Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Monya, The 200 came from the amount we needed to start the big system that is almost ready to go, so thought we would keep them in the fridge for a bit. They are very small vary from about5cm down to 2 at a guess.
Don't have a heater on hand but will think of something we could use. The test kit I am using is the master kit recomended on the forum.
I have one blue barrel cut in half for grow beds, it is full of plant life and growing well despite the cold.
Thanks

200 little silvers will send your ammonia sky high in the next day or so IMHO, so you will have to keep an eye on that. have you done any water changes yet? If you wanna up the temps a bit, boil the kettle and add a kettle full every hour until the temp is in the mid teens. Even without feeding them, you have added a huge biomass to the tank, and they don;t need to eat to excrete ammonia. Any uneaten food will create ammonia too, so I would stop feeding them until you get this sorted out. Secondly, is your big system going to be cycled when you put the fish in there? If not, you will see some pretty serious ammonia slikes in there too IMHO. And it will take a fair while to cycle given the temps you are quoting. I wish you luck with it, you are going to need to keep a close eye on it all over the next coming weeks.
Can you humour me and do an ammonia test and compare it to the one you did yesterday? Also nitrite test too please. It could be a nitrite spike, in which case you should add salt to decrease the toxicity of the nitrite. In fact you should probably do that anyway. 3 kilo's per thousand litres of water.

I just tested the water and the results are as above.
The deaths have been fairly constant since the 18th, ammonia seems ok mon, we have only been trying to temp them with the food, not much at all compared to what the yabbies and yb were eating, and i've tested before feeding them quite a bit just to be sure it was ok to put food in the tank.
I have been toying with adding warm water but worried about the temp spike seeing I cant be doing it constantly. THe fish were added on the 14th, they did have a hell of a trip over here, about14 hours on a coach then 5hours on the ute to be released in the middle of the night. There were only 2 deaths on the trip and when we started losing a few I blamed it on the stress of the trip, but the deaths should be getting less rather than increasing if the transportation was the trouble I would have thought????
It may be a bit niave, but I thought that 40 large yabbies and 4 10 cm YB would have about equated these 200 sp in weight, so I thought they should be ok????

What was the temp of the water when you whacked them in Chrissy and was it much less than the water you had them in during transport. What method did you use to aclimatise them (eg. did you float the bag - for how long)?

Eventhough literature says silvers will be okay down to about 2 degrees - it is reasonable to think that this would be under circumstances where the water heat reduces gradually over the year. These fish may well have been in 26 degree water at the hatchery - and are now getting 6 degrees at night. Not ideal I guess.

It is really important to be well prepared before receiving fish IMHO. Although AP can be very low maintenance if every thing is working well - fish keeping can be a nightmare if the basics are not followed. I bought my first ever 20 silver perch from an aquarium shop (they were sold as feeders). Pretty much killed them all - ammonia spike I expect. Since then (16 or so months ago), I have had only one death of fish that I have purchased and grown in my system and that was because the poor thing was in terrible condition when I got it.

At Backyard Aquaponics we are in the process of compiling a series of fact sheets that will help people with these sorts of issues - but above all I think that it is important to take it easy and not be lulled into thinking that this stuff is a piece of cake before systems are properly established. Always err on the side of precaution.

VB, not sure of the water temp during transport, but the tank they came out of was getting down to 9 overnight so not a huge difference there. I thought I had done everything possible to be ready to introduce the fish, cycled the system for about 3 months using yabbys and yellow belly, had the grow beds full of healthy plants. When the fish arrived I used the method the hatchery recomended of emptying the bag of fish into the foam box they were transported in then adding water from the system, waiting 5 minutes then adding the fish to the tank. Followed advise to the letter.....
They were ok for a couple of days, then started dying and haven't registered more than 0.25 ammonia since i put them into the system.

Weird - maybe it is post traumatic shock from the trip as you suggested. Does sound like a pretty full on experience for them. Is there any better way to get fish to your place?

Mind you - I know people here who have had fish in transit for even longer.

It's the best we've found so far vb, but no doubt something better will eventually surface.
Just went out and did a half water change, occured to me that I hadn't done that since the trouble started and I have read here that if in doubt do a water change, so we'll see how many dead in the morning.
Fingers crossedxxxx

Got'em crossed for you as well Chrissy....

Weird everyone seems to be having trouble with their Silver Perch dying....

Even Jonty on another site has had deaths in the last couple of days

mmm...wonder if they are more tolerant to temperature in certain parameters than others (ie. I wonder if pH, ammonia, nitrite & nitrate levels have any bearing on temperature tolerance). I have not been getting temps as bad as Chrisite - lowest I've been is 11 so far. But then I have jades as well as silvers so expect that if I do not do something soon I may be in trouble with the jades. Eating them is a real option.

CHrissy, i'd take monyas advice and whack a heater in there, set it for the highest WATER you get during the day. 6 degrees every day over 12 hrs is probably a little cyclic for them, and their probably weakened by their trip too.

Lost more last night, not sure how many, too cold to put my hand in yet, but I counted 15 without looking too hard.
It's going to take a while to get a heater here, trying to think of something I can use that we'd have here.....
An element out of a kettle on atimer perhaps?????

Chrissy, Monya's suggestion to add a kettle's worth every half hour is a good one. If you have it available, a gas burner with a billy. Boil up some system water every half hour and tip it in, somewhere away from the fish. This should slowly bring the temp up.

real problem is the stability though.

chrissy, a few online aquarium shops sell heaters cheap with about $9 postage

you need something thats temperature controlled.

We've put an electric blanket into a cavity on the outside of the fridge. Also put a bucket in the tank that we are adding hot water to. Will cover the fridge tonight with blankets as well as the fibro that we have been using. Will try and get a heater as soon as possible.
I have taken the yabbies out of the mini system (foam box and plastic crate) that we have in the house. It seems to only get as low as 9 degrees so may be better. Will add a few fish to that and see how they go. Probably wouldn't handle more than 10 but at the rate we're going that may be all we end up with. If I order the heater asap we may get it on Wednesday, otherwise it will be Saturday which would be too late I think.

don't let it get you down chrissy.