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The plan was to move the remaining 27 fish back to the outdoor tank May 1. However, the weather did not cooperate. Night time temps dropped into the 40’s–too cold for tilapia.
At last, with the weather warming, I finally got them all transferred outside. Guess what? Another cold wave. So… in with the heaters. To keep from having to heat all 1000 gallons( goldfish are in the other tank), I omitted the tilapia tank from the recirculation process during the night. Then in the morning, it was back online. Fortunately, it was only necessary to do this three nights.
Now if they will just grow….
It’s been awhile since my last post and much has changed. With apologies to Bobby Fuller, my title should be “I fought the weather and the weather won…” After 2 weeks of consecutive night time temperatures dropping below 32, I conceded the fight to keep the greenhouse warm. At this point no additional fish had become hawk food, meaning we had somewhere around 200.
Time for another strategy. We decided to move the fish into an enclosed structure on our property, called the Resource Center(for reasons I shall not go into). This is a 16×24 foot room with electricity and some level of insulation. We acquired 2 55 gallon tanks from my “mentor” and also employed a 100 gallon tub.
Next came filtration and heaters. The heaters kept the water above 60; however the filtration proved insufficient. By the time the dust, or shall I say fish poo, settled we had lost 90% (at least the hawk was happy).
I’ll continue the saga later….
Given that the 1-hour burn stove was not going to be a long term solution, other avenues needed to be explored. Last year I had used a propane heater on occasion. But the couple of times I used it this year proved to be on the expensive side. Basically I could get 20 hrs of heat out of 1 $18 fill. That is not in keeping within my shoestring budget.
Fortunately I had access to a fireplace box that prior owners said could keep their house warm(?) and last through the night. I enlisted the help of some friends and managed to install it in the fishhouse. It appeared to be about three times as large as the other stove.
So I soon began heating with that. It soon became evident that 1) it definitely put out more heat, 2) it was going to take a lot more wood and 3) it wasn’t going to last through the night if I wanted to maintain a hot enough fire to keep my fish happy.
Calling on several of my Paul Bunyanish friends, I have so far had a sufficient supply of wood. At the present rate I have enough on hand to last through the end of the month.
Several observations… I need to add wood at least every 2 hours in order to keep the fishhouse reasonable. Sunny and cold days are preferable to Cloudy and Cool. When the sun shines the temperature inside rises to 70, thereby warming the water concomitantly. Therefore no additional heat is needed. However during those cloudy days I’ve been forced to either tend the fire (not ideal) or call on a kerosene heater that I drug out of storage.
So much for keeping the air warm, more on what I’m doing with the water next time…
With the first signs of cold, I made 2 rules regarding heating the fishhouse. First, if the temperature did not exceed 62 or the water temp in the evening was approaching the death line–62, I would use the wood burning stove for the evening, that being from when I got off work, about 6:30 until I went to bed, about 11:00. The second was that if the overnight low was forecasted to be below freezing, I would keep the fire going throughout the night.
Well, little did I know that the global warming chaps forgot to tell the One in charge of the weather. Although we have not seen all-time lows, this is the longest period of continuous subfreezing temps I can remember. Needless to say, I have questioned the sanity of Rule #2.
The wood burning stove I was using, basically required wood to be added every hour, if it were going to have any effect on the ambient air temp. So either I was going to be “Sleepless in Athens,” or find alternative ways of heating.
More on alternatives next time…
Our strategy was to move the fish from the second system back into the two fish tanks from whence they had come, thereby having to keep the water temp up in only half the water. Although we could be taxing the bio filtering part of the system, we felt that since fish activity decreases with drops in temp, it should/would have to suffice. As an aside, the amount of food they were eating had dropped precipitously.
So I employed my ace fish fisher-outer,aka my wife, to begin the transfer. We continued to have dead bodies, probably because of the heightened stress caused by the lingering effects of the cold water and the transfer operation. This continued for several days.
In the last couple of weeks, our fatalities have basically ceased. However the extended cold spell we are experiencing, has created continuing opportunities…
Finally the two systems had stabilized fairly well. But there was soon trouble in River City…
With the night time temperatures dropping as winter approached, the water temperature began to fall as well. In the first system I was using 3 300 watt heaters in the sump. For the second system, I wasn’t using any. This was due to a limited amount of power being delivered to the greenhouse aka fishhouse. The power was/is coming from 2 extension cords being run from an out building I have. With what I had in place electricity wise, 2 sump pumps, 2 lights, 2 air pumps and the 3 heaters, I figured I was close to overloading the circuits.
As the temperature of the water in the second system began to edge ever so closely to the 60 degree mark we were beginning to see the bottoms of fish – not good.
So it became a daily chore to remove floating as opposed to swimming bodies. After a couple of days of this, we decided on a loss prevention strategy…..
Shortly after transferring half the fish population, the 1500gpm pump in the second system sump failed. Since this is the only pump in the system, it created a crisis – I did not have a backup. I called my long time friend and jack of all trades Dan but was unable to reach him.
So on my wife’s suggestion, I used the blower end of my shop-vac to pump air into the water. I was doing this for about 10 minutes every hour. After about 2 hours in the evening, I smelled something burning–my vac had succumbed! Well with nothing else to do, as Samuel Pepys said… “And so to bed.”
The next morning Dan called and brought me a fountain pump to get the system back on line. With his help we replumbed the sump and the system was back working.
Opportunity #1 handled with no casualties.
It’s been awhile since my last post and alot of “opportunities” have occurred. I’ll be updating the status in a series of updates in the next couple of days. So stay tuned….
First, the fishhouse has been expanded. With approximately 500 fish, it was necessary to basically double the tank volume. So I built a second system consisting of a 500 gallon fish tank, growbeds made up of a 4 tub stainless steel sink, and a 300 gallon sump. Pictures to follow. In the fall we transferred half the fish to the second system. Then the problems began. More next time…
In the last few days, there has been a huge spike in the ammonia levels in the tanks. Needless to say I have had to take severe corrective action. This entailed water change and adding bacteria.
I think it started when I was concerned with the Dissolved Oxygen level. My test kit did not include any way of tracking the DO levels. With the fish at the top of the water, I surmised that they were seeking oxygen. So I thought I would increase the cycle. The cycle had been 15 min on and 45 min off. I changed it to 30 min on and 60 min off. For whatever reason, things went south at this point.
Hopefully a state of equilibrium is being restored. It is clear that AP is a very integrated system.
After 2 months the system may be starting to balance out. I had a spike in the ammonia but with some water replacement, it seems to be back in an acceptable range.
They are hungry creatures. When feeding time comes, they practically jump out of the tank. They are clearly growing.
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