Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

System has been up and RI naming around 6 months,
Everything going smoothly, then all of a sudden my goldfish have started dying, about two a day.

Event that seemed to trigger the dye off was a stop in flow due to sump getting low on water,

Tho tests still showed only trace levels of ammonia and nitrate when I test each time I find a dead fish.

First time the oh was low, but buffered up to around 6.4 using gypsum and potassium bicarbonate and seems to be stable there now. Yet still fish dying. Have stopped feeding, and still fish are dying.
No signs of itch or parasites that I can see and dead fish look healthy as far as I can see, maybe a few scales missing on some.

One fish did look like it had dropsy befire it gave up, but others have been completely random.

Some large, some small.

Any help much appreciated.


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Did you cycle the tank with those fish? I have had issues with mysterious dies off like that doing a fish cycle.

Also have had die offs similar to you by improperly acclimating fish.

I now only do fishless cycles and use the drip method for acclimating. Its helped me prevent mysterious die offs where they go by twos and threes. Stress does weird things to their health. There was an article about it once.

How much did you shift the PH? I shoot for 6.5 to 7 and don't raise it much at a time. Sorry am I over seas and away from my notes so I won't say a specific limit but if you raise it to much it will be bad for them.

If ammonia (TAN test i assume) is below .25 and nitrites 0 and nitrates around or below 80 then you should be okay. PH you say is now stable and now obvious signs of disease I would suspect stress related illnesses. How's the environment and fish. Are the panicky and darting all the time or are they just chilling and hanging out? Lots of things cause stress from local wildlife, neighbors kids, water quality, our nieve handling (i am guilty of it), water quality and last a tank bully.

Also any possible contaminations... ie accidently pesticides or copper or zinc? But I would think those would cause a complete massive die off. But if its slow and leeching the weaker ones will go first.

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Fish has been cycled for quite dobe time now, started with about 10 and slowly raised to about 75.
Has been quite a while since I added the last ones. Maybe a month?
The ones dying are Def not jyst the last ones tho. And have been a mixture.
Not exactly sure m where the pH dropped to as my kit only measures to 6, so was 6 or below, and raised up to 6.4 ish.


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Hi mate, sorry to hear about your fish. People say they’re tough fish but I’ve never had any luck with them so gave up. Trout and silver perch no worries but gold fish and koi, a couple of months all ok then the same as you until none left even though other fish in the same system but different tank all fine. I was thinking it was the tank...
But I will throw a couple of things out there.
Where is your top up water from?
What fish food are you using? And, we’re all the fish added at the same time?

Top up water is rainwater collected from the roof.

Fish food, not exactly sure what it is, but is sourced from the same hatchery that raised all the fish

No the fish were not added at the same time. But slowly introduced. Did not quarantine. Last lot of fish were added about a month ago.
Also have added a couple of freshwater mussels a few months ago

Should probavly add that I am also running the system through a UV filter currently incase it's something in the water,
And do have a furry green alge that is growing on the sides of the tanks, but have cleaned a bunch of that off a week or do ago after this all started.


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Galvanised tin roof by any chance?