Aquaponics - Algae eating suckfish death

The smaller of my two little algae eating fish died today.

It always looked a little off, and spent a few hours swimming upside down in the days after I first put them in there, but has since looked happy enough. I'm wondering if it got too cold for it. I was told they were happy in unheated water, but perhaps if it was already a bit sick...

The temperatures in my system, have been down around 10c the last few days.

I have a really bad cold, and have totally failed to seal up all the gaps in my grow house due to spending every spare minute of my life in bed. Those gaps include one big enough for me to get through.

I'm also not sure that this grow house really works. Even when it was first installed and was in the standard layout, it never seemed warm. I think I might need to investigate going back to a clear plastic version.

The other potential problem is that the relative size of the fish tank to the grow house means it acts as a massive heat sink, and takes 5 degrees of air temperature gain and turns it into 1 degree of water temperature gain. From memory, water has 5 times the thermal capacity of air, so that might be a large part of the problem.

In other words, a big grow house can heat a little fish tank, but a small grow house can't heat a large fish tank.





120 Things in 20 years discovers that sometimes an aquaponics algae eating suckfish can get dead due to a large thermal mass in your grow house (or something else). Who knew.

Aquaponics - Yet another fish death

I lost another fish today.

And there is still another doing the fin on one side thing, trying to stay upright.

I found a stack of flowers in the bottom of my to pup water tub, so I guess it could be something to do with that as well, but my bet is currently on either the rotting bean and cok choy plant, or that I accidentally overfed them.

I cant be sure if this is still the aftermath of the damage that was done when I had the nitrite and ammonia spike, or if this is some ongoing problem.

I see ants in the water every day, and sitting on the rim of the fish tank, is a collection of ant parts that the ants have presumably thrown out their window.

If there is a pile of ant parts on the rim, I'm guessing quite a number fall into the tank as well.

I have no idea if ants and ant parts are bad for an aquaponics system, but I suspect they don't do any great good.

Losing fish Is no fun.

Waiting is even less fun.



120 Things in 20 years - Aquaponics - Yet another fish death

Aquaponics - Nitrogen fixation

I recently had a spike in nitrites that killed two fish. Actually it killed one fish. I killed and ate the other. But they both died as a result of their being too much ammonia and or nitrite in the system.

I put it down to some mistake I must have made with feeding, but it occurs to me that it might be about my peas and beans.

Nitrogen fixing legumes take nitrogen out of the atmosphere, and stick it into the soil. Most plants take nitrogen out of the soil.

I lifted one of my bean plants that's already got beans growing on it to have a loot at the roots, and remembered that in a dirt garden, you rotate crops from season to season, and plant things like beans in a bed before you plant things like tomatoes.

Tomatoes like a lot of nitrogen, and beans put the stuff in the ground. Or at least I think that's what I remember.

But this lead me to wonder if it might be my beans putting too much nutrient into my grow bed that had caused my fish to die.










I'm still at the wondering stage, so don't take this as science or anything, but according to Wikipedia's article on Nitrogen Fixation, the nitrogen goes in as ammonia.

Bad beans.

I also seem to remember that the nitrogen forms on the roots as nodules, in the form of match head sized lumpy things. But I see nothing like that on my roots.










And...

I cant remember if the nitrogen only goes into the soil once the plants die.

But...

I did have a bok choy plant and a bean plant go all rotten on me, so there could well be a connection.

I hope the fish deaths turn out to be natures fault after all.

I'll find out and get back to you if it turns out to be interesting.