One of the concerns I have is I don't get any ground insulation except for the bottom of the tank that is against the ground.  I am going to look into this again for this coming winter and consider what you do.  I don't know if it will be enough but it would be nice to keep everything outdoors.  

I have a bunch of photos to post later tonight hopefully.

Update 04/28/2013:  Catfish weighed, Cycling grow bed and sump tank, p.9

I started cycling the grow bed yesterday using the sump tank only.  Today I connected the fish tank but I will disconnect it tomorrow.  The plan today was to move all the fish into the 550 gallon/2000 liter fish tank but weigh each fish as they went in.  I came up with the following numbers:

1)   20 g
2)   40 g
3)   40 g
4)   40 g
5)   50 g
6)   60 g
7)   60 g
8)   60 g
9)   70 g
10) 70 g
11) 80 g
12) 80 g
13) 80 g
14) 80 g
15) 90 g
16) 90 g
17) 100 g
18) 100 g
19) 120 g
20) 120 g
21) 130 g
22) 140 g
23) 140 g
24) 160 g
25) 160 g
26) 170 g
27) 320 g (added 06/05/2013)
28) 460 g (added 06/06/2013)
29) 210 g (added 06/15/2013)
30)  30  g (added 06/15/2013)
----------------------
Total 3370 g = 3.37 kg = 7.43 lbs.

Fish in 100 gallon tank in garage after removing most of the water:



I transferred them about 5 at a time:



They don't look too bad for not eating since 11/08/2012:



Just chillin' in my scale:









The temperature in the 100 gallon fish tank in the garage was 50.5 F:



Temperature in the outdoor system was 56 F, likely because of the nice sunny days we've been having:



The well water seems to be a constant 52 F year-round.  So what I did was transfer the fish to a 5 gallon black 'tub' at 52 F well water which is 2 degrees above their 50.5 F tank in the garage.  I let them accommodate to the 52 F and then put them in the 56 F system.  I'm only going to let the water circulate until tomorrow through the fish tank and then I'm putting the hose from the pump into the grow bed and let only the grow bed---sump tank circulate to grow bacteria.  This will likely take several weeks.  I'm thinking of slowly starting the feedings of the fish and doing water changes in the meantime and measuring ammonia.  I am going to be very cautious with the feeding.  The water temperature should be fine though for them to start feeding.  Then once the system has matured enough I will put the hose back into the fish tank and make the fish tank part of the system again.  I have a lot of lee-way in terms of the fish because there is only a little over 5 lbs of fish and this system when up and running can process the waste from 46 pounds of fish.  

I will be adding aqueous ammonia to the system either tomorrow or the next day when I disconnect the fish from the system.  I'll be shooting for between 4 to 8 parts per million of ammonia since that's apparently what they do for aquariums in fish-less cycling.





More updates in the coming days.

I love this thread.

I'm trying not to disappoint.  

Since I have quite a bit of room between the 5 lbs of fish I have and the maximum carrying capacity of 48 lbs, I will either catch more catfish or add some Yellow Perch or White Perch.  The White Perch spawn in streams and are supposed to show up here within the next couple of weeks.  It's all based on water temperature and we had a typical spring.  I still have some frozen soil in one of my two small gardens when I dig down.  So the water temperature is going to finally rise enough here soon for the spawn to be triggered.  I will aim for a big safety factor and shoot for 24 lbs of fish (ETA:  24 lbs of grown fish ie. what it will weigh at the end of the season.  I'm probably going to shoot for less than half of that, around 8 to 10 lbs that I'll put into the system).  That still gives me a lot of room to put more in the system when it's cycled properly with bacteria.

Update:  05/04/2013  Bath salts added to the gravel bed!

OK, they're not bath salts, but ammonium sulfate.  I decided on using ammonium sulfate instead of ammonia solution as a source of ammonia since it's easier to measure out the correct amount.  Here is how I calculated the amount needed:

1)  First off, I have started feeding (worms and pellets) to the fish in the fish tank (550 gallon) so the ammonia level in there was likely rising.  However, I'm only using small amounts since I don't want to 'shock' them since it has been so long they have eaten.  The temperature in the fish tank is at 54 F and the well water is 52 F.  So I decided after a few days of feeding to use the well water to do an exchange.  The water from the hose comes in at the top of the fish tank and as you may remember comes out of the tank from a stand pipe that draws water from the bottom and comes out of the tank about 6" or so from the top of the fish tank.  The water then flows into the gravel bed.  So as of a few days ago there is some (minimal) ammonia that is in the gravel bed/sump tank already circulating but it's going to be a tiny amount.  This has at least fed the portion of gravel with bacteria I've already added and maybe they've started to migrate to the rest of the gravel bed.  At this temperature it is going to be a slow process.  

I did the equivalent of a full tank of water exchange over several hours but I could only do this now because of how close the water temperature is between the fish tank and the well water.  As the season progresses, I won't have that luxury since the water temperature in the system will be a lot higher than the well water temperature and it will shock the fish as we learned from earlier in this thread (I never knew fish were that temperature sensitive!).

2) I could just continue 'feeding' ammonia-containing water from the fish tank by running the hose into the fish tank every day for 10 minutes or so, but this would be somewhat dangerous if I didn't keep up with the water changes as now I am feeding the fish and there is a greater chance of an ammonia spike.  I can still do water changes but I'll have the outflow adjusted so the water goes onto the ground and not the gravel bed, and I'm going to keep the feedings very light.  As an aside, it is much easier to deal with fish and ammonia issues if you are not feeding them since there really shouldn't be any ammonia 'spikes' which is what the situation was this winter while 'storing' the fish in the near-freezing garage.  As I noted in a previous post, the fish tank will only get water from the garden/well water hose and not from the gravel/sump tank system since now I'm adding ammonia to the gravel/sump system and while the ammonia may be tolerated, the nitrite that is formed is more toxic, even at lower concentrations than the ammonia.  The latter statement is backed up here, "Nitrite is lethal at much lower levels than ammonia. Therefore it is critical to continue daily testing and treatment until the nitrite falls to zero."  I hope this all makes sense.

3) I decided on using ammonium sulfate because it is readily available as fertilizer and a measured amount can be added to the gravel/sump tank system.  I decided against urea since this needs to be converted by the bacterial enzyme urease into ammonia.  I've already got two bacterial species to worry about so I don't need to add a third one!  Since the water pH is around 8.0 for the well water, already some of the ammonium sulfate will be accessible as ammonia for the bacteria.  The actual calculations are as follows:

The molecular weight of ammonium sulfate is 132 grams/mole.  Of this, 34g is ammonia (NH₃) so there is 34g of ammonia per mole of ammonium sulfate.

Next, I cruised some aquarium sites and researched fishless cycling.  This is adding ammonia (or its equivalent) to the fish tank without any fish which allows the bacteria to grow and convert the ammonia to nitrite and then to nitrate.  Without any fish, you don't have to worry about nitrite poisoning.  They recommend 4 to 8 ppm (parts per million).  I'm going to go with the low end and use 4ppm.

The sump tank has a maximum of 275 gallons of water.  This converts to 1040 liters.  4ppm would be 4g of ammonia (NH₃) in 1000 liters (or 1,000,000 milliliters).  Since I have 1040 liters, this comes out to 4.16g of ammonia to give a concentration of 4ppm in 1040 liters.

Next, I use the simple formula 34g NH₃/132g ammonium sulfate = 4.16g/X to get the number of grams of ammonium sulfate to give 4.16g of ammonia. This comes out to X = 16.15 grams of ammonium sulfate or rounding off to 16 grams of ammonium sulfate in 1040 liters to give a concentration of 4ppm.

So that's how much I weighed out (actually 16.04g) and put into the sump tank.

4) I'll continue to do water changes in the fish tank but I don't want to dilute the ammonia in the gravel/sump tank closed system so the water outlet from the fish tank will be diverted to the ground.  I'm also going to keep the feeding light.  It may get diluted if it rains but I'm not too concerned about that unless we get a lot of rain.

Update:  05/05/2013 Ammonia levels measured and new idea, p.9

I measured ammonia levels (in milligrams per liter) in the:

1) Well water:  0mg/L



2) Gravel bed/sump tank that I added ammonium sulfate to:  1mg/L (should be closer to 4mg/L)



3) Fish tank:  0.5mg/L



As expected, the well water had zero ammonia.  The gravel bed/sump tank had 4ppm or 4mg/L added to it so it should have been higher than 1mg/L but the shading system is somewhat crude and graduated in relatively large jumps from 1mg/L to 5mg/L.  The good news is it means my testing is at least measuring ammonia.  I also wonder how much of the ammonium sulfate is absorbed by the gravel substrate vs. how much of it stays in solution which is what I'm actually measuring.  The fish tank, despite a recent complete water change shows 0.5mg/L which is a testament to how quickly ammonia can rise when the fish are feeding.  This is the reason I have to keep an eye on it.  

The results from today did make me re-think the fish tank water changes and I may let the ammonia level rise, empty the gravel bed/sump tank, and use the garden hose to flush the fish tank into the grow bed/sump tank.  Again, temperature is going to be important as I don't want to shock the fish with much colder water than they are in.  I've read that having even only a couple of parts per million of ammonia is enough to get the bacteria growing well and too much ammonia has an adverse effect.  I'll think about it some more.  I think this is a situation where there are several 'right' answers.

On a somewhat related side-note, the White Perch are about to run here soon.  I went again on Friday to do some fishing and could have sworn I saw one large White Perch.  There were tons of White Suckers.  I couldn't get any of them to bite the hook though.  

Here's a quick look at the gravel grow bed as of today:

I added a pipe that goes down into the gravel about 6 to 8" or so and then right up to the outflow from the fish tank.  I had a lot of splashing last year and the tomato plants right around the outflow really didn't like it.  This will hopefully cut down on that and it's also more quiet.



The pipe flowing into the grow bed back from the sump tank is buried a few inches under the gravel.  I put a larger rock on top to help keep it in place.  As you can notice, I put black pipe insulation to prevent any algae from growing on the inside of the pipe:



Insulated pipe coming from the sump tank:



More updates as things move along here.

Update:  05/09/2013  Flushing fish tank water into the gravel bed/sump tank system, p.9

While I like the idea of cycling with ammonium sulfate, I thought it over and decided that I'm going to flush the fish tank with fresh water every couple of days and let the ammonia-laden water flush into the gravel bed/sump tank system.  To take care of the temperature issue, I've set up the 100 gallon fish tank next to the 550 gallon fish tank and I will keep it topped off with water, allow said water to warm to ambient temperature, and then use a pump to transfer the water to the 550 gallon fish tank.  This translates into < 20% water exchange probably every 2 days or so depending on ammonia concentrations.  Since the temperatures will be the same, there will be no 'shock' from that.  I will keep monitoring ammonia in the fish tank since I am feeding them.  

I also installed a pump that takes the water from the bottom of the tank and brings it to the top and 'splashes' it back in.  I did this last year with the trout to increase oxygenation.  The catfish would swim near the surface so I think the oxygen levels were not optimal for them even though they can survive notoriously low oxygen levels.  I am going to remove that pump once the two systems are connected as the return water from the sump tank will 'splash' into the fish tank.

I still can't believe I tried to cycle the system with fish in it last year.  That was a disaster waiting to happen.  

The water is a little murky and I can't see all the way to the bottom.  My sense is it's from algae growing in it despite the tarp over it.  There is still some light that filters through and the wind sometimes moves the tarp over so about 1/4 of the tank is getting light.  I will tie things down better this weekend.  Hopefully the algae will also be kept in check with the water changes.  The water in the gravel bed/sump tank is crystal clear but I have not rechecked the nitrite levels again.

Quick update:  

The water in the fish tank has 1mg/L of ammonia as of yesterday.  I am continuing with my new plan to flush the fish tank with 100 gallons of water at a time based on rising ammonia levels.  The 100 gallon stock tank stays topped off at all times with fresh well water which I allow to reach ambient temperature.  I have the 100 gallon tank right next to the 550 gallon fish tank, and I use a 330 gallon/hour water pump to add the water to the large fish tank.  It takes about 30 minutes to add the water to the large fish tank because of the head/lift height.  The fish tank had a temperature of 62 F this morning and the 100 gallon stock tank was at 60 F.  I think as long as the temperature is within 2 or 3 degrees I should be OK in terms of preventing temperature shock.  

One annoying thing is the fish tank has become murky.  I can see down maybe 14 inches, even when using a flashlight at night.  I only have the 25 catfish and a single 3 1/2" goldfish.  I can see the goldfish better because it is orange and white.  I am able to catch a glimpse of it every day so I'm not concerned that I can't see all the way down.  I think the problem is algae since the tarp doesn't completely block the light from getting through.  As long as it doesn't turn into pea soup I think it will be OK.  I think the water changes will help keep the algae concentration down but I may add a second tarp today for a few days to almost completely block the light and kill off the algae.  I know that blocking light completely for a few days like I tried last year works well.

This is just an interesting picture of a type of Mayfly that hatched from the gravel bed.  This insect larvae survived the entire winter to hatch yesterday.  If someone knows what kind of insect this is, please let me know.

One thing I noticed about algae with my gold fish pond, when the temps warm up the nutrient rich water causes algae levels to increase and then after a couple weeks the bloom stops and the water becomes crystal clear again.  I just make sure I keep my pump going during this period to keep the oxygen levels up.  I don't cover my little pond during this period because I have a fountain feature in it and don't want the water splashing up on the cover.

I'll keep that in mind.  Going by memory of the discussions and readings last year, I remember something about bacteria breaking down the algae after a bloom and there being a by-product produced that inhibited algae growth.  There's also barley straw extract that has the same effect.  I'm not going to worry about it if that's also been your experience.  I have good flow and oxygenation so I think they'll do fine.  It will be nice when the gravel bed has a decent amount of bacteria!

Update: 05/20/2013  Still cycling but no nitrite yet, fish look good

I've continued to cycle the gravel bed/sump tank.  What I ended up doing is continuing to flush about 100 gallons of water every 1 to 2 days into the fish tank and have that flow into the gravel bed/sump tank.  Doing it this way, I've kept the ammonia level in the fish tank right around 1mg/L, which is 1 ppm.  I haven't gotten into the full swing in terms of feeding so I can better control how quickly the ammonia will rise.  People like to do fishless cycling of aquariums with ammonia concentrations of 4 to 8 ppm, so I've been adding Ammonium Sulfate to the gravel bed/sump tank after each 100 gallon flush of the fish tank.  The water temperatures have been hovering between 58 and 61 F.  This means that the bacterial growth is slow.  There's really no way around this unless I find a way to warm the water more.  

The nitrite level has continued to be zero in the gravel bed/sump tank so I may start diverting the water from the fish tank to the ground.  The problem with the current set-up is that I may actually have the start of a decent bacterial population but the nitrite may be getting flushed out of the system when I add the 100 gallons to the fish tank.  There is no reason not to divert the water to the ground other than keeping the grass wet.  It's not a big deal as it's only temporary.  I can then add enough Ammonium Sulfate to get the ammonia level to, say, 5 as measured by my kit and keep it there.  Then the only diluting factor would be the rain but I keep the sump tank covered at all times.

I am not going to add plants yet mainly because I don't know how toxic nitrite is to plants.  I did a quick google and came up with this, but I'm sure concentration is a big factor:

Increasing the concentration of nitrite nitrogen decreased dry matter yields, total acidity, the concentration of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium in tomato plants, and increased the chlorosis of leaves and the lignification of roots.

This is an interesting abstract because it actually lists concentration, albeit in soil and not water:

It is generally believed that nitrite is an intermediate product in the conversion of ammonium to nitrate in the soil where the conversion of nitrite to nitrate is important since relatively small quantities may have toxic effects on plant growth. Nitrite is not a stable intermediate and few cases of nitrite accumulation in soils are reported. Greaves et al. 1 found that the maximum concentration of nitrite in an irrigated field in Utah did not exceed 17 lb. per acre; Feher and Vigi2 found 0.27–1.14 mg nitrite per kg in Hungarian alkaline soils, and Janssen and Metzger3 found 0.25 p.p.m. in Arizona rice fields. Sokloff and Klotz4 reported as much as 70 p.p.m. of nitrite accumulated on Romana clay loam in California after a large application of organic matter and nitrogen in the form of nitrate. Nitrite only accumulated in neutral or alkaline soils, probably because its conversion to nitrate is inhibited more than the conversion of ammonia to nitrite. Fraps and Sterges5 found that nitrites accumulated in certain soils when calcium or magnesium carbonate was added.

During cycling, the nitrite concentrations will likely get higher than numbers they mention so it's probably better not to plant anything just yet.  I've had some seeds blow into the gravel by wind and some things are starting to grow in there.  

This is the tedious part of the process.

Update:  05/22/2013 Increased ammonia to high levels in cycling tank, p.9

I went ahead and kept adding ammonium nitrate until the level jumped from 5mg/L to 10mg/L since I was shooting for around 8mg/L.  The reason for this is that we have been getting quite a bit of rain and it ends up diluting the ammonium sulfate since it's not easy or practical to cover the gravel bed.  In fact, it started raining again as soon as I added the ammonium sulfate so the level is likely down to between 5 and 8.  I'll check levels again tomorrow.  I'll keep following this and add ammonium sulfate as necessary.  The pH of the well water is 8 so the alkalinity is ensuring that some of the ammonium ion is changed into free ammonia.  My bacteria are free-basing!



Also, this is a picture of the 'diversion' tube.  I will continue the water changes this way for the fish tank until the gravel bed has enough bacteria in it.

Update:  05/27/2013  Still no nitrite, p.9

The ammonia levels are still on the high side.

I have zero nitrite.  I'm not surprised at all.  It's not like cycling a home aquarium where you can crank up the water temperature to 85 F, and the bacteria go nuts reproducing at that temperature, and you are fully cycled in 10 days or less.  This is going to unfortunately be a slow process until the weather warms up.  We've had 1 week plus of rain and the water temperature I measured today was down to 52 F.  Ouch!  The bacteria will survive no problem but there will be no significant reproduction at that temperature.  The good news is the forecasted highs for Tuesday through Monday are 70, 72, 84, 90, 90, 81 and 72.  Those are highs and not average temperatures, but it's still heading in the right direction.  I may even rig up some type of solar heater.  I have a very simple idea for one just using a black hose set atop the sump tank and circulating water through it.

Given that the fish tank was so cold I was able to use the well water to directly do a water change in the fish tank since the temperature was the same as the well water (52 F).

Update: 05/28/2013 A few new fish, p.9

I went fishing last night for White Perch.  I had no intention of catching catfish but my friend and I got into some.  We could have stayed longer but we stopped after 4 of them.  I am not sure what I'm going to do with them yet.  They were adult fish that are coming in to spawn but the season is wide open on them year-round.

This is a picture of the ones from the garage this winter for size reference.  I haven't weighed the new ones yet:



These are the new ones.  I did catch one little one as well so we actually got 5:

Update 06/03/2013:  "Houston, the Nitrate has landed", p.9

Big news!  I checked the nitrite in the grow bed/sump tank yesterday morning and it came back zero.  I actually have two kits, one recently expired and a new kit.  I checked with both kits and both showed a nitrite level of zero.  



OK, that's not surprising since the temperature hasn't been very warm so I would expect the bacteria level to still be low.  I had actually worried a little bit that the ammonia level was actually too high and that I had put a little too much Ammonium Sulfate.  You are really supposed to stick with a 4 to 8 ppm and mine was > 10 ppm, and since the color was maxed out I don't really know how much above 10 it was.  But it was very rainy when I added the Ammonium Sulfate and I figured a lot of it would get diluted.  I had checked it a couple more times and it was still > 10 ppm even with all the rain diluting it so I got a little concerned that it could actually poison the bacteria.  I didn't go crazy with the Ammonium Sulfate but it was still a thought in the back of my mind.

Well, I went ahead yesterday and checked the ammonia level which had been sky high even after the last real rain we got and it came back ZERO.  I was shocked and repeated the test and it still came back zero.  (ETA:  I had the wrong photo here.  I had put the fish tank ammonia picture here and changed it to the correct one.)



The ammonia didn't just evaporate.  The only way it was leaving the tank was either being washed out by rain, and it hadn't rained since the last time I checked it, or it was all converted to nitrate.  So there was only one test left to do:  Nitrate.  This came back way high, 50mg/L.  



I even repeated the test and it was still positive and high.



This was great news.  It means that my gravel bed is fully cycled.  It took approximately one month for the cycling to be complete which is a little surprising given the relatively low water temperatures.  But I had been trying a crude solar heating device consisting of black hose and a pump.  It would draw water from the sump tank, circulate it in the hose in the sun, and then pump it into the gravel bed.  I could have just as easily pumped it back into the sump tank.  I actually got peak temperatures of 78 F in the gravel bed/sump tank yesterday and the day before which is nice and toasty warm.





The next step was to connect the fish tank to the gravel bed and sump tank.  I thought about the best way to do this as I needed to get rid of the nitrate-laden water first.  Here is how I proceeded next:

1) I let the gravel bed fill with nitrate-laded water.

2) Once it reached the top, I waited until the siphon just started to empty the gravel bed and I then shut the pump off from the sump tank to the gravel bed.  This way there was no more nitrate-laden water going into the gravel bed.

3) Once the gravel bed was empty, I needed to fill it up with water again so the bacteria didn't die.  To do this, I added water from the garden hose (well water) into the fish tank and directed the outlet of the fish tank to fill the gravel bed.  The water temperature in the fish tank was 70 F and the temperature of the well water was 52 F.  It's a relatively big drop, but I was only adding about 100 gallons of water into a 550 gallon tank and surprisingly the water temperature didn't drop too much.  Now the gravel bed was filled with water from the fish tank which had about 0.25 ppm (it's between the 0 and the 0.5ppm) of ammonia in it since I have been slowly feeding the fish.  Here is the actual measurement of the ammonia in the fish tank from yesterday:



4) Now I had the gravel bed filled with water that was nitrate-free but did have ammonia.  The next step was to pump out the nitrate-laden water from the sump tank.  I actually used a lot of the water to water my garden and potted outdoor plants.  

5) Once the sump tank was empty, I filled it with well water, about 275 gallons.  It was probably closer to 225 gallons since I didn't want it filled up to the top because the gravel bed was filled with water already and I wouldn't need the whole sump tank filled with water.  I then hooked up the crude solar heating device and ran it for a few hours to heat up the sump tank water.

6) Once I felt the sump tank had heated up a bit to lessen the temperature shock, I connected the whole system together and started pumping water from the sump tank directly into the fish tank, from where it flowed into the gravel bed and then back into the sump tank.

7) There is still the concern of nitrite poisoning if there is a bottle-necking of ammonia being converted to nitrite but the nitrite conversion to nitrate taking longer.  So I salted the water to 1 ppt (one part per thousand) which came out to adding 6 pounds of salt to the system.

Before I started filtering, the water in the fish tank was murky.  It wasn't 'pea soup' murky, but you could only see down maybe 18" or so, certainly not down to the bottom.  Here are two pictures before connecting the fish tank:





These are two pictures taken yesterday of the system:





These are pictures of the fish in the tank today with crystal clear water after overnight filtering of the water:







These are two pictures of the system today.  I've been very scrupulous about keeping sunlight out as much as possible to help avoid algae:





So that's it.  The system is cycled.  I have salt in the system to help mitigate any nitrite should it appear (the chloride anion helps to keep out any nitrite ion from the fish's blood).  I think things still need to 'mature', but we're finally at a stage where we can start growing out the fish.  We have June, July, August, September and likely October depending on the fall temperatures.  By November, there won't be any growing although it may not be until the end of the month that the system needs to be shut down.

I'll keep this updated.

Thanks for the thread, I've been reading everything I can find on aquaponics. Can't wait to see your results

You're welcome.  Don't forget to check out Backyard Aquaponics.  I'm not affiliated with them in any way.  I don't think you can buy from them anyway since they're based out of Australia and the shipping would kill you.  I just checked Idaho and you guys have bullhead, flathead and channel catfish.  I think the channel catfish like higher oxygen levels, but you'd be all set as long as you can get good oxygenation levels.  You also have yellow perch.  Do you have an idea of what kind of fish you would use?

I haven't given that any thought, we aren't in a permanent place right now and still aren't exactly sure where we will be heading next, so it will probably just depend on the regs where we go. My wife would probably want catfish over anything else.

I know a lot of the sites that talk about aquaponics, especially if they have a 'system' to sell, don't really talk about the drawbacks you have to deal with... they pretty much just make it sound like fish + plants = profit... for instance I didn't know too much nitrate was a problem, I thought only too much ammonia was a problem for the fish.

Anyway, thanks for the link

Brief update:  I added one of the catfish I and a friend caught the other day to the big tank.  It did not swallow the hook deeply and was taken out the day it was caught.  I know I have to worry about parasites but most don't transmit well without an intermediate host.  It's the largest in the system at 320 grams:





Three of the remaining 4 fish seem to have a yellowish hue to them.  I wonder if they are Brown Bullhead and what I have in the tank are Black Bullhead.  I will research this more.  It may simply be that there can be a lot of color variation among Brown Bullhead catfish.

Brief Update:  Added one more catfish

I added one more catfish for a total of 28 fish.  This one is the largest, weighing 460 grams.  This brings the total weight of the fish in the system to 3.13 kg = 6.886 lbs.  I think I'll stop here with the catfish and add yellow or white perch.  It's supposed to rain tonight, Friday and Saturday.  If the weather holds out, I will fish on Sunday for yellow and white perch.  Pic of latest catfish:

Update:  Some unrelated thoughts

1)  I posted this picture the other day of the very crude solar heater:



This actually serves two purposes:
           
a) It does in fact heat the water.  The sun hits the black hose, heats it up, and the water inside increases in temperature.  Conversely, if the air is colder than the water then the effect is one of cooling.  

b) The pump I'm using to return the water from the sump tank to the fish tank is, IIRC, 1000 gallons an hour.  The output is actually less than that since that is the output at 1 foot of elevation and I have close to 5 feet of elevation from the bottom of the sump tank to the top of the fish tank.  This amount of flow, unfortunately, is not enough to trigger the Automatic Bell Siphon.  I used a 1" internal diameter outer tubing for this pump.  This pump also has the ability to accept a regular ?5/8" of garden hose.  However, the flow is reduced due to the reduced internal diameter.  I didn't study Bernoulli or other related equations much in college, but the flow out of the 1" internal diameter tubing is greater than the 5/8" tubing.  The problem of not triggering the Automatic Bell Siphon last year was solved by adding a second 1000 gallon per hour pump but using a garden hose attachment.  The flow of both pumps was enough to trigger the Automatic Bell Siphon.  Now that I added the solar heater, I no longer need the additional pump since I can empty the water from the solar heater back into the gravel bed, thus increasing the flow enough to trigger the Automatic Bell Siphon.  The water is 'reprocessed' by the bacteria so this is not necessarily a wasted design.  I plan to put black fabric under the hose to catch even more heat.  I also feel that the flow into the fish tank was a little on the high side especially for fish species that generally prefer still or slow moving water to fast moving water.  So now that I am back to only using one pump I think the fish will like this better.  

2) I decided to plant 5 tomato plants and the rest Swiss Chard.  I bought the plants and seeds and have to get them in there soon.

3) I will hopefully pick up more fish this weekend but I plan on only adding Yellow Perch or White Perch.  

4) The fish look phenomenal.  They are feeding actively.  I am going to revisit the calculations so I can determine a feeding schedule based on water temperature and total weight of fish which I now have.  I edited the list of fish in a post higher up on this page to reflect the 2 catfish I added.  I am now up to 3.13 kg = 6.886 lbs of fish!

5) The water is crystal clear.  My wife reminded me that last year I had camo netting for most of the season and not a tarp so a lot more sunlight was getting through to the fish tank water and this definitely contributed to a lot of algae being formed.  I have almost no light getting through the sump tank tarp, the gravel bed has gravel about 1" above the peak water level in most of the bed, and the tarp covering the fish tank has been cinched down so it no longer blows up in the corners and very little light is getting through.  It's a lot more satisfying to be able to observe the fish completely.  The gravel bed also makes a very effective filter for solid particles of fish waste.  Hopefully the clarity of the water continues to stay the same.  The catfish actually don't like light to begin with.  The Yellow Perch and White Perch I think will do fine.

6) I should probably do a write-up on my thoughts of wintering over the fish but I will think about it some more.  I think that it went very well but it's worth going over some of the issues I ran into.  One brief comment is that even with near freezing water and zero feeding, you can still get a build-up of ammonia in the water.  

Link to Veracity's thread with some detailed responses from me.

Great thread, would love to do this some day!!

This is the fish table of what is in the system as of 06/17/13:

Brown Bullhead Catfish:

1) 20 g
2) 40 g
3) 40 g
4) 40 g
5) 50 g
6) 60 g
7) 60 g
8) 60 g
9) 70 g
10) 70 g
11) 80 g
12) 80 g
13) 80 g
14) 80 g
15) 90 g
16) 90 g
17) 100 g
18) 100 g
19) 120 g
20) 120 g
21) 130 g
22) 140 g
23) 140 g
24) 160 g
25) 160 g
26) 170 g
27) 320 g (added 06/05/2013)
28) 460 g (added 06/06/2013)
29) 210 g (added 06/15/2013)
30) 30 g (added 06/15/2013)

Yellow Perch

31) 210 g (added 06/15/2013)
32) 240 g (added 06/15/2013)
33)  30 g (added 06/17/2013)
34)  20 g (added 06/17/2013)
35)  20 g (added 06/17/2013)
36)  20 g (added 06/17/2013)
37)  20 g (added 06/17/2013)
38)  20 g (added 06/17/2013)
39)  20 g (added 06/17/2013)
40)  20 g (added 06/17/2013)
41)  20 g (added 06/17/2013)
42)  20 g (added 06/17/2013)

White Perch

43) 200 g (added 06/15/2013)
44) 210 g (added 06/15/2013)
45) 740 g (added 06/15/2013)

This brings the total weight of fish to 4.97 kg = 10.96 lbs. or rounding it off to 11 pounds.  This is well below the carrying capacity of 38 pounds for the system, and allows for a wide margin of growth this summer.

In case anyone is wondering, I did have both Yellow Perch and White Perch added to my New Hampshire Non-commercial Aquaculture Permit for 2013, and I have a NH freshwater fishing license (I ice-fished this past winter).  It's otherwise illegal to transport live wild fish caught in NH except for the 12 baitfish listed by Fish and Game.

While I dont plan on doing an aquaponics system this thread is very interesting to me.

Keep up the good work.

Thank you.  I posted in your thread with the pond picture.  That could be a really sweet deal.

Update:  06/23/2013 White & Yellow Perch, Shiners, p.9

I thought I had posted this already since last weekend and I did write it up but it somehow got lost when I went to submit it.  Oh well, I'll just re-write it again.  All the pictures are in my Photobucket account so this shouldn't take long.  I will combine the White and Yellow Perch fishing trip from 8 days ago with an update on how they are doing today (06/23/2013) and do it all in the same post here.  I will also post some information about filtration as I calculated the amount of gravel I have in my system but put it in a separate post below this one probably tomorrow.

First off, I added two more catfish, one was 210g and the other 30 grams on 06/15/2013 (last Saturday).  This brings the number of catfish to 30.  I will not be adding anymore catfish to the system and will focus on other types of fish for now.  Here are pics of these last two catfish:







These are the weights and dates of the Brown Bullhead catfish added.  If there is no date then the fish are holdovers from last year's (2012) system:

1) 20 g
2) 40 g
3) 40 g
4) 40 g
5) 50 g
6) 60 g
7) 60 g
8) 60 g
9) 70 g
10) 70 g
11) 80 g
12) 80 g
13) 80 g
14) 80 g
15) 90 g
16) 90 g
17) 100 g
18) 100 g
19) 120 g
20) 120 g
21) 130 g
22) 140 g
23) 140 g
24) 160 g
25) 160 g
26) 170 g
27) 320 g (added 06/05/2013)
28) 460 g (added 06/06/2013)
29) 210 g (added 06/15/2013)
30) 30 g (added 06/15/2013)

I went fishing at a pond about 25 minutes from my house last Saturday (06/15/2013).  My goal was to catch some White Perch and Yellow Perch to add to my system.  



I fished near a small island where I've caught small Yellow Perch before and managed to catch 10 of them.  They all weighed 20g each except for one that weighed 30g.  Here they are in a bucket:



In addition to these, I also caught two large Yellow Perch weighing 240g and 210g.  Here are some pictures:





At first, they fed well but over the course of the week, the feeding dropped off and their fins seemed to have the earliest beginnings of a fungal infection.  I decided to take them out.  Ain't nobody got time for that!  Seriously, they either take to the system or not.  Once they start looking sickly, they are removed.  If they're not feeding but are swimming around OK and look generally healthy then that's fine.  But I'm not dealing with trying to nurse a sick fish back to health while jeopardizing the rest of the fish.  We ate them and they were delicious!  Breaded and pan fried.

I also caught 3 White Perch:







The big 740 g (1.6 pound) White Perch:





The big one feeding on some smelt cut bait:



The 3 White Perch are going nuts eating.  They have really taken to the system.  The two smaller ones (200g and 210g) started eating first.  I've been feeding them cut up Smelt that I bought frozen at the grocery store.  The bigger one is 740 g (1.6 pounds!) and started feeding a couple of days later and has been feeding aggressively as well.  I can't tell yet with 100% certainty, but he may have helped himself to the 20g Yellow Perch as I'm having a difficult time locating all of them.  I added a 30g Yellow Perch to the tank as well as some others and when I went to add more fish, the 30g Yellow Perch was floating belly up on the surface and had that "mauled" look to it like it had been dragged around the tank by its head.  

I also added two goldfish (120g and 100g) and the biggest Golden Shiner I've ever seen at 180g and right around 11" long.  

This is the fish table of what is in the system as of 06/17/13:

Brown Bullhead Catfish:

1) 20 g
2) 40 g
3) 40 g
4) 40 g
5) 50 g
6) 60 g
7) 60 g
8) 60 g
9) 70 g
10) 70 g
11) 80 g
12) 80 g
13) 80 g
14) 80 g
15) 90 g
16) 90 g
17) 100 g
18) 100 g
19) 120 g
20) 120 g
21) 130 g
22) 140 g
23) 140 g
24) 160 g
25) 160 g
26) 170 g
27) 320 g (added 06/05/2013)
28) 460 g (added 06/06/2013)
29) 210 g (added 06/15/2013)
30) 30 g (added 06/15/2013)

Yellow Perch

31)  30 g (added 06/17/2013)
32)  20 g (added 06/17/2013)
33)  20 g (added 06/17/2013)
34)  20 g (added 06/17/2013)
35)  20 g (added 06/17/2013)
36)  20 g (added 06/17/2013)
37)  20 g (added 06/17/2013)
38)  20 g (added 06/17/2013)
39)  20 g (added 06/17/2013)
40)  20 g (added 06/17/2013)
41)  70 g (added 06/22/2013)
42)  60 g (added 06/22/2013)
43)  40 g (added 06/22/2013)
44)  40 g (added 06/22/2013)

White Perch

45) 200 g (added 06/15/2013)
46) 210 g (added 06/15/2013)
47) 740 g (added 06/15/2013)

I will also add some goldfish and a golden shiner to the list and post a total weight of fish weight tomorrow along with some calculations regarding gravel volume.

In case anyone is wondering, I did have both Yellow Perch and White Perch added to my New Hampshire Non-commercial Aquaculture Permit for 2013, and I have a NH freshwater fishing license (I ice-fished this past winter).  It's otherwise illegal to transport live wild fish caught in NH except for the 12 baitfish listed by Fish and Game.

To be continued tomorrow.

I responded, there is so many things once can do with a piece like that. I have to remind myself to stay focused on the stuff I need to do today instead of the stuff I want to do tomorrow.

Update:  06/25/2013 Total fish count and some calculations, p.9

This post is going to jump around a bit so I apologize in advance.  

The first thing I want to go over is the final fish count in the fish tank and the various species, along with doing a final weight count as that is the determinant in whether there is enough filtration for the fish.  

I now have 30 Brown Bullhead Catfish.  I do not plan on adding any more of them for now.  They spend most of their time in the bottom third of the fish tank and I don't want it to get too crowded down there. Here is the list of the Brown Bullhead catfish with their weights and the total weight:

1) 20 g
2) 40 g
3) 40 g
4) 40 g
5) 50 g
6) 60 g
7) 60 g
8) 60 g
9) 70 g
10) 70 g
11) 80 g
12) 80 g
13) 80 g
14) 80 g
15) 90 g
16) 90 g
17) 100 g
18) 100 g
19) 120 g
20) 120 g
21) 130 g
22) 140 g
23) 140 g
24) 160 g
25) 160 g
26) 170 g
27) 320 g (added 06/05/2013)
28) 460 g (added 06/06/2013)
29) 210 g (added 06/15/2013)
30) 30 g (added 06/15/2013)
--------------------------------------------
Total = 3370 g = 3.37 kg = 7.414 lbs

The Yellow Perch have been a bit of a disaster.  I have had a high fungal infection rate and they don't seem as "tough" as other fish I have worked with.  I still strongly suspect that some of the 20g ones below have been eaten either by Brown Bullhead catfish, or the large White Perch, or both!  I will look around the tank more to see if I can get a better count.  I do get a good enough look to make sure there are no dead fish in the tank.  As far as I'm concerned, I have the following Yellow Perch in the fish tank:

31) 30 g (added 06/17/2013)
32) 20 g (added 06/17/2013)
33) 20 g (added 06/17/2013)
34) 20 g (added 06/17/2013)
35) 20 g (added 06/17/2013)
36) 20 g (added 06/17/2013)
37) 20 g (added 06/17/2013)
38) 20 g (added 06/17/2013)
39) 20 g (added 06/17/2013)
40) 20 g (added 06/17/2013)
41) 70 g (added 06/22/2013)
42) 60 g (added 06/22/2013)
43) 40 g (added 06/22/2013)
-------------------------------------------
Total = 380 g = 0.38 kg = 0.836 lbs

The White Perch have done much better than the Yellow Perch in terms of mortality, but I only have 3 of them so far.  I'd maybe like to get 2 more, but I work straight through this coming weekend until the following weekend so it will be a while before I can get out.  They are feeding aggressively and they seem to be healthy with no obvious fin fungal infections.  I did salt the water to 1 ppt (parts per thousand) again, but I am not likely near 2 ppt since there has been some water loss due to the rain.  Here is the list of White Perch:

White Perch

44) 200 g (added 06/15/2013)
45) 210 g (added 06/15/2013)
46) 740 g (added 06/15/2013)
47) 140 g (added 07/12/2013)
48) 205 g (added 07/12/2013)
49) 215 g (added 07/12/2013)
-------------------------------------------
Total = 1710 g = 1.71 kg = 3.76 lbs

I have two goldfish, one white one and an orange one.  They've been with my systems since I started this.  I had them in a separate container but I decide for simplicity's sake to add them to the fish tank.  They are good about cleaning up after the catfish.  I will also include the large Golden Shiner I caught last week since they're in the same family.

47) 120 g                        (added 06/22/2013)
48) 100 g                        (added 06/22/2013)
49) 180 g (golden shiner)  (added 06/22/2013)
-------------------------------------------
Total = 400 g = 0.4 kg = 0.88 lbs

These are some pictures of the goldfish with the Golden Shiner, and me holding the Golden Shiner to show its size.  It's somewhere around 11" long!









The total weight of fish comes to:

5300 g = 5.3 kg = 11.66 lbs  Not a bad haul.

The next topic I want to cover is my grow bed volume and to see if I have enough filtration media and, if so, how much room my fish have to grow.

The most critical value in an aquaponics system is the volume of the grow bed.  The grow bed is the container and media that is in it used as the surface onto which the bacteria grow.  I've made this point before but it is worth repeating:  The amount of fish that can be grown is completely dependent on the volume of bacteria-covered media that will break down the fish's waste products.  There are factors that The latter includes mainly the nitrogen wastes but also all the solid products.  Nematode and other worms as well as bacteria contained in the grow bed break down solid products as well and this has the effect of both detoxifying the waste products as well as making them more available for plants to absorb.  The more media, in my case gravel, that is in the grow bed the more fish you can have in your system.

The general rule of for fish stocking per Backyardaquaponics.com is 3 kg of fish per 100 liters of grow bed media.  This is regarded as the maximum ie. you do not start with that many fish, but rather that is the total amount of fish your system can theoretically support.  This translates to 6.61 pounds of fish per 26.4 gallons.

I spent some time trying to get a better idea of the volume of gravel I have in the system.  The grow bed container is 300 gallons but I don't have it completely filled.  It's also not a perfect geometric shape and widens as it reaches the top so I can't use simple math to determine the volume of the gravel.

Calculations:

1) I first calculated the volume of water that filled the grow bed to the top of the gravel.  I did this by measuring the flow rate of both pumps filling the grow bed by how long it took to fill a 5 gallon bucket.  The pump with the 1" diameter hose flowed at 10 gallons a minute and the smaller 5/8" hose flowed at 5 gallons a minute.  This gives a total flow rate of 15 gallons per minute.  I timed the filling time by observing how long it took to go from when the siphon broke on the Automatic Bell Siphon to the next time it broke.  This came to 4 min 15 sec.  Since 15 seconds is 1/4 of a minute, I used a factor of 4.25 min to multiply 15 gallons/min which gave 63.75 gallons.

2) I then filled a 5 gallon bucket with gravel grow bed media.

3) I then filled the bucket with a measured amount of water until it broke the surface of the gravel.  This came out to 2.375 gallons or a volume percent of water of 47.5%.  The volume of the media in the grow bed is then easily calculated using the following formula:

47.5%/63.75 = 100%/X where X = 134.2 gallons of grow bed media.

4) There is some 'dead space' at the bottom of the grow bed and this allows 3" of water to be at the bottom of the grow bed at all times, and this represents an additional amount of gravel.  The depth of the gravel is 15".  The 134.2 gallons of grow bed media doesn't include the 3" of grow bed volume at the bottom of the grow bed, but this gravel does contribute to filtration and I don't want to leave it out.  A rough estimate of additional volume would be:

3"/15" = Y/134.2 where Y = 26.84 gallons.  Since the container is not a perfect cylinder, I will round down to 20 gallons of additional gravel volume.  This brings the total volume to 154.2 gallons.  I've been using an estimated 200 gallons so it's a good thing I made these calculations.

So bringing it all together, if I divide 154.2 gallons by 26.4 gallons gives 5.84 and this multiplied by 6.61 pounds of fish (for each of the 26.4 gallons), I get 38.6 pounds of fish.  This is down from around 48 pounds that I have previously estimated.

That's not too shabby.  I've got a lot less fish (11.66 lbs) than that in my system but we also have to keep in mind that while the volume of bacteria-covered grow bed media is the most important factor, the other important factor is temperature:  The higher the temperature, the more the bacteria replicate and the more higher each individual bacterium's activity.  My system reached it's highest temperatures yet during the day both yesterday and today:  78 F!  Also, the feed rate will make a different in ammonia production.  I will develop a set feeding schedule and feeding amount over the next few days.  Right now I'm playing it by ear.

The last thing I want to do is go over again (yes, I realize this is repetitive) the cycling process of having bacteria grow and cover the grow bed media.  I posted this in Veracity's aquaponics thread and thought it would be worthwhile copying it here:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I will go over 3 different situations in setting up a system.  This is to better understand what is happening and the interactions between the various parts.  It's not complicated once you understand and you will know why you need to cycle your system without fish in it to avoid killing them.

Situation A:  With fish and plants but no bacteria

1) When you first start circulating the water, you will have no bacteria in the gravel or whatever media you would normally use to host the bacteria.  Having fish in the system creates ammonia as waste in the water.  Since there is no bacteria, you get no conversion of ammonia to nitrite or nitrate.  The ammonia level will continue to rise as you keep feeding the fish.  

2) What is the source of the ammonia?  You may remember from biology that the liver can cleave ammonia (NH₃) from amino acids.  An example is cleaving ammonia from glutamine to form glutamic acid.  What is the source of amino acids?  Proteins.  Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins.  What is the source of proteins?  The fish feed has, depending on the feed, about 24% protein content.  Some are higher.  Some of the protein is incorporated into the fish's muscle, but some of the protein is "burned" as an energy source and the ammonia is taken off first by the liver.  Neither fish nor terrestrial vertebrates can oxidize ammonia to nitrite or nitrate.  They must dispose of ammonia by excreting it into their environment.  Ammonia can be transformed into urea, but this is also disposed of eventually by fish.  This ammonia must be disposed of or it reaches toxic levels and eventually causes death.  Ammonia is highly toxic.  

3) Fish dispose of the ammonia in two ways.  The first is directly into the water by diffusion from the gills.  With some exceptions, freshwater fish dispose of 90%+ of ammonia waste as ammonia directly into the water.  This is a passive process and occurs because the ammonia level in the blood is higher than the surrounding water and the ammonia simply passes through the gill membranes into the water.  The second process is through urine.  There is an extra step, though.  Two ammonia molecules are combined by the liver with one carbon dioxide molecule to form urea.  The urea is then filtered by the fish's kidney and emptied into the bladder.  From the bladder, it goes into the water surrounding the fish.  If you have ever cleaned fish, you will notice that they have a bladder near the anus.  Many marine/saltwater fish actually instead concentrate urea in their blood to act as an osmotic buffer with the surrounding seawater.  But freshwater fish generally produce little urea as it does require energy to produce and the passive diffusion of ammonia into the water does not require any energy.  

4) If you continue to feed the fish, the ammonia will eventually reach a toxic level and you have a big fish kill.  If all the fish are of the same species, they will actually die within a very short time of each other, usually within hours to 24 hours.  It's like clockwork.  Since ammonia is colorless, you don't seen anything happening until it's too late.  Once one fish dies, the process of decay can actually cause the ammonia to spike very fast which probably accounts for why the rest of the fish die within 24 hours.  As you probably read from my system, that is part of the reason I do not have anything in my fish tank that can hide a dead fish.  I want to be able to remove the dead fish immediately and my system is checked at least twice a day for dead fish.  Once the system is well cycled, though, it's not really necessary.

5) Even though you may have plants in the system, their roots absorb ammonia very poorly compared to nitrate.  The presence of plants therefore has a very negligible effect on reducing the ammonia toxicity.  The ammonia levels that will kill fish are essentially harmless to plants.



Situation B:  With fish and plants and bacteria

1) If you add bacteria to the system, they will naturally colonize every surface of the system.  They actually do not like light (interesting article on light's effect on these bacteria) and will colonize the gravel or other media you will use.  There will be bacteria in the water of your system and if you know someone who has an aquarium, you can ask them for either water from it or if they can give you the used filter sponges.  The filter sponges are loaded with Nitrosomonas and Nitrobacter bacteria and you can bury the sponges in your gravel or squeeze them out as a source of bacteria.  I have a friend with a 90 gallon fish tank and I got some used filter sponges from him.  I think that also helped jump-start my system.

2) The bacteria will be happy because the fish ammonia waste will provide an ample supply of food for them.  This is where things get a little tricky.  The two species of bacteria actually don't reproduce and colonize the gravel at the same rate.  This results in the following usually fatal situation:  As the Nitrosomonas bacteria continue to grow and reproduce, further colonizing the gravel, they take ammonia and oxidize it to nitrite.  Since they can do this faster than Nitrobacter can take nitrite and oxidize it to Nitrate, and since Nitrosomonas grow significantly faster than Nitrobacter, you get a build-up of nitrite in your system.  The problem is fish have hemoglobin based blood like we do.  Nitrite is a potent oxidizer of hemoglobin and transforms it to methemoglobin.  Methemoglobin cannot carry oxygen.  For this reason, nitrite is extremely toxic to fish (or any organism using hemoglobin) because it prevents the blood from carrying oxygen.  The fish become oxygen-deprived and suffocate.  As with ammonia toxicity, the fish die within a very short period of time of each other.  Once the first fish dies, the rest can go within a few hours and up to 24 hours.  

3) Can you do anything to protect the fish against nitrite poisoning?  Yes, you can!  The chloride ion (Cl-) competes with the nitrite ion (NO[sub]2/[sub]-) in being absorbed by the fish.  If you salt your water, the absorption of nitrite can be prevented to some extent.  However, it's a very dangerous game and most people either have a very high % of fish kill or lose their fish entirely on their way to getting sufficient bacteria in their system.  Some fish are more tolerant to nitrite poisoning such as catfish.  Other fish are very sensitive to nitrite poisoning such as trout.  Also, not all fish can tolerate salting of the water.  I lost two entire batches of trout last summer (2012) trying to cycle my large system with fish.  I highly recommend against it.  One thing I noticed is that goldfish are probably the toughest bastard fish alive!  If you insist on trying to cycle your system with fish, I would recommend goldfish or a Bullhead species of catfish.  I cycled my small system last summer with goldfish and Bullhead catfish and none of them died, but the Channel catfish did die.  Channel catfish actually have a higher oxygen requirement than Bullhead catfish.  I would also keep the salt concentration in your system at 3 ppt (parts per thousand) and pray to the Aquaponics Cycling Gods that no one dies.


Situation C:  Without fish and plants, and with bacteria

1) In this situation, you have no fish to worry about as there aren't any in your system.  This is a very relaxing way to get your bacterial population up and running.  

2) What I did this season was to use ammonium sulfate as my source of ammonia.  Since the pH of my well water is 8.0, some of the ammonium ion is present as ammonia.  If you look at my aquaponics thread, it is explained pretty well.  I kept measuring nitrite levels until it would appear which would let me know that Nitrosomonas bacteria were present in sufficient quantity to convert enough of the ammonia to give a positive nitrite test.  What happened in my system, though, is that the population of bacteria increased quickly over days to the point that all of the ammonia was converted to nitrite and then quickly to nitrate by Nitrobacter.  I had 'stored' onion bags of gravel from my system from last summer in the stream out back.  The bacteria overwintered in the ice-cold water and then were put back into the system.  While I only put about 15 gallons of bacteria-covered gravel into my 200 gallons of gravel system, it gave me a jump start.  It still took about 1 month for my system to get fully cycled.

3) Once I saw that the bacteria were able to convert all that ammonia into nitrate, I knew my system was "cycle" and I connected the fish to it.  Now the source of ammonia became the fish waste rather than ammonium sulfate.  

An important point to remember about the bacteria in the system is the oxidation rate of ammonia and nitrite is heavily dependent on the water temperature.  The higher the water temperature, the faster the conversion rate.  There are tables in my thread on determining how much feed to give the catfish by weight based on the water temperature.  In this way, you don't allow the fish to get more feed than the bacteria can break down in terms of ammonia waste.

If you have questions, let me know.  I think you have your hands full getting the system together and the actual cycling part should be easy if you do it without fish.

ETA:  To answer your two specific questions more directly and without going into detail:

1)  How can I avoid that nitrite spike you wrote about?  You can't.  It is the nature of the two types of bacteria that you will get a bottle-necking of nitrite.  If you have no fish in your system, it won't matter though.

2)  When the temp drops, should I do water changes?  Water changes are not necessary at all if you, A) Cycle your system without fish.  B) Have enough plants in your system to soak up all the nitrate.  C) Reduce your feeding of the fish as the temperature drops.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


That's it for today.  If you have any advice or questions, please post them here or send me an IM.

Update:  07/19/2013 More White Perch, p.10

I went fishing this last weekend and picked up 3 more White Perch.  They seem to do better than the Yellow Perch in my specific system that also contains catfish.  The Brown Bullhead catfish are certainly living up to their namesake.  They have a "bullish" personality and are aggressive with other fish.  They will even roughhouse and bite each other during the spawning season.  I'd like to expand a little on this topic because it brings up a good principle of aquaponics that I've experienced and also read about.  

I think it is important to use fish of a similar size when stocking your system.  This is especially true of aggressive fish since they will attack and even cannibalize smaller fish of their own kind.  I had two of the smaller catfish attacked and their wounds became infected and they died.  They both had 'circular' bite marks that were really unmistakable when it came to the cause.  I don't know which of the two largest catfish did it and it may have been both.  After the second fish attack, I removed the two largest catfish and isolated them in the sump tank.  This is a good example of one of the CHIFT-PIST system's advantages ie. having a different place to put fish within the same system for a variety of reasons.  Obviously, if it's sick fish that's not a great idea since the illness may spread, but in my case it's a great place to put fish that are too aggressive for their own good.  Since moving those two a couple of weeks ago, I have not had any problems since then.

So I'm now down to 28 catfish, 26 in the main system and 2 in the sump tank that are fed separately.  My wife is not that interested in this stuff but I did convince her one night after I moved the two largest catfish to come take a look at the fish at night with a flashlight.  The third largest catfish happened to have a Yellow Perch about 2/3 way down its mouth.  The Yellow Perch and catfish simply don't get along if there is a significant disparity in size.  Catfish are also notorious for eating anything that will fit in their mouth, especially as they get older and become fans of eating other fish.  Remember that the catfish last year would go on a crayfish pogrom every week or so.  It's simply their nature.

I have found that when there is a significant size difference, or the other fish species are at least close to the same size as the catfish, the catfish seem to leave the other fish alone.  The only exception seems to be one of the goldfish that is rather small and could easily be swallowed by the remaining 2 or 3 largest catfish but has somehow survived untouched.

So if you decide to try your hand at an aquaponics system, I strongly recommend to stay with fish that are all nearly the same size, especially if you are going to keep catfish alone or mixed in with other fish.

Here are some pictures of the 3 White Perch I caught.  These guys have been awesome to keep in the system.  I found some inexpensive frozen Pacific smelt for < $3 a pound that they love.  I've also treated them to squid when I find it on sale.  I also edited the post above to reflect the new White Perch as follows:

47) 140 g (added 07/12/2013)
48) 205 g (added 07/12/2013)
49) 215 g (added 07/12/2013)







It was a great day for fishing last Friday!  Here are some pictures.  



One of my sons came with me.  This is heading back to the boat launch.  I use a canoe and it gives me access to 90% of the places I would want to go to.  It does involve quite a bit of paddling though.:



Crappie has been stocked in New Hampshire for years but I've actually never caught one here until last Friday.  I use to catch them growing up in Canada.  I don't have it listed on my aquaponics license and since it's the only one I've caught in this particular lake, I released it.  Hopefully they will set up a good population because they are delicious as many people here know!





Back to the fish in the system.  This is a feeding session with some squid:



This is a picture of my 3 goldfish.  I had 4 but one died in early spring.  I have to confess that these poor goldfish have gone through fish Hell since at least last summer.  They have gone through cycling of the small system and who knows how high an ammonia and nitrite levels.  Then they went into the big system for a while with the Channel Catfish that didn't make it, then spending the entire winter, unfed, in a 5 gallon bucket.  Goldfish are certainly the toughest freshwater fish I've come across.  If you do decide to do aquaponics with a species of fish that is essentially inedible, then I highly recommend goldfish.  I would obviously still cycle the system without the goldfish in it but going through the experience of last summer proves that they can handle just about anything you can reasonably throw at a fish.  I feel now that I owe them some measure of debt and I have not encountered any problems with keeping them with other fish.  The big orange one has gotten fat though.



One of the White Perch moving in for a piece of squid:



Another one moving in for a piece:



Yet another White Perch coming in.  You can also see a catfish "flashing" on the bottom.  They will often do this when they get parasites or irritation of their skin.  I took these pictures ? a week ago.  Since then, I've been aggressive about water changes since my nitrate levels were between 25 to 50mg/L.  I've been very careful about temperature shock.  I fill the 100 gallon stock tank with water, circulate the water for about 24 hours until it reaches ambient temperature, then add it to the system.  I did this for 4 days and salted the system to 1 ppt (part per thousand) and the fish look like a million dollars.  They're feeding aggressively and cleaning up the floor of the tank of any pellets.  The water temperature has been peaking at 78 F for the last week, maybe a little lower.  The highest recorded temperature in the system was within the last 10 or so and was 80 F.  I have a picture of it on my phone I'll have to post at some point.  That's incredibly high.  There is no way to easily keep trout in such a system.  I do wonder if you tried to acclimatize the fish ie. placing them in the system in early spring when the water temperature is 52 F and letting it slowly go up if they could handle it.  Who knows, I may try this next year.



This is just a good shot of the fish in general.  One thing I have noticed about the catfish is they can sense when the White Perch are feeding hard and will come up to investigate.  They will also hunt by sight and make a bee-line to the food, say squid, from the side so that it wasn't the scent that they used.  I know they hunt primarily by scent but they can still use their eyes.



I'll post some plant pictures as well.  They are coming along nicely.  The tomatoes are flowering but I think that month plus of rainy/cloudy weather has delayed things.  I also have Swiss Chard but that is growing slowly.  Lastly, I have cucumbers and those look great.  They are flowering so we shall see.  They did great last year.

One last point:  I've noticed that one of the surviving Yellow Perch has started eating the pellet food.  I'm a believer now that they will take pellets.

That's all for tonight.

Good info.

What's the story on White Perch? Are they good to go with a wide water temperature spread...like Catfish are?

Absolutely!  They are caught here through the ice in winter so they have no problem with near-freezing temperatures and in fact thrive in them.  They can tolerate temperatures well into the 80's F.  According to this link, their preferred temperatures are between 15.2 C and 31 C, or 59 F to 88 F.  In your sun room, how high can the temperature get?  I would be very surprised if you didn't have wild White Perch on Long Island either in fresh or salt water.  They tolerate both freshwater and saltwater, and they are related to the White Bass and Striped Bass.  They are delicious!  I did put them on the list of fish you should look at in your thread a while back.  

Now, I haven't had them eat the pellets consistently, but I really haven't done anything to train them.  I think I saw a couple of mine trying to eat the pellets this morning and I really don't see why they could not be kept in an aquaponics system and be fed pellet food.  They are known to eat fish eggs in nature so it's not a stretch to see them get used to eating pellet food but I haven't come across any significant information on this.  I'm not saying I'm the first person to use White Perch, but there's definitely not a lot of information out there on them in the aquaponics world.  Be careful:  White Perch =/= Silver Perch.  The two are completely different fish.  Silver Perch are popular to use in Australia but I wouldn't use any information about one fish for the other.  White Perch do have a silvery-white color on the sides so I warn you because I could see how one could be mistaken for the other.

Nice update!

Maybe get a worm bed going to supply FREE food, rather than buying it in?

Most fish can be trained to take artificial feed, some just take more effort.

how much are the catfish growing?

I should really do that.  I love to fish so it would serve a dual purpose of feeding the fish and 'storing' worms for when I go fishing.

I am going to calculate again the feed rates.  As you may remember from the feed table I posted last summer earlier in this thread, between 70 to 86 F the feed rate is 3% of body weight per day.  If I look at the catfish only, and I remove two catfish for the ones I've lost (crossed out) and the two that are fed separately in the sump tank (blue highlight), I end up with the numbers below.  I did not weigh the dead catfish so I'm guessing that they were around 80 g each:


1) 20 g
2) 40 g
3) 40 g
4) 40 g
5) 50 g
6) 60 g
7) 60 g
8) 60 g
9) 70 g
10) 70 g
11) 80 g
12) 80 g
13) 80 g
14) 80 g
15) 90 g
16) 90 g
17) 100 g
18) 100 g
19) 120 g
20) 120 g
21) 130 g
22) 140 g
23) 140 g
24) 160 g
25) 160 g
26) 170 g
27) 320 g (added 06/05/2013)
28) 460 g (added 06/06/2013)
29) 210 g (added 06/15/2013)
30) 30 g (added 06/15/2013)
--------------------------------------------
Total = 2430g = 2.43 kg = 5.35 lbs

3% of 2430 g = 72.9 g or 73 grams.  I have been feeding them for a while so they've likely grown.  I will play it by ear in terms of feed rate but this is a good starting point.

For the White Perch:

44) 200 g (added 06/15/2013)
45) 210 g (added 06/15/2013)
46) 740 g (added 06/15/2013)
47) 140 g (added 07/12/2013)
48) 205 g (added 07/12/2013)
49) 215 g (added 07/12/2013)
-------------------------------------------
Total = 1710 g = 1.71 kg = 3.76 lbs

3% of 1710 g = 51.3 g  This would represent the amount of pellet feed which is dry food.  How do I convert this to fresh fish or squid?  I don't know exactly but I have been feeding the White Perch to what appears to be satiety ie. when I put more food in there they are less aggressive about eating it.  Today, I put a total of 73 g of smelt and squid in there and they slowed down eating it with the last few pieces.  Anything they don't eat, the catfish are more than happy to help themselves to it.  They are certainly not shy about that!  But I would rather have the catfish eat the pellet feed.  Speaking of which:  The 3 Yellow Perch (I counted them last night) are eating the pellets as they fall to the bottom of the tank, or at least I've seen 2 out of the 3 doing so.  Except for the largest White Perch, they are also eating the pellets as they fall.  I still have one small 1/2 lb. bag of the larger pellets ?4mm long so I will feed that last bag.  It's from last summer and I'm not sure how long this food lasts for but the fresher the better.  The new feed is 2mm long.  That is on the small side for the White Perch and I would prefer larger pellets but that is all they had at that online fish store.  I can buy it from the manufacturer but I'd have to get a 40 pound bag.  Maybe I'll go this route next year depending on a few things.

I didn't do any additional calculations for the goldfish and Golden Shiner since their weight doesn't make a huge difference.  They eat mostly the pellets.  

I still didn't make it to catch crayfish.  Hopefully tonight.  If I can catch quite a bit of them, I could use them as a pretty big feed source.  There is an almost endless supply and I can catch them about 3 minutes from my house.

Next up:  Plants!

The plants have been mixed in terms of success.  The tomatoes are all indeterminates so they keep growing.  I have been cutting new shoots to hopefully get them to flower more.  They are flowering but no fruit yet.  The really good news is that these tomatoes have resisted the Verticillium Wilt that I think is what is plaguing my potted tomato plants.  Hopefully they continue to hold out.  They have an aggressive root system and have helped to keep the nitrates low.  The Swiss Chard is poor at best.  Part of it may be the inadequate sunlight due to how fast the tomatoes grew, but I will still not plant any more Swiss Chard in my system.  The cucumbers are doing great and I actually planted them late.  They are flowering like crazy.  I have one potato and one horseradish plant as well as some weeds that I never took out.  Overall, it looks OK and part of it I can blame for the lack of any sun for the entire month of June.



Tomatoes are in the back, Swiss Chard in the front/middle, English Cucumbers on the sides:



You can see the tomato roots in the Automatic Bell Siphon:







I'll keep this updated.

I don't know.  It's hard to keep track of individual fish.  I'm going to be more aggressive about feeding them the 3% feed pellets if the water is above 70 F.  My plan is to weigh each fish in the fall when I'm shutting the system down again.  I can't even count the fish properly as they move around too much.  I even thought today that it's possible the smallest one or two catfish were eaten by the largest one.  They are feeding very well though so hopefully they put on good weight.  If the temp goes down to 60 to 70 F then I'll feed them 2% of their body weight per day.  I would really rather not handle them too much.  I could take them out now and get a weight but I don't want to stress them or risk injuring any of them.  I would actually really like to weigh the largest White Perch.  He has been feeding well and it would be interesting to see if he has gained a lot of weight.  He was 1.6 pounds going in and they don't grow much past 2 pounds on average.  There are certainly monsters out there though.  One of my co-workers joked that I should fatten it up and put it in the next fish derby!

Have you ever had any root issues with tomatoes?

A few things I saw on Murray Hallam's YouTube videos were about tomato roots. The idea is that they sometimes get too invasive and either mess with the plumbing or create a dead spot in the bed.

Your pic shows the roots creeping in.

Thoughts?

If you have a system with an Automatic Bell Siphon, you simply do not get dead zones.  The water floods the grow bed, and then the entire volume of water flushes out through the Automatic Bell Siphon through siphon action.  There may be a little water left, like 1 to 2", but even that gets mixed up when fresh water starts to fill up the grow bed with the next cycle.  This is one of the reasons I advocate using this type of siphon.  If you don't use this type of siphon, I can totally see how the roots can create 'dead zones' where there is little flow because of the densely packed roots.  

In my small system from last year, the roots were so extensive that they filled most of the gravel.  I wouldn't be surprised if over 50% of the gravel had roots in it.  This still did not affect the water flow since I used an Automatic Bell Siphon for that system as well.  If you want to see tightly packed roots, try planting horseradish.  It looked like a wig when you pulled the roots out.  This is a good thing since the more root surface area you have, the more nitrate it can absorb.  

So, roots aren't a problem at all unless you have a system where the grow bed doesn't flush.

Quick note:  The small goldfish I had in my system 'disappeared'.  Again, be careful about disparate sizes of the different fish.

BTT to prevent archiving.

I've been busy with this and other projects.  I will update and everything is going well.  I have some big plans for next season and I will very likely be changing out my design.  It will depend on a few things.  I have found a source for expanded shale and may switch to that as a growth media as it has some advantages over gravel.

More later.

Out of everything you listed, (diversify, of course!) I think the yellow perch is the best tasting.  I hate catfish, but hope you can find them palatable, and I know that they are quite hardy which is a virtue in itself.  Of course in times of duress it's hard to be picky about protein.  White perch, aka white bass in my neck of the woods, seemed to me to taste like crap, and I'd recommend finding a substitute to the white perch due to their palatability and aggression (bluegill or crappie) and focus more on the yellow perch and catfish.

This thread has been an excellent read.  Thanks for continuing to update in such detail!

Yellow Perch, huh?

What are their temp limits?

Not sure on the specifics, but I have caught them from Northern Michigan to Texas to Oregon, while ice fishing in winter and while anchored or drifting with perch rigs and night crawlers in summer.

Your welcome.  

I think that part of the taste is also dependent on diet.  Look at the difference between farm-raised salmon vs. wild salmon.  

I have been pleasantly surprised by the catfish.  Where I grew up in Canada along the St-Lawrence River, the banks had a lot of clay and the bottom was mostly soft and muddy.  
The Brown Bullhead catfish were edible, but they did suffer from the "muddy" taste people often complain about catfish in that type of environment.  I did not care for them and except
for fish chowder, I really didn't pursue them.

Here in NH, the catfish are abundant in clear ponds and streams with sandy and rocky bottoms.  The flavor is excellent.  It is a soft flesh and there is no "gamey"/muddy taste at all.  I
would definitely recommend it for aquaponics because of the mud-free, clean system.  

Where I grew up was well-known for their Yellow Perch.  It is such a pleasant fish to eat.  It's a sweet, white and firm flesh.  They fed heavily on abundant snails and Amphipods.
As a result, the grew fast and large.  The fishing pressure was very low when I was a kid and you could quickly catch 30+ fish in a sitting.  They've all but been wiped out in the Lake Saint Francis portion of the river.  

I definitely agree it should be on the short list of fish you should chose.  I fish them through the ice here and my system reached 80 F this summer as a peak temperature and they had no issues with that.  So temperature
range is excellent.

I respectfully disagree about the White Perch.  Also, just to make sure we're on the same page, White Perch is a smaller cousin of the White Bass which is a smaller cousin of Striped Bass.  I've never eaten White Bass so I can't comment on the taste.  But I've eaten personally caught White Perch and Striped Bass and they're both great.  Again, it may be more related to the diet of the White Bass you're eating.  I love Rainbow Trout.  Probably one of the best fish meals I've had was a breakfast of freshly caught Rainbow Trout from the CT River that marks the border between VT and NH.  I can't begin to describe the amazing orange-red flesh and the taste.  I also caught a 16" Rainbow Trout in a local stream in the spring and I couldn't eat more than one bite.  It was terrible.  Time of year, age, diet, water conditions, bottom conditions, etc all affect fish taste differently.  In an aquaponics system there is some control over those variables.  

The White Perch have adapted very well to the system and they are excellent eating.  My wife is very picky about fish and she loves it.  In fact, this is a thread where I cooked up one of the fish Indian-style in the form of Fish Kerala.  

http://www.ar15.com/forums/t_1_5/1526443_Indian_food_lovers___Spinach_Dahl_and_Kerala_Fried_Fish.html

It has a beautiful flesh that I would describe as slightly oilier than Yellow Perch.

Update:  10/18/2013 New Beginnings

My fish have done well since my last post.  I've been busy with this and that with work, family, the garden, chickens and my fish so I haven't posted in a while.

My system temperature has dropped quite a bit and has averaged about 52F.  I am going to be weighing my fish when I close down my system which should be within a month at the very most, maybe sooner.

I ended up with very nice tomatoes in the system but they were hit with blight of some sort (? verticillium wilt) and the plants themselves died but did end up producing quite a bit of tomatoes.  I also got cucumbers.  My Swiss Chard never really took off.  I was expecting really nice plants but that never happened.  I emptied the grow bed recently of the Swiss Chard and fed it to the chickens over a period of days.  The tomato remnants are visible in the photo below.  I also want you to pay particular attention to the one plant that has done very well:  Horseradish.  I dug down a few inches and the root is actually quite large.  I will post a picture of this when I actually pull it all the way out.  



When I grew horseradish last year, instead of a nice thick root I got a big hairy mass.  This is horseradish from last year:



If I can indeed confirm a large root from this year, I think that I may gamble all or nothing and plant only horseradish.  It seems to be the plant that has done the best.  The tomatoes would be great but there is a blight I have in my soil and air that simply will not allow for it.  I'm done with tomatoes.  Even if there was an anti-fungal or anti-viral chemical I could use, it could never be used in an aquaponics system as it would kill the fish or render them inedible.  

Why horseradish?  I am running into a problem with my system because I am not adhering to one of the fundamental principles of aquaponics (I am going to work on posting a primer of sorts summarizing the basic principles of aquaponics):  The ratio of grow bed volume to fish tank volume should be 2 to 1.  Why is this?  In an aquaponics system, we are relying on bacteria to break down the fish waste.  We want the bacteria to convert ammonia to nitrite and then to the relatively harmless nitrate.  In a system where the grow bed volumes are small, you can always adjust the number of fish so you will never have a build-up of toxic ammonia or nitrite.

However, you still need to remove the nitrate.  By not having a large surface area of grow bed for plants, my plants are not capable of keeping pace with the nitrate production and I end up with high nitrate levels.  Why is it important to have low nitrate levels if it's not toxic?  Well, I think that we have to first consider the validity of the last sentence.  Toxicity has to be qualified.  Are we simply trying to maintain fish without regard to growth or growth rate?  No, we are trying to grow fish as fast as we can, especially with the short growing season I am dealing with.  In its natural environment, do fish get exposed to high nitrate levels?  The answer is no.  In an aquarium that is populated by many fish but few plants, we have the luxury of large, regular water exchanges to keep nitrate levels reasonably low.  This is not something that is feasible in an aquaponics system, or at least not long-term.  While it is certainly OK and even necessary to do water exchanges in the beginning until the plants get large enough to take care of the nitrates, it's difficult as I found out to use water exchanges to keep low nitrate levels.  The problem is you have to keep large volumes of water on hand that are at the same temperature as your fish tank.  

In terms of nitrate toxicity, I would like to direct you to the following article and related links that does a great job of exploring this topic.  I think after reading it you will come away with a better view of why it's necessary to keep the nitrate levels as low as you can to maximize the health of your fish:

Is Nitrate Toxic?  A Study of Nitrate Toxicity

While I can't say what level of nitrate is acceptable, I think that a goal of 20ppm or less is not unreasonable, and 10ppm is probably even better (ppm is the same as mg/L as there is 1,000,000 mg in one liter of water).

So, again, why horseradish?  The lone plant in the left bottom corner is horseradish.  It started off as a very small plant and went completely wild, despite being partially shaded by the tomatoes.  This is the second year I've done this and it's obvious that horseradish simply does very well in the aquaponics environment.  To summarize:

1) It is very tolerant of wide-ranging temperatures.  It can therefore be started early and will grow late.  
2) It's has large, lush green leaves that will act as a huge nitrate sink.  
3) It is extremely easy to propagate.  Small pieces of roots will generate new plants.  It can be started indoors to get a jump on things which is my plan so I can put small plants out as soon as water is flowing.
4) If everything goes well, you can harvest and can the roots after shredding.

The second topic I wanted to discuss is the media.  I've been using gravel (crushed stone) so far and one thing I've never been able to really affect is the pH.  Ideally, as the system ages the water pH should drop.  This is helpful for many reasons but foremost I think it serves as a way to create a generally hostile environment for pathogenic bacteria and other organisms.  I think that one of the issues could be my gravel/crushed stone.  It doesn't 'fizz' with hydrochloric or acetic acid but I think it likely contains enough alkaline minerals that it does adversely affect the pH.  I don't want to overstate the advantage of a lower pH.  For instance, Nitrobacter that converts nitrite into nitrate has an optimal pH range of 7.6 to 7.8 so a slightly alkaline environment is beneficial for them, though they will continue to function down to pH 5.8.  

I started searching for an alternative and came across expanded shale at this website.  Take a look at the table in the link.  It goes through the various materials that can be used and the advantages/disadvantages.  In addition to being pH neutral, expanded shale weighs considerably less than gravel or river stone.  Here are some FAQ for expanded shale at the same website.  Expanded shale is more porous so it will have more surface area for bacteria to grow on it.  

So I paid a visit to my local building material supply store and inquired about expanded shale.  They had some on hand but it was very small, maybe 1/8".  You could certainly make a go of it, especially with a small system, but I was looking for something in the 3/4" or larger range.  He was able to add it to another order for the small material and it came in today.  I also ordered some cinder blocks since I am going to change the system around a little.  Nothing dramatic but I'm going to switch two of the containers around.  

Lastly, I'm going to try some Channel Catfish again.  I actually already started with the purchase of 25 Channel Catfish in mid-July.  What an unmitigated disaster!  I got them into a 55 gallon drum that was connected to the aquaponics system outside.  They did (seemingly) well for about 7 to 10 days and then I had my first casualty.  It was covered with spots and I should have known it was ich but I was very busy at the time and it didn't hit me until several days later when other fish became ill.  I remember the same thing happened last year with two different batches that were wiped out.  

This time I decided to bring them indoors and treat them.  I used an old aquarium filter filled with gravel from the outdoor system for filtration.  I put them in a 5 gallon bucket.  I put a heater in and gradually raised the water temperature to 87F (no kidding!).  I also salted it slowly to 2 ppt.  It was a Pyrrhic victory.  Only 9 out of the 25 fish survived.  The dead ones were literally covered head to caudal fin with parasites.  However, once I got rid of the infection, the fish grew like crazy!  They were maybe 1 1/2" long and now some of the larger ones are several inches.  I also bought another 18 fish recently but they were already at about 2 inches but there were 20 in the bag.  One managed to commit suicide by jumping through the only gap I had in the netting covering the bucket.  So I have 19 left.  I am cooking them at 87F to prophylactically kill any ich.  They look great!  

This is 8 of the first Channel Catfish.  One is already in a new system as I'll describe below.  Along with these 9, I have two wild Brown Bullhead Catfish that I caugh when they were maybe 1/4" long.  So there is a total of 11 catfish from this first batch.  Here is a picture of the 8 in the 5 gallon bucket.  Yes, I know it's horrific to keep that many fish in such a small container but that's all I had room for at the time:



Filter, heater, aerator and catfish all in a 5 gallon bucket!



I had an old 38 gallon water softener barrel so I bought a canister filter and turned it into a nursery.  There is a heater with the water temperature now at 81.5F, an aerator and the canister filter.







I cycled it using urea and used guppies to make sure everything was good once the ammonia and nitrites dropped to zero.  I did a big water change to lower the nitrates.  The guppies were doing well so I decided to add the Channel Catfish.





I made the mistake of feeding the fish heavily rather than very slowly increasing the food to allow for replication and expansion of the bacterial population.  Today, I found a big nitrite spike, 5mg/L!  Ammonia is a little up at 0.25mg/L.  I had just scolded someone in GD the other day for recommending no cycling when I made a very similar mistake of feeding the fish too much and overwhelming the bacteria.  The fish look great though.  I have stopped all feeding for now, did a 35% water change and salted to 1 ppt.  The chloride ion displaces nitrite from the blood and reduced the toxicity of nitrite.  I am going to wait until all the nitrite is cleared and then begin feeding again very, very slowly.

I have the other 19 new Channel Catfish in the 5 gallon bucket and they look great.  I have them under quarantine for 3 weeks and if they look good then I'll add them to the other catfish.  It's crowded for any aquarium hobbyist, but I plan on transferring the fish to a 100 gallon stock tank and grow them out until I can put them outside in the spring (2014).  That's assuming I can keep them all alive until then.

So to summarize:

1) Horseradish for plants next year.
2) Expanded shale for grow bed media.
3) Channel Catfish for fish next year.  This is a long process but I really want to try them as they grow very fast apparently.  If all goes well, I will have 9 + 19 = 28 Channel Catfish for the outdoor system.

Tagging this as something I plan on getting into next year.

If you or anyone have specific questions, please post here or send me an IM.

Official Backyard Aquaponics Thread--Update: 11/24/2013 Big fish kill, p.10

I went downstairs on 11/16/2013 to check on my fish and the pumps were all off.  There is no way to know how long they had been like that but when I went to feed them the night before everything was good.  I was busy the whole next day so it may have been 24 hours from the last time I had seen them.  I simply would not forget to turn the pumps back on (I turn them off to while feeding them).  The water outlet is on the top and it makes a nice splashing noise as it hits the water which helps with oxygenation.  So there is both a visual and auditory cue that it is working.  I also always checked to make sure the aerator was working and that bubbles were rising to the top.  I have to peak under where the water goes in so I can see the aeration stone at the bottom of the tank.

The plug has a reset fuse so I am presuming that it was set off for whatever reason.  I have had the chance to discuss this with a friend who does electrical maintenance and his conclusion based on the information I provided was that the fuse tripped.  It's out of reach of the kids so I do not think they did it, and it's in the basement which is locked off to them anyway and they are not allowed downstairs.  There's bleach, insecticides, etc. I don't want them getting into.

I looked down and saw cloudy water and fish floating.  Not a good sign!

Dead Channel catfish:







25 fish are dead.  There are 3 small survivors.  I am sick over this.  Yes, I realize there are babies dying somewhere in the world so I am keeping things in perspective.  I wasn't "emotionally" attached to the fish like a cat or a dog as I was planning on eating them some day!  Although I have to admit they were cute with their large eyes compared to other catfish and seem to have more personality.  At the end of the day, what bothers me is all the effort that went into this.

I'm kicking myself for not having moved them to the larger, flatter container sooner.  In fact, that's exactly what I was going downstairs to do that day!  I had already moved the 75 gallon stock tank down there the day before to allow it to warm up since I had it next to the driveway outside.  I think the added surface area of the stock tank would have provided some measure of safety and they could have potentially survived, at least a greater number of them.

75 gallon stock tank:



These are not Brown Bullhead catfish.  The latter are much more tolerant of low oxygen levels.  In fact, Brown Bullhead catfish are notorious in how well they can survive in water with extremely low oxygen concentrations. Channel catfish, I am learning, are simply not the same.  They require good water flow and an aerator, especially if the water temperature is high and they are stocked densely as they were in this case.  As the aquarium keepers here know, you have to be very careful with oxygenation as the higher the water temperature, the lower the dissolved oxygen in the water.  This means you have to keep a good flow going and you must have aeration.  The 38 gallon container was run on the ragged edge and any aquarium hobbyist with even a little experience would have gotten chest pains looking at the set-up.  As long as their was flow, it was OK.    

I'm very disappointed but I've already started searching for replacements.  The following website seems to have very reasonable prices, even cheaper than what I could get
through the pet store:

http://www.smithcreekfishfarm.com/shipping_and_deliveries.cfm

I sent them an email for a price quote but they did not get back to me.  From their website, though, it looks like they close from November to March 31.  Oops!  So they may not answer emails for quotes until then.  I will try again at that time.  I also put in a call to the pet store where I bought my now dead ones and they are getting back to me tomorrow (Monday) with a price quote if they can even find them.  They tend to be seasonal.

I now have the 75 gallon set up in the basement with the 3 surviving Channel catfish and two small Brown Bullhead catfish that I was raising with the Channel catfish but that I removed when the bigger ones started to bite their fins.  I may have to remove them again.

The cinder blocks on the left will hopefully be used to hold up the new grow bed.  The bag on the right has 3/4" expended shale that I am using as a new grow bed media:







The following are pictures of the now dead Channel cats except for 3 that survived.  Live and learn:









I'll definitely update if I get more fish.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed that they are still available and for a reasonable price.

Darn.  Sorry to read that!

Thanks.  If I can get my hands on more of them, I'm going to be extra careful.  With winter, I have a lot less projects outdoors so it should help my focus on them.  The pet store didn't have any they could get for next week when I spoke with them today but they are hoping they can get some from another place.  These tend to be seasonal in terms of availability so I may have to wait until the spring.  Hopefully that is not the case.

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The pet store said they are pretty sure they can get more fish for me.  Likely two weeks from today.  They usually get shipments in every Tuesday but this being a holiday weekend it may mess things up and it may not be until two weeks from today.  They said to call this Monday though because it could be next Tuesday.  I may get more fish to kill sooner than I think.

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