too much about changing it all out again tomorrow, they should be right for at least a couple of days... Big test for DH tomorrow...

haha, yeah. It's good he doesn't have to move the fish again. Good for him and the fish. He's been reading a lot of threads on the site here so if something else happens, you might hear from him using the forest name.

Good to hear everythings well, forest.

Everyones on the money with their suggestions as far as i'm concerned

On the pump, i have a small (35W) submersible pump, and i did indeed find the internal filter was cloging probably monthly or so. I removed it fully expecting to damage the pump, but its been fine, and its been 9 months!

I had to open it up and clear the impeller shaft of fibrous threads (i thin it was from silver beet stalks i put in there, but apart from that, its all good. Just try and make sure that no hard solids (rocks / pebbles / sand) that are able to fit through the intake grille are in your fish tank. The fish poo is fine. The pumps are pretty simple, they have an epoxy sealed "winding", with a ceramic shaft and plastic impeller that fits into a rubber seal type thing. The impeller is usually the only thing that you will have to replace (unless you drop the ceramic shaft while you have it out )

Steve

Good to hear more about the pump, steve. H had a good look at it last night and he removed the foamy stuff in it as you and joel suggested. H is an ex-diesel and heavy equipment fitter and his last job was at a huge wash plant so he knows a bit about pumps. He's been having a ball setting up the system.

Hopefully the tank will be here soon and we can get the fish settled in properly.