Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Seems ph is 7.2-7.4, ammo is 0.25, nitri 0-0.25 and nitra 0-5

The ranges are because the color cant quite match so I placed it in between. Out of 36 goldfish I have 10 left. But have not had any deaths in the last 3 days. Hoping the system is moving forward...

Pershing

Seems ph is 7.2-7.4, ammo is 0.25, nitri 0-0.25 and nitra 0-5

The ranges are because the color cant quite match so I placed it in between. Out of 36 goldfish I have 10 left. But have not had any deaths in the last 3 days. Hoping the system is moving forward...

Pershing

ph 7.4-7.6, ammo 0-0.25, nitri 0, nitra 0-5

out of 37 goldfish, down to 9, has held steady for the last 3 days

The temp swings we are experiencing right now are killing off my goldfish as well.

So all my fish died off and I will hold off adding more until spring. For now I added some ammonia and nutrients to see if that gets me going until spring.

If a system is too small, or more accurately if a system water volume is too small, the temperature swings can be really wide, wide enough between day and night to severely stress or even kill fish.

For the part of central Florida I'm in, for an outdoor system, I find that if you are not going to heat or go to any extremes to insulate or mitigate temperature swings for a system that 300 gallons of fish tank is usually a good minimum size. Any smaller than that and the day/night temperature swings during our dry springs (which makes for cooler nights but sometime Hot days) can cause too wide a temp swing for the fish to eat well. And any smaller and a sudden change from a warm winter afternoon to a hard freeze overnight can cause the water temperature to drop enough to be hard on fish. And strangely enough, when I compared Bluegill, Channel Catfish, Koi and Goldfish in a tank that experienced such a swing the Koi and Goldfish showed the least ill effect from an extreme temperature drop overnight, the poor bluegill were tumbling in the bubbles and the catfish huddling in a plumbing fitting while the Koi and Goldfish were still managing to maintain their balance and place in the tank but I still don't recommend exposing your fish to such extremes if you can avoid it. Add more water volume or a tank heater to keep the temperature from swinging too much.

While I wait for spring to get more fish, anyone know if I can get by adding ammonia or can I just add a hydroponic solution to get me through the winter? Any reason I should not do this?

Pershing

Hi pershing, I don't know the details on hyrodponic solutions but don't they contain chemicals. I would be worried that it would leave a residue that would be poisonous to the fish once you put them in.

I know there are a number of people on this forum that run their system off Seasol when they don't have fish. Do a search for seasol on this forum and you should get lots of information.

Here's what I would try - two drops of ammonia per each 100 gallons per day and add a little Seasol as well (I'll let you figure the amount of Seasol). See how that does. You may need some other nutrients but that depends on the system and how long you'll be without fish. At the very least the ammonia will keep your biofilter going. Good idea to check the ammonia levels to see how things are going and adjust your input if needed.

P.S. This isn't intended as a long term solution just a couple of months or as long as it's working and you don't have fish.

When you don't have fish (or are not using fish feed) you are missing out on the ammonia and phosphorus as well as many other nutrients your system gets from the fish feed.

If Pee ponics doesn't gross you out and you are not on any major medications that you want to keep from re-circulating through your food system, then pee ponics can supply pretty much the same stuff that fish/fish feed does.

You might also look into a seaweed plus fish product. Or use a seaweed product and a separate fish emulsion fertilizer.
I've used something called GroTone in my system before. It is a fertilizer made from the byproducts of the catfish industry and has a minty fragrance rather than a fish odor attempting to be masked by wintergreen oil (which is what the Alaska Fish Fertilizer is like.)

I can't recommend using hydroponic fertilizer since that stuff will probably build up salts in the system and require that you dump and change out your water and nutrient solution every few weeks as well as sterilize everything (which would mean you have to start cycling all over again when you can get fish.)

So I would say stick with the natural nutrient sources that will let your bacteria survive the "no fish" period.
Ya know, it isn't the fish that provide the nutrients for your bacteria and plants but actually the fish feed. If you can grind up the fish feed real small and put small amounts into your grow beds where it can be decomposed and digested by your bacteria and worms, then that might be all you need to get through without having to buy anything special.

That looks like good advice for some options you can use.

Fish feed can be crushed into bits pretty easily. I use a roll of tape to corral the feed. You can then lightly drop something on the feed to break it up (I use a mallet but a water glass should work, you only need a very light pressure).

The fish fertilizer should work but I'm not certain how they process it or if there is anything in it that might be a concern for the fish (viruses, bacteria, parasites ...). I notice that fish emulsion deters flea beetles when used as a spray which might be useful for someone here (from this site - http://www.vegetable-gardening-with-lorraine.com/fish-emulsion.html)

Thanks for the great input. I decided to stay away from chemicals. As already mentioned the cleanup would be a nightmare and I would be risking the fish if something was not cleaned right. I opted to keep the handfull of lettuce in a half barrel I prepared with soil and this will let me tweak the system freely. Not sure about the bacteria, system was not running for like a week due to the icestorm. Will have to resume testing to see if its worth upkeeping. Might need to start from scratch.

Pershing

While the bacteria will freeze to dormancy basically, cycling back up in spring is usually not as bad as the initial cycling from scratch since some of the bacteria seem to survive enough to at least help inoculate the system when the temperature is up enough to feed the fish and since the water temp usually comes up slowly, so should the feeding ramp up slowly and everything all gets to build back up slowly so the "cycling" isn't usually noticed so much anyway.

when the water temps are much below 50 F, you should basically treat the system as kinda dormant or in hibernation anyway. If there is no danger of drain lines freezing then keep the water flowing around at least during the day but otherwise you wouldn't be feeding the fish anyway and there would only be minimal traces of ammonia being produced by the fish respiration anyway. Without fish it won't take much to keep the system alive at a "dormant" level.

to crush fish feed for small fingerlings I would put a hand full of pellets in a baggie and then smack it with a little block of 2x4 on the workbench. If I needed to grind up large amounts of feed, I have run it through my grain mill before too. (catfish fingerlings usually got the 2x4 treatment since they grow so fast that I didn't need to do that much crushing for very long before they could take the full size pellets. the bluegill grow slower and have smaller mouths so appreciated the ground food for far longer so I might do up a jar to have on hand for feeding them.)

For a few months of system running at a kinda dormant level, you probably only need one or two spoon fulls of feed per day MAX and maybe not even that much unless it warms up and your plants say they are hungry.

with goldfish I'm not sure the temperature swings are the source of your problems.they tend to be hardy fish when it comes to temperature.with my new small systems after a week of cyclingI add water from a pond on my property this seems to kick start or seed biological activity. if you choose to try this take my advice screen the water for any unwanted pest