hello sustainable growers this is Jonathan from Melbourne Aquaponics in
this video I would like to talk about a potential mistake that could cost the
life of all your fish.
So I'm actually just back from holidays, I went two weeks in Europe and during
those two weeks I had no one here taking care of my aquaponics setup so what I
normally do I just leave the setups as they are, you know the fish can live for
several weeks without food it's not a problem, that's something they do in the
natural environment, and specially here it's winter now so in winter you know
the fish are not very active and they don't need so much food but a friend of
mine offered to come and to take care of the fish and to distribute a bit of food
so I say okay, I was happy you know and I thought it was very nice so I just
showed him to put a little bit of food but I explained him that it was
important to not put too much food into the fish tanks obviously especially here
I stock also sometimes some fish for my customers so my tanks are are quite high
in terms of fish biomass so the system, the systems are close to the limit so by
close to the limit I mean that I got just enough bacteria to cover all the
needs or to absorb all the ammonia that comes from the fish so if I over feed
the fish I may have some troubles and what happened is that when I came back
from holidays my friend told me that he lost a few fish and he buried them into
the growbed so it could seem like a good idea you know to keep
the fish inside the system the fish died ok that's lot of organic matter why don't
we use it into the system to use as a fertilizer for the plants you know to
increase basically the nitrate that we're going to produce into the system
the issue with this kind of thing is that because I'm very close to the
limits if I got a few fish that died for some reason it may be because you ever
feed them and we were high in ammonia so if it's the case, if you keep the dead fish
and you put them into the grow bed you're going to add even more nitrogen
into the system and even more ammonia
and if the bacteria biomass is already borderline in terms of
capacity of ammonia absorption you may have a pic of ammonia and and then a pic
of nitrite which could be obviously a big problem and could kill
all the fish so it's definitely not something to do. Obviously my friend
didn't know you know he doesn't know anything about aquaponics he just wanted
to help me and, I mean it's super nice from him and I'm very happy
that he helped me but just, I just don't want anyone of you to make this
kind of mistake if you have some fish who died where if you know that you are
very far from the limit of your system and if you want to put them into the
growbed it can be a good idea because obviously it increases the quantity
of nitrogen that is into the system so it's a bit more fertilizer for your
plant. So if you are a bit low in terms of quantity of fish yeah that's
something you can do but if if you are like me if you are already crowded in
terms of fish biomass if you got one or two fish that are dying,
don't bury them into the growbed just put them in your compost give them
to your chicken do something different recycle them but don't recycle them into
the aquaponic setup. So here I've been very lucky because it didn't have any
real negative impact it didn't kill the fish it didn't create a pic of ammonia at
least not not a pic of ammonia that killed the other fish and my friend
just buried them into the growbed so what I'm very interesting to see now is
to see where or to try to find the place where you buried them because I got a
lot of worms and lot of animals insects in into the grow beds that are living
and I would like to see if I find the body of the fish I'm sure they already
decomposed and I would like to see if I find a big quantity of worms in one
place I'm sure I'm going to find the place with lot of worms so let's have a
look right now
I'm just going to grab a shovel to dig into the crowbed. So he told me that he
buried them into this growbed so oh
yeah here I've got some worms oh yeah look at that
that's the pine bone of the fish and on the pine bone
I see a lot of little worms very small one whitish ones let's see if we
can find more oh yeah here's a bone okay so apparently it was only two little
fingerlings so it didn't have a big impact on the rest of the tank obviously
if you got lots of fish and if the big die just don't worry them into the crew
bed right and even if it's just a few small ones you don't know why is it died
so if it's because of a special disease by burying the fish the sick
fish or the dead fish into the grow bed you're gonna keep the disease right and
it can multiply if it's bacteria if it's parasite
you never know they may spread and may go back into the fish tank it may
increase the disease so if you've got dead fish the best thing to do is
basically to keep them away from the fish tank to give them to your chicken
to put them in the compost or to recycle in anywhere but it's not really into the
grow bed of you aquaponic setup I hope you enjoyed the video I hope you learned
something and I hope it's going to avoid you a mistake that can that could have
cost the life of your fish see you in the next video don't forget that we got
some webinars going on so you can subscribe to the webinars in the link
here in this webinar I'm going to give you more information about aquaponics
and few little tricks so it's always interesting
to be part of this webinar and I hope I am gonna
see a lot of you in the webinar.
bye-bye!