Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I didn't get a chance to swap some of the water between the tanks today as I had kids birthday parties and treks in the rain to contend with, lol. But fingers crossed tomorrow I'll get it done.

The trout seem to be happy, although they absolutely love hanging out by the sack of shell grit for some reason. I managed a couple of dodgy photo's and an even dodgier video, for some reason my daughters underwater cam didn't like the water today and kept fogging up.





I think they are behaving normally, but tell me what you think if you watch the video as I'm no expert. The video becomes useless about 40 seconds in because of the foggy lens and turn your sound down, I never realised just how bad it sounded (watched yesterdays video with sound lol).

Levels in Tank 1 are still at zero, I think the Nitrites have dropped a bit in Tank 2, as have the Nitrates. I forgot to take a photo though so I can't compare to previous tests. Tank temps have dropped to 14 degrees, although that's not bad considering it didn't get above 12 today.

*edit* A quick question about diluting to get actual Nitrite reading, do I use distilled or normal household filtered water?

The fish look like they are behaving normally but a bit stressed from you being there.

Lol, yeah I don't think they like me. Hopefully that will change once they realise I am the bearer of all things tasty and nutritious.

Hmm, I'm pondering whether to give them a teeny bit of food tomorrow or hold off a bit longer?

I don't really know what their weight would be at the moment and exactly how much to feed percentage wise, but I was thinking of throwing a teaspoon or so in just to see how they behave?

Throw some in and if they don't eat it in 5 minutes scoop it back out. Easy peezy

In my travels with trout I fed them until they weren't hungry when they were young.

By the end of the season I had someone help on this forum figure out my max feed rate which was a small tub or handful 84g? something like that - for 2x IBC 400mm deep growbeds with scoria.

Lol, it's funny, I'm so much more cautious now I have the trout in. With the goldfish I was never this tentative!

I have to resist the urge to stick an underwater video camera in the tank permanently so I can check on them from my computer whenever I want. Although it would be fun too...

Thanks for the feedback folks!

So I went to give them a bit of food before, camera ready to film the feeding frenzy...they totally ignored me as their new god and life giver. I left them to it and poked my head in about 10 mins later and they had eaten it all. Hopefully they become a little less shy soon and start worshipping me instead of the all seeing, all knowing shell grit sack.

Tank 2's test today is looking promising, Nitrates at a readable scale now, woo! I'd put it somewhere around the 1.0ppm mark.

What is your underwater camera?

The camera and video camera are just my daughters dinky toy ones my sister bought her. The brand is MiCam. I wouldn't recommend buying them as the quality is poor and the video camera seems to have gotten water in it as the lens instantly fogs up when it's placed underwater now.

This is the video camera: https://www.bigw.com.au/electronics/cam ... order-pink

And this is the camera: https://www.bigw.com.au/photo/digital-c ... amera-pink

Turns out my daughters still camera has video function too which is handy. I dismantled her video camera and it was full of water, so much for being for underwater use.

I took a video of the trout, it's fairly long as I hid and was waiting for them to settle down a bit. From around the 3 minute mark you can really notice one of the fish struggling, swimming vertical and looking like it's gasping or something. Not quite sure what is wrong with it.

I tested both systems today and it appears as though Tank 2 has finished cycling. I actually thought I had the tests mixed up as there was a tiny amount of Nitrites detectable in Tank 1 so I retested them both. I was surprised to see that Tank 2 has come back down so quickly from being way off the chart just a couple of days ago.




The question is, do I transfer 10 of the trout into Tank 2 now or wait a bit? I don't want to stress the fish more than they are but it'll have to happen at some point.

Speaking of fish, I took another video this morning and Mr Vertical is still swimming vertically. Not constantly, it will give a tail flick and dart off, but when it tries to swim on the spot like the others it tends to go head up again. Should I do anything about it? Leave it be, give a cooked pea to see if it helps it's swim bladder, knock it on it's head, give it a top hat and cane and have it do a rendition of 'Hello Ma Baby' a la Michigan J. Frog? Not sure what to do.

Looks cycled to me
Yes fish in it if you want.

I like top hats

Transferred half of the fish over, so far it seems they have settled in well. Although I didn't realise one of them was Mr Vertical so it may well be the tipping point in terms of stresses and the like. Hopefully he makes it but I won't be surprised if he is eventually found floating.

They don't seem overly hungry today, and I'm still yet to see a feeding frenzy, but all in good time. They prefer to eat when I'm not looking, lol. Tanks still stable at zero bar the pH, temp sitting around 14-14.5°C in both tanks, so all in all a thoroughly boring post from me!

It will come.

They are probably still a bit nervous.

Mine are attacking me now but then the new ones had some to show them the ropes.