Aquaponics - Overfeeding

When I was even more of a kid, my favorite book was about overfeeding fish. It looked like fun.

Uneaten fish food (not poop)

One of the problems with overfeeding isn't that your fish sit in your bath tub and get uncomfortably large and interesting, but rather that the uneaten food sits in the corner going rancid.

A mature system can handle a certain amount of excess food as it breaks down into plant food via the normal nitrogen cycle. My grow bed media is kind of mature, but my water is almost all new from a few days ago when I moved the system.

Most of the nitrifying beasties live in the gravel, but I think there are some living in the water, the slime layer on the sides of the fish tank, and on things like my pump, and pump inlet screen etc. This can mean that, after an upset like a washout and water change, the system might not be quite as capable of turning ammonia into nitrates. I think.

fish so well hidden you cant really see anything

When I changed the water and location of the fish tank there was some inevitable stressing of the fish. Shown here is an image depicting not really being able to quite see the fish because they are still hiding.

As a result of the upheaval, they went off their food.

I think the amount of ammonia introduced into the system by feeding should be similar regardless of the fish eating it or it rotting in the corner, but because I had the option of removing the uneaten food, I removed it.

why do chickens have to stand on whatever you are taking a photo of?

A few days ago I finally tracked down a product I remembered seeing in the shed when I was a kid. It's a siphon for fuel etc, but it has a squishy hand pump so you don't need to drink so much petrol. I thought it would be perfect to vacuum up any uneaten food.

It wasn't.

It didn't work very well at all. That might be why nobody sells them any more.