When doing Aquaponics, everyone must occasionally kill a fish.
My first fish Fatality. The smallest little catfish got sucked up against the pump intake.
First fish Fatality due to pump
I had a mesh bag around the suction bottom drain but it was tipped slightly up at and angle enough that the small fish was able to swim under it and even with the mesh to keep the fish from being sucked into the pipe, it was still fatal.
Death by Pump
A very common cause of accidental Aquaponics Fish deaths is fish getting sucked to the pump or fish going exploring the plumbing and getting a tan on top of the grow bed.
Everyone should learn from my lesson so they don’t need to experience this first hand. The pump just sucked the bones right out of this little guy. Cages, mesh, grills, whatever, make sure the fish are well protected from the pump intake. This also goes for gravity drain plumbing since fish don’t survive well when sunning themselves on the grow bed gravel either. You would be amazed at what a fish can manage to swim though so don’t underestimate their ingenuity at getting into small pipes.
Offending Pump Intake
Here you can see the bottom drain wrapped in a mesh bag but it is up off the bottom of the tank just enough that the smaller fish was able to swim under it.
The evening of the day after getting the fish I noticed the flow from the pump wasn’t as good as it had been before. We shut things down and discovered the dead fish stuck to the mesh bag on the bottom of the pump inlet.
Improved Pump Inlet
Here is the solution we used at least for a while. It did work just fine. The water is even clearer so the fish are kind of visible.
Notice the zip ties holding the basket to an old bottom drain for an above ground pool. Zip ties are useful tools in Aquaponics but I’m usually careful not to cut them off since the sharp cut bit would actually be rather dangerous to the fish. If they must be cut, make sure to cut them good and flat so they can’t scrape a fish that might brush against them. Especially catfish since they have no scales to protect their skin.
On a more upbeat note, that was my only fish death near after getting the fish. The feeding ramped up nicely while watching the water quality and all was fine for a while.
Fish Feeding
Please ignore the bit of pond plant floating in the tank, I threw it in to see if the fish would be interested in it but channel catfish are not really that omnivorous. They take well to eating floating pellet food with 32-38% protein.
Channel Catfish are warm water fish but that only means they grow best while the water is warm though they can survive cold water just fine as long as they are big enough to have some energy reserves to survive not eating for a time.
Small Chanel Catfish
For those who wish to go read the detail version check out my original system thread. Pages 29-31 (March 25-27, 2008) are the time frame for this Blog post.
BYAP Forum System Thread page 29
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