Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

The stuff was cured on the outside of the tubs....but not on the inside; by the smell.

Hmmm, I'll read the "treating Ich" info, I'll have to figure something out since I'm still waiting for the return of an old glass aquarium to use as a hospital.

Handy if you can do it I think E2.... how big an aquarium is it?... and can you filter it really well??

If not then, and if it's only small then you're going to have to monitor the water religously with 100+ fingerlings in it and be prepared to do water changes.... that will also mean adding additional salt with every water change.

PS... E2, if I remember rightly you use a seperate pump for the hydroton clay beds.....

Can you isolate these beds/pump from the rest of the system while you cure/redo the silicon?

An update on the situation:

I've been reading my diary (thank god I've been keeping one) and managed to get things in order

The system is a 12000 litre pool (holding 10K ) + 500 litres of hydroton clay balls, a 1 metre high x 100 mm dynamic bed sand filter (which in theory has a very large surface area), and a greenhouse with 12 x 4 metre NFT channels (ok flattened stormpipe) with around 160 perlite pots in. I've planted around 50 seedlings and 30 seeds, the seedlings are growing pretty well.

Water from the centre of the pool is sucked up by a Ventura to the clay ball tubs and returns via a sump buried in the ground. Water to the greenhouse is taken from near the surface and returns by the sump.

The sand filter takes water from near the surface and sprays it over the water on return.

Clay and greenhouse are on timers (15 minutes out of each hour for the greenhouse and 15 out of every 30 for the clay balls); while the sand filter is on all the time.

The pumps for the greenhouse and clay balls are 2400 lph ; while the sand one is 3600 lph. the head for each is around 2m so I should be getting a reasonable flow.

The sump uses a 6000 lph return pump.

originally purchased 150 sp and 4 goldfish and lost a few in the first days after deliver (sp).


Ph is around 7.6 and well buffered
no No3/No2
GH > 7
KH 6


On Wednesday the 22 got my first TAN reading 0.25 (water temp below 20)

7 days later lost 5 fish in one go (TAN between 0.25 and 0.5, warm day). Cut feeding in half.
Added 2000 l water (tap + conditioner) + added around 100g salt
Next day lost 2
cut feeding again
Next day lost 10 fish , no feeding
Today 5 (this morning)
no feeding
lost 1 more by 10am!

Water temp is around 16 degrees (still waiting on damm aquarium max/min thermometer I ordered). There's some flashing fish (2); but they seem to be the same ones that have been flashing all along.

The fish I find dead; just die on me with little or no warning, there's no white spots or anything on them, and they're mostly the smallest sp. They just go silver with a touch of green. all the fish that I can find (alive) are active and come to the surface everytime I go near the tank (I think they're hungry)


Other things that happened. On the tuesday took my clay balls offline and discovered the silicone I was using wasn't suitable (stunk). So on thursday I cleaned out the tubs and used proper drinking water quality fittings and brought the tubs back on line (tubs were drained first).

Possible answers:

(1) mucking about with the clay balls stirred up the toxins from the silicone
(2) My ammonia is too high and it's got warmer


I'm going to take some water down the local fish place and see what they can find (will take dead fish as well since one just died on me).

may have to hook up my spare pump to my aquarium cleaner and a filter and do some cleaning up of the muck off the bottom (and maybe let the water pass through the filter).

Any ideas welcome.

Been down the aquarium shop. water and dead fish in hand (ziplock bags)

They agree with me that there's no sign of disease, that the eyes are clear, scales clean, fins fine and gills good (only problem fish dead!).

From the symptoms they feel it's probably not a toxin (ie antifungal agent) since they felt I'd have lost a lot more,a lot quicker. But of course my ammonia is high....

So I've put more bacteria in to help things along, bought myself a metre of 100mm pressure pipe, a few fittings and a little zeolite (15kgs), and I'll build a little cannister filter to bring the ammonia under control. I'll have to refresh the zeolite I guess (will figure out later); but the hassle will be worth it.

One question, anyone used zeolite before and refreshed it with salt solution? If so what were your experiences?

I've built my zeolite canister and here's a pic of the zeolite master 5000. If this doesn't help then at least my fish will die surrounded by technical fixes (hmmm maybe that's the answer "we are BorgFish, resistance is futile" )

An now for something completely different (I'm sick of talking about the fish, I'm dying to talk about something cheerful).

So here's a picture of my greenhouse (during the day) with a few plants

and for those who just love little plants

Drifting back to the fish subject, I've just thought of a book (pamphlet) I could write to complement the backyard aquaponics book. "Raising chickens using Aquaponics"

Here's a picture of the big healthy chickens I've raised aquaponically....


Well ok these are the chickens who get to eat the dead fish, they love the little treats

An update:

Well the zeolite has been swapped out and replaced (the old lot is soaking in salt water) and the ammonia readings are STILL the same.

In fact nothing changes in my system except the number of live fish, which at the rate I'm losing them will run out in around 2 weeks

At this rate I'm going to have to look up the smiley "sob uncontrollably"

Oh well, live and learn:

Should have fishless cycled or got a lot less fish, it's just that I thought 12K litres vs 150 little fish, no probs! Well was I wrong

I'm going to cut food totally for a couple of days and then see how the ammonia is going.

I guess I'm going to have to tough it out (well the fish have the hard bit) and hope....

of course as soon as the ammonia goes, I'll get nitirite and then the fish will die from nitrate poisoning...aarrrrrgggggggghhhhhhhhhh

So, have you still been feeding your fish throughout everything E2??

If you're still cycling then yeah as your ammonia drops off you'll get a nitrite spike.... then that'll drop off and the nitrates will rise.....

Keep doing water changes, and setup another pump if possible to circulate the water within the growbeds. Ie divert from return and pump back into growbed. Create as much water flow through the growbeds/biofilter.

I hit HSM one day with my inside tank. I just setup another pump in the sump to circulate water around down there, so I doubled the water flow in my biofilter. Worked a treat.

Well the latest news is that I've lost approx. 50 of my 150 SP, and some were the bigger ones

Dropped down to NO feed whatsoever for two days; but had to start feeding again when I noticed one of the fish had a big head but thin body

I'm feeding lightly at the moment and have upped the circulation to the grow beds (I was reducing the frequency during darkness hours; maybe that was a mistake).

Death rate seems to have dropped down to 1 or 2 a day (much better than 10) and I'm still swapping out the zeolite and soaking in salt solution.

The main effect of the zeolite seems to be to make the water crystal clear.

Everything else is stable: PH sits around 7.8; ammonia (TAN) at 0.5, plenty of carbonate buffering no nitrites/nitrates; but plants doing fine

Noticed one thing, my dynamic sand bed filter purged itself of sand (time for a rethink on the design, maybe heavier sand and a little window so I can see into the thing).