AP update - Death

[SecretPrepper]

It has been a while since my last update and things have not gone well.
There have been a series of unfortunate events in my green house. The first was fish not eating food leading to waste food on the bottom of the tank. I got a pond vacuum off eBay and go rid of nearly all the waste worms etc off the bottom of the tank but I also lost a lot of water.

Then the courgettes in the beds grew big and the fruit hanging off the tank some how led to a large loss of water. Then due to a miscommunication with my girlfriend we lost all the courgette plants out of the grow bed. The fish seemed fine even with 2/3s of the water gone. Then my siphons stopped working and was hit with more loss of water. It had been a few months anyway so I took the opportunity to remove the pump. To take it apart and clean it. My pump was a big 1000L/hour pump which even though I have a 600L tank seemed to be fine. But when I put it back in the system it suddenly stared being better than when I fist got it. It was causing an overflow in my system so I swapped it for a cheaper 650L/hour pump and slowly increase the water level until I was nearly back to normal when last week disaster struck.

Fish started dying. Some seemed to get swim bladder issues where they float/ swim on their sides or backs. Some just died. I tried salt baths, adding new water even some antibiotics but to no avail. Everyday I would get 4 dead fish. Some days it would even be 4 in the morning and 4 in the evening but always 4 at once. Until nearly all were dead. I captured my last 10 fish and salt bathed them (like I had been recommended) when I came back they were all dead including number 11 who I could not catch at all (he was a ninja)
Now I have no fish. No real idea what happened and if I see relying on them for survival I would be starving.

I will try AP again next year and am learning how to set up a solar powered heater so I can try with tilapia.

[Devonian]

Sorry to hear about your problems and I have no experience of aquaponics myself, but I have kept fish, although I am certainly not expert. But from what you are saying the only things that I could think of are:

When topping up the tanks, did you do it all in one day, or was it done gradually over a number of days to help reduce the effects of chlorination on the tanks from the mains water?

What used to be stored in both the blue barrels and the fish tanks you are using, could there be any residual contamination?

I'm not sure where you are located, but down here the weather has warmed up again in the last couple of weeks and being in a greenhouse, I should imagine the water gets quite hot, warm weather (water) reduces the amount of oxygen in the water which could be a problem. When the fish were on their sides, where they gulping for air?

[Skean Dhude]

Sounds like it was going OK for a bit though. Then it all fell apart. I would guess with an almost closed eco system that it doesn't handle issues that well and with a couple of issues that spells disaster.

I would have thought that if it was a water/oxygen issue there would have been some survivors so it was more likely a waste issue with all the waste raising the pollutants in the water especially when the water was reduced by 60+%.

Lessons learnt;
Don't feed them so much. (Trial and error)
Fix issues when they happen. (Sounds like you left the water down for some time)
Have backups available. (When something breaks)
Note I subtly didn't mention the communication problem with the missus.

[SecretPrepper]

I think it was an ammonium issue but i am not sure It may of been a virus. The IBC was lined so i dont think it was the tank or grow beds.

[Skean Dhude]

If it was the tank or IBC I doubt it would have got as far as it did.

The waste from the fish, nitrates and ammonia, are supposed to feed the plants but with the pump going they would have increased to a fatal level. However with you replacing the pump and putting in more water it should have fixed it. Unless it was too late.

OK. I can't resist any longer. How did a comms error result in the loss of all the courgettes?

[Straight Shooter]

Sorry to hear that SP what a bummer, I am about to start my set up shortly........hope I have more luck.

[T-oddity]

Sorry to hear of the failure of your system, hope you have better luck next time, better to learn from difficulties now than when you are more dependant on the system.

[SecretPrepper]

Thanks everyone.

Straight Shooter let us know how it goes. You might want to try vertical to save space

[Tigs]

not in london are you? http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/mys...50187.html

[SecretPrepper]

Not in London. Looks like something was dumped in there on them