Comment

Comment by George T on October 3, 2010 at 5:18pm

I'd like to join in the group therapy here, if I may. Last week I lost Everything (10 tilapia) in a 60 gallon test system because a timer failed.

There's no getting around the reality of timers being a failure point. I'm intrigued with the idea of indexing valves but if it involves the use a timer that worries me a bit. Maybe some timers are reliable enough to eliminate that concern, I don't know. I'd like to think I could count on one for many years. Also, there may be a way to build in some redundancy to reduce the possibility of catastrophic loss. These things might be a good topic. I'm more of a question guy than answer guy at this point. I'm considering sinking a 1,000 gal fish tank in the ground and using an indexing valve with no sump and no siphons - simply drain back to the fish tank. Whether that's feasible/reliable, I don't know. It seems simpler to me.

Comment by Sylvia Bernstein on October 3, 2010 at 7:44am

I'd like to join in the group therapy here, if I may. Last week I lost Everything (10 tilapia) in a 60 gallon test system because a timer failed. I always test the pumps every day by overriding the timers if they don't cycle on while I'm in the greenhouse...and everything was working fine that day...but it didn't occur to me that a timer would fail - never had that happen before. Live and learn, but that sure doesn't help the poor tilapia. Ruins you morning (day?) when that happens, so I can so sympathize, Cori!

Comment by Cori MacNaughton on October 3, 2010 at 5:39am

Unfortunately ours were a bit past the point of filleting, but I do want the bumper sticker! ;-)

Comment by TCLynx on October 2, 2010 at 5:26pm

by JT I mean Jim Tinker

Comment by TCLynx on October 2, 2010 at 5:24pm

Ron, that should be a bumper sticker. Hum, maybe JT can do that for us?

Comment by Ron Thompson on October 2, 2010 at 5:17pm

Been there, done that.. got the filets in the freezer.

Comment by TCLynx on October 2, 2010 at 5:05pm

If they were breeding size, take a close look to see if you might have fry hiding out in your system somewhere.

Yea, in hot weather it doesn't take long for the fish to use up all the dissolved oxygen. Multiple means of aeration can sometimes save from complete catastrophe in case of a single failure but then again, rarely does just one thing go wrong at a time.

Sorry for the loss Cori, and then we move on to improve the system (that's me "ok so what do we do now?")

Comment by Cori MacNaughton on October 2, 2010 at 1:49pm

Well, it's an unfortunate consequence of having friends who don't know much about fish taking care of the place while we were gone. Such is life. I laughed a couple of weeks ago at whoever commented on most aquaponists being serial tilapia killers - not quite so funny now, especially since they were all breeding size.

The irony is that it, even though we have been having ongoing filtration problems, the filter remained working fine - what killed them was a simple air pump failure. At least our large plecostomus made it.

Comment by Daniel E Murphy on October 2, 2010 at 12:56pm

OMG Cori :/ sorry to hear that. Any time a fish dies i go through "Fish Death Guilt". If more than a couple die its "Fish Massacre Guilt"... That really sucks... i mope around knowing I really suck and thinking God is mad at me for doing that... :P

Comment by Cori MacNaughton on October 2, 2010 at 12:34pm

I would like to join you as well - we just returned from a two-week trip to find we had a major fish kill and lost all our blue tilapia, so once we move we will be starting over from scratch. Damn.

Please keep us posted with directions as well.

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