Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi,

I am very upset to say that I have lost all the fish in my system at home. I am away at the moment and a friend has been feeding the fish for us while were away. I have just had news that all the fish are dead. I have 2 large bubblers and I left the system on constant flow to try to ensure that the O2 levels remained good during the hot weather in Perth at the moment, and the levels in the system were all good earlier this week before we left.

Apparently the water is quite murky at the moment where as it's usually relatively clear. Can someone tell me what the typical cause would be to lose all the fish like this?

Thanks.


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probably too much feed if everything was running fine.
or maybe they played around with it and disturbed media, etc?

what species of fish

About 15 silver perch and 15 koi


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Sorry to hear this happened.

Overfeeding isn't necessarily the cause. It would be impossible to say what caused the deaths at this stage but sometimes it's better to just let the fish go without feed for a couple of weeks. Could also have been caused by one or more dead fish that weren't noticed - they sometimes sink instead of floating. Power outage is another possibility if you don't have a backup system in place.

Could also be an overstocking issue or an algae bloom where there wasn't sufficient oxygen. Seems less likely than the others but who knows.

I would probably say it's you.

Actually EB pointed this out already.

Mmmm... Biggest killer of fish? People... (EB)

IMO this is the reality of AP and aquaculture system.....in the wilderness of nature fish are the biggest killer of fish(big fish eat small fish)....same goes for human, many life's have been loss by the hand of a fellow species!....... we are our biggest killer!

IF you want to really get to the bottom of this probably providing some data/evidence for a better understanding of the circumstances surrounding the mysterious deaths would greatly help.

Fish size
FT volume
PH
TEMP
DO
amount of daily feed
System layout and design

Unless you have a power failure device or a way to track power outage you have little chance to see if the air pump was off for a number of hours.
It could be anything at this stage.

Heard of many stories about how APers get their non AP friends to look after their fishes while they are away, and then disaster happens. Overfeeding is quite possible especially if they have kids and bring kids along to look after the fishes. If I go away for 1-2 weeks, I usually don't feed the fishes.


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Yes been very hot here the last few weeks, I lost one fish, there was evidence of algae in the tank so I added more air to my systems, algae cleared up and the fish have been feeding like mad since.

Not knowing how big your tank is, it's a bit hard to say. The other thing to consider is that Koi do produce a lot of waste and unless you have good filtration from your grow beds that could also be a problem.

Oxygen deficiency will knock them over quickly as will an ammonia spike if fish are over fed etc.
Water temps of over 30 greatly reduce the amount of o2 that can be held by water and used by fish.