Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Well I have 30 albino catfish, 1 Koi fish and 2 blue catfish. Now I realized about 5 days ago the water to my aquaponics is murky. I noticed so algea. So I did a water change 2 days and and cleaned off the algea ( I read some where's that is what your suppose to do) now the issue I am having is the water is still murky and my catfish keep sucking the sides and the bottom of the tank. I noticed that they are begging to eat anymore. When I put food in there, it floats around for a while. Sometimes when I get up in the more there is still some food. So usually my husband is the one to take care of it but since he is occupied, I have to, The thing is I should of payed attention (lesson learned) . I read somewhere about egg whites? Where do you put the egg whites? How long should the egg whites have to saty in the water? Do you feed the fish at the same time? If not how long do you put off feeding the fish? My fish tank is 175 lts, so how many egg whites do i use? Well we have alot of plants in the plant bed and they are thriving. So I don't know what's going on? I was thinking of cleaning out the filters? Help

Welcome to the forum Misty

Hi Misty,

the basic rules are....
(a) stop/reduce feeding fish - so them eating algae etc is fine, and they will survive a while anyway.
(b) run pump continuously / bigger periods to keep aeration and promote maximum filtering
(c) make sure your pump is accessing water effectively - eg. may have to put pump a bit higher in the pond for a bit rather than on bottom. eg. use a brick or temp. modify your SLO.
(d) make sure you have veg in your grow bed and
(e) check fish tank Ammonia & Nitrates.
(f) make sure your grow beds are not feeding crap back into the fish tank
& make sure you have enough grow beds / filtering for number of fish
* sometimes you get murky when something is done to the grow bed.

It is not necessary to water change, but can help if your nutrients are a bit high.
Mostly you just need good, continuous filtering to deal with murky water.
Particularly if it is suspended material rather than pea soup algae.


Actually I am more concerned about these two comments....

" My fish tank is 175 lts," + "I have 30 albino catfish, 1 Koi fish and 2 blue catfish".

maybe you mean 175 Gallons ~ 650-700 Litres
(and still a bit small for that many fish IMO - unless they are small sized).


[edit] "I was thinking of cleaning out the filters? " - that may/will help as well.