Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Can anyone help me? I have about 30 silver perch in 2000L. Plants look healthy and green just very small with minimal new leaf after more than 3 months. Do I just need more fish?

( I also need some tips on where to get hold of good cheap fish food.

PW, can you post some pictures of your system so we know what we are dealing with?

Maybe more fish, maybe more sunlight...pics would help. Also water quality readings. If your nitrates are higher, then more fish won't help.

Hi pw. I am thinking ur bio is still establishing. Bio prefers 20 plus C. U will prolly find in another 6-8 weeks things go boom when the night time temps are warmer and bio is fully established. You may find u have highish ammo levels in ur system, so do a check. Once this starts falling nitrite will spike then nitrate. With some heat it will all happen pretty quickly.

In the meantime, keep an eye on ur fish for signs of stress, try keep ur pH down a little, ammo is less toxic at low pH, and make sure you have plenty of aeration in ur system.

Some pics of my system......

Water is from a bore and slightly alkaline.

How do I test ammonia / nitrates?

more pics

PW, you can buy water test kits that will do nitrates etc. Try for a master kit, does lots of tests.

How big are the fish? If they are only tiny, they will only be producing a small amount of ammonia. As they get bigger there will be more available for the bacteria and then the plants.

What have you got planted in the far bed?

That is lucerne growing in the last bed. It germinated very quickly but has remained only a couple of centimetres high since.

The fish are only about 5cm long at the moment, and only 20-30 survived out of 100 in the initial system. It all seems to have stabilised now with the fish eating well and growing.

In the photo with the lucerne bed you can see my "cold smoke house to be"- an old fridge!

PW, if you're systems cycled and been up and running for a while I'd say get a master test kit.....

http://www.theaquariumshop.com.au/shope ... r+Test+Kit

Could be that the lucerne is pulling all the nitrates out of the system...

If that's the case and all other values are OK.... then the good news is you can go ahead and double the number of fish you've got.

By the way where did you get your first (100) perch from... when.... and how much were they??

Thanks for the link.

I got my perch for $1.00 each from ausyfish. Air express was $75 extra.

Hi, How will you turn this into a smoke house? I have an old fidge too!