Thanks for the update C4. I would love to do trout but it will take some work to keep my temps right.
I am still experimenting with mine and gold fish.
When I started it was an experiment growing wheat and wanting a loaf of bread a week and it worked!
Then my Dr said no more wheat in my diet
Switched to tomatoes and peppers for salsa and did great!
Then my Dr said no more peppers and salsa.

Looking at a new build for a salad garden that is Dr approved but the excitement isn't there yet.
I have kohlrabi kale and cabbage growing basicly wild at the moment.

Its automated year round in my greenhouse and I just fill the feeders every two weeks at this point.

ETA what will it take to get to a few pounds of trout on the grill every month?

Do you have a trout fish hatchery within a reasonable driving distance?  That's one of the reasons I'm still trying to breed my catfish as I could grow my own and not have to buy them from the pet store (I know you don't eat catfish though).  

In talking with the hatchery, and from my very limited experience, the strains of Rainbow trout they have out there now grow very fast.  Getting a few pounds a month should be easy.  You're right that temperature is a big factor that is not an issue with catfish given their broad temperature tolerance from near freezing and up well into the 90'sF.

Incoming Noob.

While it's winter up here, I've been looking into aquaponics to do this spring/summer. Is there a good place to get noob information to start one on a small scale?

Are there any pictures of small scale ones? Maybe ones to start out in my garage or on a screened in porch. I want to start out small to keep the Mrs. happy!

Check out www.backyardaquaponics.com.  It's based in Australia and I have zero connection to them though I do have an account on there.  
They know aquaponics inside and out.  There are also Americans and other nationalities posting there.  Some of the fish you won't recognize as they are native to Australia only.

If you read through this thread, you'll see some pictures of my smaller system.  I used a ? 100 gallon stock tank as my sump tank, along with a ~ 20 gallon grow bed and a 55 gallon fish tank.  It's in the right bottom part of this picture.



The grow bed had pea gravel in it.  The fish were in the 55 gallon drum.  There was a small pump in the sump tank.  This is the same "small" system viewed from the top.  The 55 gallon barrel has a blue tarp over it to prevent algae growth.  The grow bed is filled with tomato, cucumber and a corn plant.  You can scale it up or down as much as you want.  The principle of running the outflow from the fish tank into a grow bed with plants remains.

Sorry, @Kitties-with-Sigs, I've been stupid busy.

I will post an update soon (with pics!) but here's what's happening in a nutshell:

1) I recently started up my outdoor system again.

2) No trout this year!  Too much of a distraction.  Although, if anyone has questions about raising Rainbow Trout in an aquaponics system, please ask as it went extremely well for me.  The only issue really is water temperature.  I was lucky since my well water is at 52F year-round and I only had to use it for a few days in the dead of summer to cool things off.

3) I have put my Channel catfish back outside and they are looking great.  

4) They are in good physical shape and now 3 years old.  The breeding age is minimum 2 to 3, and I think they were still a little on the small side last year.  They are now exhibiting (what I think) is good sexual dimorphism.  The males are the largest with darker skin and fat, broad heads.  The females are more "torpedo" shaped and are slightly lighter in color.  The females will also have 2 vent holes that will get reddish around them as the eggs begin to develop.

5) From reading my Channel catfish reference book, water temperatures must drop to at least 55F for one month, which they did this winter in the basement, to induce vernalization.  After this period, the water temperature must rise above 70F.  The current temperature in the outdoor fish tank is 73F.  I am going to start up my solar heater again this year to keep the temperature above 70F.  



6) If I see that the females are increasing in girth, I will set up my 1100 gallon above ground pool in my garage and bring the water temperature up to 80F.  I already have my plastic totes that I will be using as breeding containers.  I have 3 of them.  I will discuss breeding more when the time comes.

7) I will pick a pair and put them in the breeding tank and hopefully nature will take its course



PS:  I will also post pictures of my Stickleback.  It's a very unique fish that is in the Seahorse family.  I can give a primer on breeding Daphnia, Clamshrimp and Cyclops which I use as live food for the Stickleback.

Thank you.

I will try to be aggressive about updates.

ETA:  People also love picture so I will post many.

Update:  08/12/2017

1) Sorry about the loss of pictures I had on Photobucket.  I have been using Imgur for a while so it affects mainly older pictures.

2) I had a catastrophic loss of fish.  Eight out of my 11 adult 3+ year-old fish died when one of the plugs in the 500 gallon tank came loose and all the water drained from the tank.  It was a colossally stupid mistake on my part.  It happened in June.  I should have known that catfish that size could easily work the rubber plugs loose.  The human mind sometimes has difficulty identifying a completely obvious problem if there has never been an issue with it before.  I have lots of pictures of the fish and will post some pictures showing the sexual dimorphism.  All the females had eggs, albeit underdeveloped.  They were sexually mature.  The largest male was > 5 pounds and 21" long.

3) Three of the 11 fish were male.  I thought this was odd but it may be that the culling process from stress and disease killed off more males than females out of the original ~ 25 fish.

4) I was pretty upset and decided to forge ahead.  I bought more fingerling catfish and I also bought a new 500 gallon container.  Since it is brand-new, it has no holes.

5) I've also rigged up float switches that sends a signal to my IRIS home security system and alerts my phone.  The interesting part is I can measure flow as well because when the pump stops, the water level drops about 2" in the main 500-gallon fish tank.  I will get pictures of that as well.  I think a lot of you would find the set-up interesting.  The float switch is connected to a leak detector and when the float drops, it connects a Reed switch that sets off the leak detector.  If I'm going to invest more time and money, I want to create as much of a fail-safe system as possible.

6) I ran into an interesting problem with buying new fish.  I never thought anything about how Channel catfish are often referred to as "Blue Channel catfish".  It turns out there is a hybrid made from mating a male Blue catfish and a female Channel catfish.  I will post pictures of an article I found on how to distinguish between the Blue catfish, Channel catfish, and Blue Channel catfish hybrids.  I also had some of my new baby catfish die and I have pictures of those as well.  The fish I got were in terrible condition, including being severely underweight and infected with Ich.  I will go into much more detail regarding that.

Lots more things to discuss.

I've decided to pull back from some of my other hobbies/activities to focus more on the fish.  I really think I could breed them successfully.  We shall see.

The semi-good news is of the 3 adult fish that survived, 1 is male and 2 female.  They were extremely stressed by the experience.  The two females are both infected with Columnaris and I'm trying to treat that.  Hopefully they heal up.  They reside in the 500-gallon tank and the male is kept in the 300-gallon sump tank.  The male looks great and set up shop in a 30-gallon, pea-gravel lined, nesting Tupperware container.

I haven't had time to update but I have time off coming up and will do so.  More explanations, plans and pictures to follow.

Die offs suck glad you're sticking with it.
I lost most of my fish awhile back and it took the wind out of my sails but I am slowly getting it back together.

Yes, sucks badly, especially when avoidable.  

Looking back, though, I'm now recalling how it hasn't been smooth sailing and there was a steep learning curve, with lots of bumps along the way.

The babies look great.  The 3 surviving adults are also settling in.

I can't stop now, since I know I can raise fish to adulthood.  How hard can it be to breed them?  They've been doing it for 17 million years.

@BUCK1911
@Kitties-with-Sigs

These are pictures of some of the deceased Channel catfish.  

These are two good pictures to show the classic difference between a male and female Channel catfish.  

The male (right in first picture and left in second picture) has a larger and broader head whose width is greater than the rest of the body.  

The female (left in first picture and right in the second picture) has a smaller and narrower head whose width is less than some parts of the rest of the body, especially the abdomen when full of eggs.





The genital openings are distinctly different between male and female.  The male has a more raised opening at the top where semen comes out, similar to a nipple.  This is seen on the right in the picture below.  The female has a flatter opening at the top, but there is a furrow that connects it with the anus.



I was able to confirm male vs female from the gonads, testis in the males:



And ovaries in the females:



The largest male was 21" long and weighed over 5 pounds!

More later.

Thank you.

I am getting a little dizzy trying to confirm the sex of the remaining fish.  I took them out of the water to photograph the other day and I am confident that there is a male.  The other two seem to be female but I'm not certain.  Their outward appearance is certainly female but not 100% certain about the genitals.  

What my plans are:

1) I talked to a real estate agent yesterday about finding a property with a pond.  I need space if I'm going to continue with this.  If I had a pond, I likely would have "stored" several of the adult fish there and kept the rest more comfortably for breeding in the container space I have.  It's a challenge to keep that many fish, that size in such a small space.  Although it is doable.  I will keep my search updated.

2) I will try to get better pictures of the genital vents of the 3 adult fish and possibly reach out to someone at Auburn University as they do a lot of breeding research.

3) I will give an update on my attempts to breed the remaining fish in the last 2 months and why I think it didn't succeed.

4) I will show you the float switches I rigged up that sends a call to my cell phone if the flow in the fish tank stops or if the water level drops.  You will find it very simple but interesting.

5) I will give a run-down of the new baby catfish I bough back after the big fish kill and how that is going.  I learned a lot in the last 5 years so I didn't make a lot of the same mistakes as I have in the past.  

Lots of good info coming up.

Quick update 12/07/2017

1) I still have the 3 adult Channel catfish outdoors but my plan is to move them into the basement this weekend.

2) I had a horrific battle with Columnaris bacterial infection with my indoor baby catfish.  This was epic.  I let the water quality slip and will post a detailed story of what happened.  I lost 5 of the 25 baby catfish and the efforts I went to in saving those 20 were insane.  These remaining fish have grown tremendously.

I have been swamped with work, family, outdoor chores, town budget committee, etc.  I am reorganizing my time to focus enough time to successfully breed these catfish or at last say I gave it my best.

The first step has been accomplished:  Vernalization.  This involves keeping the adult catfish at a temperature below 50F for at least one month.  The temperature in the outdoor fish tank has been well below that, at times as low as 35F.

More to come.

Sexual Dimorphism? Sounds like some millennial snowflake disease!

@BUCK1911

It sounds bad but it just means there are obvious physical differences between the sexes, such as antlers in deer.  Not all catfish exhibit sexual dimorphism.  For instance, Brown Bullhead catfish, that are widely available here in the wild in NH, show no obvious differences, except for maybe around their anal vents.

Wow I can't believe it's been almost 3 years since my last post.  I had to go back and reread everything I posted about building and buying land, yeah divorce sorta changes all that lol.  Well anyway I broke ground today for the start of a new system.  I am going to need some advice and help since I have been out of this so long!  I am being given a fully functioning system that I will begin to move to my property hopefully this week weather permitting.  It is one 350 and two 150 gallon tanks and 5 grow beds.  The system has been working great where it is but  could use some tweaking with solid filtration and I am going to post pictures of where it sits now before I disassemble and move it.  It is so good to be getting back into what I have missed for so long :)

@delicious_bass

Please ask anything, either in this thread, your own thread or IM me any time.

I apologize for not updating.

One of the 2 adult females is sick from being harassed by the male who has since been put into his own tank.  If she dies, that will leave me with only one adult male and one adult female.  My plan is till to breed them in the spring.  I really hope I can nurse the other female back to health.

I have 19 “baby” Channel catfish from buying them in June 2017.  I have had good luck with them lately.  They seem healthy.  I will try to grow these out as much as I can this summer and then overwinter them indoors again.  If all goes well, they could breed the following spring.

Here are a few pictures of the system I will be moving to my property this weekend.  The system has produced wonderfully for 4 years but it needs some fine tuning. It's a 300 gallon fish tank that flows into a 100 gallon mechanical filter down to a sump that pumps back into the tank and into 8 50 gallon flood and drain beds, one 4×8 raft bed and a series of about 7 5 gallon buckets that hang along a fence..  All of this flows back into the sump via a 4" pipe.

It's a pretty simple setup and the only change I am going to make for now is to elevate the tank 30" and filter it into a 200 gal swirl filter directly out of the tank vs the mechanical filter I will place elsewhere to catch some of the finer solids.  The filter does good as it is now but this will allow me to capture and drain solids a little more efficiently.

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Here is the 200 gallon induction tank for the swirl filter.  I am having the stand built vs using this one to add additional support.  This one change means I have to elevate the tank almost 3'.  
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This is as far as I have gotten and I've got the tank elevated and fish (4 year old goldfish) moved over.  I will have to move pretty fast now to get them filtration.  I will eventually elevate the smaller 150 gallon tank and use them both.

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Let me digest the pictures and I’ll come up with comments.

Have you thought about adding edible fish?

@delicious_bass

What’s that body of water in the last picture??

Size?

Depth?

Streams going in/out?

Does it belong to you?

I do not "own" the land yet but the owners have approached me about selling the 6 acres to me and they are close friends of mine.

I would much rather have tilapia vs goldfish and I will switch to them in the future.  Probably when I get the second tank elevated so I can grab a few pregnant females from the office system and seclude them.

The body of water in the picture is my pond.  The only time there was a stream going in and out was during Harvey and it took my chickens with it
(Harvey-tree is where pond is)
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It's not a very deep pond but it does have a few bass and catfish in it.  Last summer was a snake haven and i have future plans to drain, clean, and deepen it.
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So today I mudded/dyed the cinder with an industrial fiberglass reinforced grout to strengthen the dry stacked block and dress it up aesthetically.  Hopefully tomorrow my filter stand will be ready and I can get that in place before the work week starts :(
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@delicious_bass

1) I like the tilapia idea!  No way I could do it without heating my system.  From my readings, tilapia are pretty close to hardiness compared to goldfish except that goldfish can go down to near freezing in terms of temperature.  There doesn’t seem to be any sense to keep only goldfish unless you are experimenting with the system.  Tilapia are tougher than Channel catfish and are very tolerant of crowding.

2) Are you going with CHIFT-PIST style system?



You did mention collecting the solid waste, so I look forward to your set-up.  I don’t separate the solid waste and let it go into my grow bed, where it is eaten by earthworms in the summer.  I think it’s better to collect it.

3) I would definitely deepen that pond, as deep as you can!  It would be cool to raise Channel catfish and if you have too many for the aquaponics system then they can overflow into the pond.

ETA:  Sorry about the chickens.  Ours have become pets almost.  We still get a lot of eggs.

@c4

The goldfish are from the previous owner and I will use them to get the system going again.  I was able to move the 8 grow beds without emptying them and destroying all the worms and bacteria.  It was a pretty big job that involved tractors, hoists, and lots of backwoods ingenuity .

This is more of an improved CHOP system.  The fish tank drains entirely into the swirl filter and water has about a 30 min retention time for solids settling.  The swirl drains directly to the sump which refeeds tank for water movement then feeds the 8 flood and drain beds.  The 8 beds drain into the 2 buried recovery tanks which all flow back to the sump via a 4" pipe.

I still have an additional tank and raft beds to incorporate and it's not near finished.

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@delicious_bass

A few questions:

1) Where is the pipe from the fish tank to the settling tank?

2) Is that water return that’s coming up the fish tank?

3) Where are the pumps and what make and model are they?

Looks neat!

The larger 3" pipe coming out of the tank goes down and then up into the settling tank.

The smaller pipe going into the tank is directly out of the sump that gets all of the filtered water from the settling tank. ***edit Let me add a closeup picture of the fish tank and sump in the next day or so.  

The system is ran off of two pumps and they are Pondmaster magdrive 500GPH.  The pump feeding the water back in the tank puts out almost exactly 350GPH at a 5' head loss which is one tank exchange an hour and the height of my tank.  The other pump feeds my 8 flood and drain grow beds which have 30 minute retention times.

I am still going through and fixing a few little leaks here and there so it may be a week or so before another update.

A few things I need to do are come off both pumps with a short bleed off valve back into the sump that pass through a fine mesh filter and paint the settling tank.

The guy that handed all this over to me had everything covered and had built a humongous "shed" over it with 4x4 posts and 2x material.  I can have all that as well, all I need to do is dig it up and move it lol.....no easy feat but it's free.  I do plan on doing that eventually but I need to take a break from this to get my soil garden prepped and that takes up most of my free time.  At least I will be able to start most of my seeds in the aquaponic system but I am already behind on doing that getting the system in so late this year.

@Kitties-with-Sigs
@BUCK1911
@delicious_bass

I have two prongs to my Channel catfish:

1) I have 3 remaining adults.  I *think* one is definitely a male and the other 2 are females.  I am going to contact ?Auburn University, which has an aquaculture Department, to send them pictures to see if they can confirm.  I will post a video of my preparations for trying to breed them later this spring/early summer.  These adult catfish are ~ 4 years old.

2) I have 19 “teenage” ~ 1 year old Channel catfish that I bought when they were ~ 2 1/2” back in June 2017.  I’m guessing they were probably 6 to 8 weeks old so I put them at about 1 year old.

This is a short video ~ 3 minutes of talking about these catfish and putting them in the outdoor system.  I weighed the fish but I miscounted and only put down 17 weights but there are actually 19.  I took a picture and that’s the only way to count fish, by counting them in the photograph!  Very easy!

The largest of the “baby” catfish weighs 625 grams and is 13” long.

The smallest of the baby catfish weighs 110 grams and is 6” long.

There is a wide range in sizes as some are more aggressive than others.  The largest ones are usually male.

Here’s the video.  If you want, subscribe as I plan to add many more videos!

ETA:  I’m going to try to keep the videos short, ~ 3 minutes.  People won’t even click if they’re longer!  You should be able to get your point across  in 3 minutes.

[youtube]https://youtu.be/fBbOmZd9Lmw[/youtube]

Update: 05/04/2018 Video of Flashing

@Kitties-with-Sigs
@BUCK1911
@delicious_bass

*Sorry about the dark video.  The tank is black and the fish are black and it was later in the day!  I will take future videos during daylight hours!*  All the underwater videos are filmed using a Go Pro Hero5.  This is an example of flashing which is a fish rubbing it's sides against a surface, usually the bottom of the tank. This was taken yesterday.  It can indicate parasitic infection of the skin, high nitrate or ammonia levels, but can also be seen as part of normal behavior. In this case, I think it is from cycling the aquaponics system with high levels of solutes since there was a lot of dead organic matter in the system before cycling earlier in the spring.

[youtube]https://youtu.be/k6MZC0EhBHE[/youtube]

This is another video today after an ~ 90% water change last evening.  Unfortunately, there is still a lot of flashing.  Instead of salting it to 2ppt, I will do another water change tomorrow and then salt it to 2ppt.  The salty water can have a soothing effect on the fish's skin.  Catfish skin is easily irritated due to being scaleless.  I also fed them in this video.

[youtube]https://youtu.be/GHCCV41hSwI[/youtube]

This is another video of the sump tank.  The water flows via gravity from the big fish tank to the grow bed to the sump tank and then back into the fish tank via a pump.  I have 10 goldfish and one Yellow Perch in the sump tank.  This is just a neat little video.

[youtube]https://youtu.be/6D5h2c10oPA[/youtube]

@Kitties-with-Sigs
@BUCK1911
@delicious_bass

Update 05/19/2018 Feeding worms to Channel Catfish

I think the catfish are starting to settle in.  It's been 2 weeks since the last videos.

There is much, much less flashing.  This indicates they aren't experiencing as much skin irritation.  I'm really not certain
what was causing the irritation, but I ended up deciding NOT to put any salt in the water.  Salt can have a soothing effect
on their skin and you can salt to between 1 and 3 ppt (parts per thousand).  There aren't a lot of disadvantages, except that
some plants really do not like the salt.

This is a video of the fish using my son's Go Pro Hero5 camera with a waterproof housing.  It shows them eating worms.  I like
to supplement their diet of pellets with other foods, but most of their diet is pellets.  I am planning on using these fish as breeding
stock but they are only 1 year olds now.  The absolute minimum for breeding would be 2 year-old fish that are at least 12" long, but
some of these fish are 13" long already, so they have to mature internally and will likely grow quite a bit over this season to next year.

I still have the two adult female and one male ? 4 year old fish.  They seem to be doing well.  I am going to move them outdoors and
hopefully start the temperature process to breed them.  This is brand new territory for me so we shall see how it works out!

This is the video of the 1 year-old babies!  Sorry, I reduced the field of view by accident somehow.  I'll fix that for the next video.

[youtube]https://youtu.be/VRAbpKaMTuM[/youtube]

I started a new company last year and let everything go. This year I haven't been watching things closely I didn't notice the feeders aren't working. (Thought wife was refilling them) So goldfish are fat and happy and have not been feed in 6 weeks!!!
Grow beds are a mess and I guess enough bugs algie and moss bits are flushing to feed them?
Self sustaining system!!!

What I have learned is that goldfish are bulletproof.

I hope things quiet down so you can get back into it.  I hear you about work.  I had this past week off except for Thursday and it allowed me to get caught up with projects.

I’ve run into a puzzling problem.  My 1 year-old catfish keep “flashing”, and I can’t explain why.  I thought it was because of high nitrate levels but I’ve done several water changes and the levels are low now.

I don’t think it’s parasites (Ich or anything else).

I had decided this year to use only soft water from my water softener indoors as the bacterial infection Columnaris requires hard water to properly infect fish.

Interestingly, the adult female catfish who are in the sump tank, soaking in the same water, are not flashing.  Very strange.

I’ve read 100 articles in the subject but I’m still baffled.  It’s not Ich or they’d be dead by now.  Maybe some skin parasite?  They did flash indoors but only when the nitrate levels got very high.  Ammonia and Nitrite levels are zero.  Nitrates are < 20, likely 10 as I just did a big water change today.

I may try adding salt to 1ppt (part per thousand) and increase to 3ppt over several days.

Haven’t decided yet.

They otherwise appear healthy and are eating well!o

The grow bed has tomatoes and Red Russian Kale.

@Kitties-with-Sigs
@BUCK1911
@delicious_bass

Update 08/01/2018 Male Channel catfish in Nesting Box

This is my 4 1/2 year old male Channel catfish that has been raised in captivity since it was 5 grams in weight.  He is the only male to survive when I had my accident 1 year ago that killed 8 of my 11 adult fish.  He is in a 300 gallon stock tank with a 30 gallon tote that is lined with pea gravel that is being used as a nesting box. There is a heater in the tank to keep the water temperature at 80F, the optimum temperature for breeding. There is a filtration system with zero ammonia, zero nitrites and low nitrate levels.  The white "bobber" in the video is a float switch that is connected to my IRIS home security system that sends an alarm to my phone if the water level drops below the switch.  The water is clear because I keep netting (prevent fish from jumping out) and a tarp over the entire tank.

I have two adult females in a separate stock tank as part of my aquaponics system. This is all part of my ongoing effort to breed Channel catfish.

Replying from GD thread.

We spawned them in a shallow pond.

Tossed in some structure, old buckets, weighted 16" diameter platic pipe etc. And a domed cat litter box.

Tied a float to each so we could check them.
In 2-3' of water.

Caught some cats in the river in May.
Most were under 5# so had trouble sexing them.
Couple obvious males but only 1 female that looked like she had eggs.

Check structure every 2 or 3 days.

Found these eggs end of May.

Attached File


In cat litter dome.
Pulled out and made a half assed incubator out of a 40 gallon tub. Had an aquarium bubbler to provide some movement and aeration. Eggs will fungus up if static.
Had a trickle of pond water ( gravity) and a trickle from a hose.
Still lost some to fungus but tore off most as it popped up.
If you leave eggs alone they'll fan them.

Hatched and stuck to bottom of tank.
After a few days started swimming up so started feeding some mash. Then adding in #1.

Found second batch of eggs couple days later.
In cat box.
0 hatch and all fungused up.

2 weeks later more eggs.
Again in cat dome.

Made a box out of 1/4" hardware cloth and suspended them in tank with bubbler underneath.

Great hatch. Kept in tank for 3 or 4 weeks and put all of them back in a small pond that SHOULDN'T have fish.
We will see.

Have more pics on another device. Will try to add/ take more.

Used to mess with aquaculture a lot.
Fun stuff.

@Dave15

Thank you for the information!

Definitely post the additional pictures if you have time.

Egg basket. Worked good, less fungus.

Attached File


Couple days old. Just lay on bottom.

Attached File


Attached File


Up on feed.

Attached File

@Dave15

That’s my dream!  Seriously, that’s amazing.

My understanding from reading is that the eggs develop into baby catfish in 8 days at 80F.

If the temperature is lower than 80F, the catfish embryos develop more slowly and they are prone to being attacked by fungus.

If the temperature is higher than 80F, the catfish embryo develop faster and are more prone to fatal genetic defects.

Do you measure the water temperature?

This is a new video of the male channel catfish in his nesting box.

I narrated the video.  Sorry this isn't National Geographic level quality here.

I wanted to discuss the low water alarm float switch which notifies me through IRIS home security on my cellphone but ran out of time.

[youtube]https://youtu.be/tgKR2VO9Ny4[/youtube]

That's great! I need more time to play.

@BUCK1911

Thank you.  I think this year is a wash in terms of breeding.  I can keep the male tank at 80F
easily because it is well-insulated, but the large aquaponics system is now cooling off because
we have run into some cool weather.

The flood and drain part draws in the cold air, cools the rocks (expanded shale), and then the
water filling it again cools the water when it touches the rocks.  Tomorrow, I plan on taking out
all the plants as I'm at the end here for cucumbers and tomatoes, and the Red Russian kale was
eaten by cabbage worms.  The plants grew like
crazy so that part was a total success.  I normally get blight (verticillium wilt) with the tomatoes
but this was a verticillium and fusarium wilt resistant cherry tomato hybrid I bought as small plants.

I like the narration of the video.  I'm a little annoyed since I bought my son Wondershare Filmora to
edit videos and it works fine for his computer.  I tried buying it for mine and they never sent the key
so I ended up having to start a charge-back.  I tried sorting it out with them but never got an answer
from them.

The video is great!
How are you filming under water?
I am shocked that mine is still going after a year of no maintenance!
Little giant pump keeps going and random garbage growing. The strangest thing is I stopped feeding my fish a year ago and there fat and happy!!!!!
I can't wait to get back to it.

@BUCK1911

I'm using my son's GoPro Hero5 with a waterproof housing.  I bought the housing for < $20.  It does take great video underwater for our purposes.

Goldfish are omnivores as you know so they will feed on anything.  I'm sure that they are finding plenty of organic matter and insects to eat.

The submersible Tetra pumps I use are practically bulletproof.  The ceramic rods can be broken if you try to turn the propeller while it's frozen in place due to < 32F weather.  But you can buy replacement parts so no big deal.

When you get back into it, pictures are always welcome!

Love the footage, been toying with getting a Go Pro.

Little Giants are hit or miss. Have had some for decades and others start spewing oil in a few months.

Used to get them CHEAP from Surplus Center but no more. Have a few from Lowes that look the same for much cheaper. Will see how they hold up.

Fry we put in pond are 2-3" now.
Can see them knotted up under the feeder.

Attached File


$#:#! GB heron has been perching on top grabbing them!

Awesome!

When I buy them, they are 2 to 3 inches long from the pet store.

I have 3 containers in the basement right now:

1) 150 gallon stock tank with the largest, oldest male.  He is looking good and is my best prospect for a nesting male.  I have been toying with the idea of naming him but heard it was bad luck to name fish?

2) 300 gallon stock tank with the largest, oldest ? female.  She is very aggressive and I can't keep any other fish with her.  She ate 3 out of 6 goldfish before I took the remaining ones out.  She had lived peacefully with them all summer long before she decided to eat some of them.

3) 300 gallon stock tank that has the 3rd survivor of the mass die off + the 19 new "baby" catfish that are now ~ 2 years old.

The 3 "adult" fish are all 5+ years old now, plenty old to breed.

Sorry about not updating this.

This past fall, I made the decision that I would not be bringing the fish indoors.  They were simply too big to take care of inside and I didn't think I could have enough biological filtration to keep them healthy.

So I insulated the large 550 gallon fish tank, the water then pours into the 300 gallon grow bed which houses 250 gallons of biologically covered grow media, and then the 300 gallon sump tank.  I used several layers of silvered bubble wrap insulation on the sides of the tanks and also insulated the black tubing with black foam pipe insulation and then silvered bubble wrap around it.

I am using an 800 watt heater and currently have the water temperature in the high 40's.

I also insulated the 300 gallon tank that houses my large male catfish separately.

I have the containers covered with tarps to prevent heat loss.  I will get more pictures up of the insulated system.

I am still feeding them throughout the winter with mostly frozen sardines, but at a much reduced rate given the low water temperatures.

That was in March, which I guess is still winter there?  How'd they do?

@DaTrueDave

Sorry for the late reply:

They did great over the winter but I got stuck with too many fish that had grown too large and had a horrific Columnaris bacterial infection kill 13 of the 19 fish in ? late May.  My original plan when I got the fish 3 years ago was to buy a property with a pond to stock them in and despite aggressively looking for a pond, I just never found one in time.  I will post the whole story with pictures.  The survivors look amazing though!  Also, I grew Red Russian Kale, Tomatoes, Zucchini in the grow bed this past summer.