A Community and Forum For Aquaponic Gardeners

fish bruises???

Hi everyone.

i've had my system up and running since the end of may. i did a fishless cycle with ammonia from ace hardware (10% ammonia the rest was water in the jug, i checked before buying).

about 3 weeks ago i got about 100 fingerlings from a hatchery 50 channel cat, 50 sun perch. the two weeks 0 deaths, i was extremely happy. then i started to get about 1 death a day after that. i've been checking the water everyday during cycle, after the fish were added every other day. my readings were (and still are mostly) 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite, 110 ppm nitrate, ph 7.4. now i've been getting 2-3 deaths once in a while. i examined on of the dead fish for ich but nothing, although i noticed what looked to be a bruise. i've added a few pictures of the fish to show its mostly on the top. i was wondering if you guys have any ideas and what i could do. i'm contemplating doing a salt bath of the whole pond following TCLynx website (by the way TC if you read this great site full of info and thank you for all the help you give here as well)

a little background of my system its a flood and drain. 500 gal pond(10x3x2), 2 growbeds(8x3x1) about 200 gallon capacity; pond was filled with 1/2 rain water (thanks to the two tropical storms that passed though jacksonville fl) and regular hose water that was passed though a water softner/filter. i got two airstone plus some of the water from the pump gets thrown back in the pond for extra oxigenation.

i didn't have a cover until 2 days ago, so i did get algae growing in it. hopefully it will go away now that its covered. water temp was always around 72-76 but the past week has been 76-80

100 original fish (50 channel cats 50 sun perch), most deaths came from sun perch about 2" long two of the deaths were from 4" perch. i think i'm down to about 85 left.

ok i know i wrote a lot but i wanted to give the most info. thanks everyone for the help

Francesco

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