Getting frustrated fish dying.

[Josh M]

I have had my system up and running since the end of March. I thought things had finally leveled out and I was seeing Nitrates but then the Nitrites were too high so I thought that was killing them. I have never had any ammonia the PH stays around 6.2. I have lost about 70 feeder goldfish though all together. I am down to 4 fish now and I assume the reason my Nitrates have dropped to nothing is because I don't have enough fish pooping now. I have also noticed my plants beginning to yellow a little. This could have something to do with the aquarium salt I added or just the lack of Nitrates? Any thoughts you have or questions I should answer to get to the bottom of this. I really want to make this successful.

 

Guess I should add a link to my blog so you can see everything. www.aquaponicbasementgarden.blogspot.com

 

[David Rairigh]

Then you're good there...

We started out with feeder goldfish also and learned very quickly that they simply don't like anything over 75.  They seemed to pretty much ignore pH and Ammonia, as long as the numbers weren't too far off the chart.  After ensuring that the water temp stayed lower we continued to lose fish, although at a slower rate, mostly due to ick.  Although we found that the non-feeder goldfish survived much better we graduated to tilapia and relegated the remaining goldfish to a display tank.

Good luck.

[Nigel Clement]

Hi Josh from my readings a nitrite spike is not abnormal but once you recognise it its important to introduce more light into the system. Apparently the readings indicate that the bacteria which create the nitrites develop much faster that those which develop the nitrates so you tend to have nitrites building up faster than nitrates in the first instance until the system settles. These bacteria apparently tend to die when there is too much light. I had a similar experience with my system which is a 300gal tank with 30+ tilapia. I uncovered my tank during daylight hours and this brought the spike down over a week and a half and so far I only lost one tilapia. Hope this helps.

[TCLynx]

Nigel, your recommendation there might be a little confusing.  I know it comes from Friendlies recommendations though.  It is geared for a raft system with tilapia and you wait until you get past the initial high ammonia spike and while the nitrite is spiking really high you remove some of the rafts off of a raft tank because the bacteria that convert ammonia to nitrite are light sensitive.

 

Basically what this does is inhibit some of the bacteria that convert ammonia to nitrite so that the nitrite spike doesn't get as high as it might otherwise but remember that while doing this, the ammonia will likely be a bit higher than it would otherwise as well.

 

This method doesn't work very well with gravel beds since they block light from the bacteria naturally.

 

I don't really recommend leaving the fish tank in full sun in a new system since that usually produces an algae bloom.

[Harold Sukhbir]

Hi Josh,

For the yellowing you can try foliar spraying if you're experiencing nutrient deficiency. I use homemade seaweed extract, iron chelate,calcium and potassium and use these when a low PH make it difficult for plants to absorb nutrients from water. Or you can buffer the PH with calcium carbonate if its getting too low.

[Josh M]

WOW thanks for all the replies everyone. Really do enjoy all the help here. So far I have gotten a lot of great information. I had thought about that seaweed extract Harold but not the other stuff. I will have to look into those  So are you recommending just spraying the leaves? I don't add it to the water? Just want to make sure.

 

Oh yeh I picked up a few more Koi tonight. Happy little bunch of 8 of them now. They are all really friendly with each other. Funny how the same color types hang out with each other more.

[Harold Sukhbir]

Hi Josh,

Sorry for the late response to your question. There have been many discussions on foliar spraying as a method of adding nutrients for deficiency symptoms in plants. You can search the word foliar in the search bar. Or you can see this

http://aquaponicscommunity.com/forum/topics/flood-and-drain-cycle-a...

Josh M said:

WOW thanks for all the replies everyone. Really do enjoy all the help here. So far I have gotten a lot of great information. I had thought about that seaweed extract Harold but not the other stuff. I will have to look into those  So are you recommending just spraying the leaves? I don't add it to the water? Just want to make sure.

 

Oh yeh I picked up a few more Koi tonight. Happy little bunch of 8 of them now. They are all really friendly with each other. Funny how the same color types hang out with each other more.