Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Another morning (12 hours ago) with no floaters. I think the 30% water change did the trick. Hopefully no more to be found when lifting the lid. Readings are still all 0, increasing feed to 1.5 tsp/day.

Last weekend something came in the garage and ate ALL my basil . I've cut way back on the fish feeding, and really have no idea what to do. I suppose I need to set up some sort of netting to keep critters out of the grow bed when I plant new crops.

yep think the critters must love you for providing the organic food.

So it was 2 months ago almost exactly that my basil crop was devoured by forces unknown. Since then, the weather turned cold, and the seeds I put in haven't germinated at all. I think the main mechanism is a slow-down/death of the nitrosomes and nitrobacters. Even though I cut way back on feeding, my goldies have suffered from water quality issues because of the lack of bacterial action.

So I'm faced with 2 choices if I want to do anything before the weather returns to the 70 degree mark: 1, frequent water changes for the goldies, and forget about plants until spring. 2, get some heaters and more temperate fish.

I'm thinking that I will go with #2 since I found some cheap 150W heaters. I'm planning to get 3 of them, for 450W of heating power, which should do the trick in my foam-insulated 40 gal tank.

As I understand it, plants can survive cold surface weather fairly easily if the root zones are warm. With my 3 min flood and drain time, I think they will stay warm enough.

Just did a little wikipedia'ing and it says goldfish can survive up to 77F, so 70F should be OK.

goldfish are damnably resilient creatures. They should be ok if you bring the temp up slowly enough

Hey Tamo just re-read your whole thread, it's a good concise chronicle of several issues that come up when a system is being put together. The goldfish will be fine at the temps you want, but try to keep the temps from bouncing up and down, they don't like that at all (could die from it).

Happy to tell you my goldies are hovering around 80f and have been as high as 85-90f without any ill affects. 'Course I don't recommend it and I have heaps of air being pumped in but given it's been over 110f here most days since Christmas, I figure thats not to bad.

DD, glad to be of service to my fellow AP'ers. I certainly feel like I've had more than my fair share of issues, but I bet everyone feels that way .

savage, good to know! I should be receiving my heaters next week some time, so hopefully I'll be able to give them a nice stable temp to grow in.

I scored 2 semi-rigid pond liners today. 125 gallon and 75 gallon, both for $25! So right now I have roughly 300 gallons of total (FT and GB) capacity, not including a sheet liner that I got from the Lowe's clearance kit.

Heaters should be here Wednesday. The goldies have take a turn for the worse, I hope they make it. I'll be doing a water change tomorrow.

Ended up doing a 1/3 water change tonight since I was bored (wake up Aussies! ) I only found 1 casualty.

Oh, I forgot to add that I got the heaters yesterday. It turns out they don't have an on-board thermometer, so I need to get a separate one.

I put in one of the three heaters, so the water is warming slowly.

damn that's gotta bug you, not having thermostats... but 1 thermostat for 3 heaters imho would be better, as I find when I've had 2 aquarium heaters in a tank, 1 is on all the time, and the other only takes up the slack, because it's thermostat is set to 0.001 degrees higher...

Yeah, you're supposed to set the heater by turning the dial until the light comes on. It seems to be working, but kind of kludgey.