dying cat fish Help

[Randy Paul]

All

Need help ,  I have channel cats and they have been doing Great all summer,  growing like crazy .  I live in Ohio and it is now getting colder.    The Cat fish slowed way down on eating about 2 weeks ago but they were still eating some.  I thought that was normal.   but over the weeked I have lost 2 of the bigger cat fish.  The water quality is every think is normal.    The water temp is at 58 deg F .  I thought that cat fish can take colder water, so did not think that is the problem.     There is nothing visiable wrong with the cat fish when I take them out .  Any ideas ?

 

600 gal tanks

3 4 x  8 grow beds.

PH  7.2

ammonia  0-.25 range

nitrite 0

Nitrate 40

[Keith Rowan]

hello fellow buckeye!

as the weather changes in ohio.. you'll get much bigger swings in temp in a small body of water than you will in a pond..

catfish can and will survive in ohio ponds, even in "frozen" ponds, as long as they have oxygen, but a pond getting to that stage is a slow change..

what kind of temp swings are you getting between day and night?  you might need to provide some heat just to slow down the swing at night

how many fish/lbs in how much water?

[Randy]

Pardon me jumping in here. Regarding temperature swings would turning the pump off at night be much help? and what would be the down side?

[Kyle]

I grew up around Cincinnati so I know it gets cold there. My question is how deep are your tanks? I know during the winter a lot of fish with gravitate to the bottom of ponds and lakes in the deeper water because the temp doesn't change much. Shallow tanks obviously will have a problem with temp changes. I would try adding a supplemental heat source before I suspected anything actually wrong with the fish.

As to turning off the pump at night, it would help keep the water from cooling down a bit, that's true. I'm not sure what the downside might be thought. I expect that it would simply result in a build up of solid matter in the bottom of your tanks but if your fish aren't eating as much they aren't excreting as much either.