Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

If you have the possibility to lose that much water in just a few days then why not add the auto filler. It is cheap. Maybe 10 bucks or so.

Tilapia question to all: Why do I read that many of you heat your tilapia water. We just pulled a baby tiap out of a mountain stream that was the temp of water out of my refrigerator. If they live in the wild under these conditions, why heat the water? And it is May. That water has to be ice cold during the winter time. Maybe for matting they wait till summer or spring when it warms up to 50F. To mimic its home water I would need to chill mine.

That stream temp must swing from 10c to 30c+ or about 40f+ to 90f. In the huge farm fish ponds the water get too hot and they lose a lot of fish.

Besides, IMO fish that come out of colder water taste better. So why heat it?

To continue a fish kill a month later because of a drained sump, not a drained FT is strange. Some how something got in the water IMO. No red gills, no floppy fish, no fish doing the air dance in an empty FT. Maybe the sump had chemicals in the bottom and the water was layered. When the level got so low it sucked all the bad stuff out? Heavy metals would layer out.

My guess is you have Blue Tilapia (Oreochromis aureus) which can take lower temps than the others. Blue Tilapia are prohibited in Oregon where I am. Tilapia in general appear to be illegal in most of California. Lots of the rest of the U.S., it would be a struggle during the winter to keep any outdoor system going even with native fish without some heating. Anyway people in states where you can't grow Blue Tilapia will be heating the water to higher temps to keep their fish alive and people in locations where you can grow them will be heating to keep their system working at all . Some lucky people in warmer regions can probably grow them without supplemental heating though.

Yes it is a blue tilapia. But from my perspective at least on the blue ones they like it cold with no problems. So if anyone is heating blue tilapia more the 45F I would like to know why? I am talking about water 40F degrees and up. they should do fine. But the plants might suffer. Scotty it is just so strange for this fish to come into my life 3 times in a week after searching for it so long. And find one in a really cold brook to boot. His water is now about 70 degrees F and it is happy defending his part of the tank.

Hey guys,

I really think it was low DO. Kinda seems that way any how. But the main reason I am chiming in is that I deal with a lot of water evaporation everyday in my business. There are several home aquarium (Mainly saltwater, but the components dont care) solutions to this issue. This is the one I highly recommend for ATO use.

http://www.amazon.com/Innovative-Marine ... 7CAXJ7#Ask

The reason, I recommend this one over all others is two fold:

1. This is a step away from float switches, and IR sensors. Float switches can stick, and IR sensors are limited in their capacity to be used on certain plastics and tank acrylic or glasss thickness.

2. This unit will scale up with any ATO pump. Pretty much self explanatory. You dont want a little pump trying to replace 20 gallons of water lol.

This is the pump I recommend to use with it. It is a Mag drive, reliable never fails pump. And has a 5.5ft head height.
http://www.amazon.com/Marineland-ML9051 ... i+jet+1200

In my day job, I have tens of thousands of dollars of Saltwater Coral, If I did not have an ATO, I spend most of my days adding top off water to my systems. I rely on this equipment, that is why I trust it on my AP set up as well.

JM, that's a lot of money for a simple reason. Add an overflow to a drain if worried about sticking. It sounds like this is the company you work for or own? And where do you get the water for the pump? A holding tank? So all in all, the ATO, a pump, lines, electricity and a holding tank that then also needs to be topped off when used. Does that need an ATO or does it use a float switch? Most tap water I have ever used is under pressure. Why would it need a pump?

The new float switches don't stick just like the new faucets don't leak or drip all night. The old ones with a ball on a stick did but technology has removed the problems. And they are cheap.

And low DO should turn the gills red. It would be very noticeable. And why would they still be dying a month later. They were always with water and air. Some other poison must have entered the system. PVC glue, paint thinner thru air pumps, anything unexpected. Kid tossing in copper. bug spray. A fish is not going to wait a month to die from DO. They might last a few days and that would be a lot. I saw one guy drain his FT almost dry and some of the fish lived thru the night. I once shipped by accident a small fish in a bag of wet gravel a thousand miles and it lived.

Sometimes more then one problem happens at the same time, just bad luck on the timing and then we fix the wrong problem. Or it might be a cascade of them.

I read that they survive fine at lower temps but grow faster at the higher temps.

I missed the month time frame, so its not DO at all. So I am at a loss as to what it was.

I do not work for Or sell aquarium equipment, so im not trying to make a buck. I do sell Aqua Cultured Coral, and ship only to the US, if your ever around and in the need, let me know lol.

I use a RO unit on on my systems, because my tap water is terrible here at home. However, it certainly is pressured lol.

In the majority of my systems, I use salt water, which tends to make salt build up on any moving parts. Which is the reason, I recommend not using float switches. The same thing can happen with detritus and other things that can collect on the switches. I once had a food pellet work its way up into the float switch on my AP system and it wouldnt let it open.

As for a holding tank, or reservoir, I use a 50 gallon blue barrel, the electricity is only used when the pump is on, its not a continuous flow. As far as filling up the barrel, I ran a small flexible water line from my RO unit over to it, with a small valve on it. When the barrel needs water, I turn the valve and fill it.

Thats just how I do things, and was just a suggestion, on how *I* would fix the issue of the sump running dry.

Glad you agree on the fact that fish don't continue to die of DO a month later.

There is another member here that raises coral, I'm sure you either know each other or will shortly. The problem tank is fresh water so no salt build up.

Thank you for clearing that up.

IMO still to this day I think something new or old has entered his water at or before the time of the sump failure. We also have deadly tap water for fish. When I first moved here we bought our family FT as a divider in the incoming hallway. We used the tap water right out of the faucet as is for 8 years. And then one day, everything changed. All of a sudden fish started to die off over several weeks. The more water changes I did, the more died. After the tank was a ghost town and all dead I had no choice but to find another water source. So we went to a local well for water and about 2 months ago some one poisoned that also and when replacing only 30 liters of TO water, more then half the fish died in a few days, most over night. We were also drinking this water like many do and we got very sick for a week. I had enough bottled water on hand for the remaining fish and they got stuck to bucket life for over a month.

We since have added an eight stage filter for drinking water and use that to fill the tanks. I run a 1/4 clear vinyl drinking water safe hose from the kitchen to the tank and fill it up. Top off from water jugs. It works but the water is not as nice as the well water was. I am saying all of this because we lost 2 good water sources and suffered a loss of all our fish twice and to let all know this happens with out warning.

The bottom line is it is up to us, the end users to take control of the water we use. People selling it to you could care less. Heck look at all of the crap they put in it in the states now. They take the chemical waste from chin a and put it in your water. And then tell you it is good for you as you doze off into sleepy land. If they did that here, the seller would get a bullet to the head for contaminating food water on purpose.

I have been thinking about adding a stainless steel water tank out on the A/C notch to hold RO water. That is a big step yet to come. I would like to RO all of the water if I could, less the toilets. Just like the fish our skin is our largest organ and we take in stuff thru it all the time, so do the fish. They just can't get out of it.

Yea I read through your thread.... Thats pretty sad.... So someone literally poisoned this well on purpose... WHat kind of person would do that? It blows my mind.

That might be the reason but IMO fish that come from colder water taste much better. Look at trout or salmon. So you wait another few weeks.

My reason is mostly towards anyone who is spending cash on heating a large tank and might not have to. Do they really need to do it? Or are we getting mixed up on tilapia? Meaning the blues don't need to be heated IMO so far. If I had a large population of them and heating, I would do a heatless test off line. If it dies I have supper. No waste. I would have to toss ice in the tank to make it as cold as the water it came from or refrigerate it.

I am also going to go back to the tilapia fish market tomorrow and check out the other fish that was recommended to me. The owner said it could be raised and the taste was much better and still had the single bone rail down the spine. Unlike the millions of bones carp have. I would need to be ready for that size of a fish and get at least 1 male and several females if I could. They are at breading size when they sell them.

Get you a pair or four!

I agree, a good cold water rainbow is one of the best tasting fish out there. Followed by a Black Crappie, and the the Channel Catfish. Just my humble opinion...


Honestly, ill eat just about anything.

Most likely some idiot rinsed out a jug that was full of something. That well is an overflow well/ spring fed and probably if I had got the water a day later it would be fine. The trouble is I can't trust it any longer. It is about 2.5 meters across and tiled. They can turn a valve and bypass the well pond to clean it out. maybe they cleaned it with detergents or gasoline. People are stupid to after effects here. Education problem!

Need more pollution control teaching. I am doing what I can but it is a huge battle for 1 guy to take on. So every win feels like a super bowl victory. Teach the kids, they teach the parents. It is our only hope. My kid will now say something to his friends if they start pollution. They pass it on and so on.

A bunch died last night. Water tested fine, good pH, good temperature, air stones working, etc. Something must have gotten in the water. The system is slightly exposed to the alley in the back of my house. Looks like I am going to have to build a new fence and exchange all the water. Total bummer.

So I checked around the area to see if anything could have contaminated the water. It looks like the guy who lives across the alley sprayed some weeds and grass with pesticide. With the winds we've been having it very well could have drifted into my sump. I'm guessing that the initial event in which the sump ran dry had nothing to do with my die-off. Or maybe it caused the first couple of fish to die then the pesticide took care of the rest. I'm going to try the fence, total water change, and unfortunately now new fish.

Without knowing what in the world he was spraying, it is very possible. Im glad my system is secluded back behind my house which is on a two acre lot, that is bordered by woods.