Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hey all,
Popped the cover this morning to feed and noticed 2 very sick fish hanging at the bottom upside down. One died before I could get him out, the other is in a sperate tank now dosed up on salt and air.
Looking at the dead fish.. I can't see any obvious signs of ich, but I'm far from experienced!

Looks like the others might have been nipping him but it could also be a sign of the disease...




Ich? Or something else?

Not ich. There are a couple of little spots that might be ich (can't be sure from the pictures), but when a fish dies from ich there are zillions. Looking at my handy-dandy PDF on silver perch diseases (you can download a free copy here: http://www.dpi.nsw.gov.au/fishing/aquac ... lver-perch ) I can't see anything that clearly matches the marks on your fish, but there are quite a few bacterial and fungal problems that cause skin lesions and breathing problems (the gaping gill covers indicate that whatever this is is messing with their gills).

Do you have salt in your system water? Putting in salt to around 2ppt is the simplest and safest thing to do at this point when you know something's up but not what it is.

Thanks mate,

Yes system is salted to about 1ppt, and ive chucked some more in which would bring it to around ppt.

Rest of the fish are eating fine, looking fine. Very strange!

If/when the other one carks it, ill snap a photo of him too.

Thanks for the advise

Good luck! Hopefully this was just a mystery one-off.

Hiya mr water, water parameters? Water temps? Do you have air to the tank? How much and what are you feeding them? What colour were the gills?
As Mel says sometimes they just die but two at the same time is curious. Hopefully it's just a once off but more info helps is nut it out.

Yes two at the same time is what worried me..

Mm ammonia is less than .25, so between 0 and the first mark on the api kit, nitrites are 0 and nitrates are pretty high, the app kit is pretty hard to tell off but ild say around 150ish?
I've been struggling with them, but was under the impression that it wasn't a huge problem.. maybe it just played a part in weakening their immune system..

I'm not supplementing air atm, as I have splash back 24/7×2 from the garden beds, a powered splash back return from the pump and a spray bar in the tank.
Should I plumb in my airpump?


I noticed the gills looked like they had a couple of red spots? Didn't seem excessively red like I've seen in other photos though.

I have a lot of eucalyptus trees around the GBs dropping bits in, and I'm fairly sure it gets into the water.. I hope it's not poisoning them..