((((( Help))))) Please advice required on sick fish

Charlie

In my opinion you need to be careful with quarantining fish... Let me explain, In most cases fungal and infection issues accelerate under stressful conditions. Catching, moving and quarantining fish which are already exhausted from fighting back disease can also have a negative effect. There comes a point where you need to draw a line.

When I saw the pics you posted my first reaction would be to remove any affected fish that were in such a bad state as it would be rare that they would come back from an evasive infection. Possibly some might but they are already stressed and others will stress in their company and it may just prolong the issue... Its not nice to watch your fish die day by day either. Then salt to 10-12ppt to shock the entire system and hopefully save a few.

Not everyone understands what salt actually does for fish. Its not some kind of super barrier that keeps them safe from nasties. Salting a system improves the protective 'slime' coat on your fish and assists in mitigating against nitrite poisoning...both help 'fight' disease...but more importantly, fish naturally contain an internal salt content which is expelled through respiration and activity. When an infection occurs, fish become distressed, respiration becomes extremely rapid and exhaustion occurs very quickly. This opens the gates for further damage. Adding salt 'replenishes' and 'equalises' the inner and outer salt content thus calming and strengthening the fishes ability to survive.

Id get rid of all heavily affected fish, salt hard, cover the FT, increase aeration and leave them alone. :thumbleft:

blind freddie

Hi Charlie, thanks for sharing your thoughts and experience on the subject.
I would also apreciate some advise / comment on the scenarios below.

System (1)
1000l FT, 800l sump, 3 X IBC growbeds

This is the system that had those couple of realy sick looking fish in. it is now empty ( early harvest) (no fish)

I have salted it to 3PPT, I would like to know how long I should leave it running on seasol alone befor I re-introduce 25 new fish fingerlings. ??

System (2)
1000l FT, 800l sump, 4 X IBC grow beds
Stocked 29 jade perch 150 - 250mm.

I pulled one dead fish out of here two days ago, it apeared to have a small amount of the same discoloration/ fungal symptons as the two dead ones in system 1. All other fish look fine at this time and are feeding well. I have now also salted this system to 3PPT and am checking fish each morning. Water parametres are good.
PH 6.3
Amonia 0
nitite 0 +
nitrate 0 +
temp 27.5 deg C

Aeration is pretty good 4 large airstones 1 in SLO + 4 grow beds dumping directly into FT, 2 with spray bars, 1 angled to produce slight swirl in FT, 1 angled strait down towards bottom of FT.

I intend to maintain this system as is and keep an close watch of fish for symptoms. Other than that I will leave them alone and well covered. There are a few in there that are nearly plate size so I hope to start harvesting early in the new year.

Cheers Steve

RupertofOZ

If your problems/symptoms... are bacterial and/or fungal.... then salt to 6ppt...

3 ppt is used for parasite infestation... but is too low for fungal/bacterial problems...

Re : the one fish with symptoms... isolate and treat to 10ppt in a salt bath... for several hours... then return him to the tank at 6ppt...

blind freddie

Thanks for your help again Rupert,

just to clarify do you suggest salt entire AP system to 6PPT?.

I did notice earlier post from Wildfire saying his vegies are mostly OK at that level, I can move the strawberries out into wicking beds if need be. :think:

Also if you dont mind my asking, would you restock the other system soon and possibly salt it to 6PPT just in case or leave it run with out fish for a while ?

Cheers Steve

RupertofOZ

I'd salt both systems to 6ppt.... and just let the salinity lower through evaporation/transporation... and water top ups....

Move the strawberries.... and use clean, unsalted water for the wicking beds....

Seasol to help the plants along....

blind freddie

Thanks once again Rupert, I'll increase the salinty tomorow in both systems to 6PPT, and as you suggest let the salinity lower naturally through evaporation/transporation and water top ups.

I will re-post hopefully in a few weeks with more positive news.

helomech

I didn't think salt levels dropped due to evaporation and such. When water evaporates the salt is left behind. I think the only way to lower salt levels is to pump out some of the water and replace with fresh water.

RupertofOZ

Some salt is taken up by the plants... but yes, evaporation as such doesn't lower the salinity levels...

Rather, combined with transpiration.... it results in top up water being added... diluting the levels...

blind freddie

Hi foks

Just thought I would give a bit of an update on the health of my systems following the issues I had at the end of last month.

Once again thanks to all for the feedback and advised given :notworthy:

back on th 4th of Dec. I salted both systems to 6PPT.

System (1) is looking good, the 30 Jades are looking very healthy, no signs of any fungal problems. They are feeding well and growing very quickly. I can almost taste them already.
In the grow beds, All strawberry's were removed and put into our wicking beds. Most other plants seem to be OK except for the Egg plant, I pulled it out today. also some of the silver beat looks a bit poor and has a dried out looking apearance. the lettuces, rhubarb, beetroot and tomato's are going well and producing a lot of our fresh food.
I am not going to add any more salt and will in another week or so start to lower the salt levels by partial water changes until I get to 3PPT.

System (2) Is also looking good i added about 50 Jade perch fingerlings a week ago ( went in on a batch with CC Bear), Also had a bit of a drama with about 3 of them going up the SLO and getting dumped on the grow beds, Another 10 or so went via an SLO overflow into the sump. They seem to be OK in there so I'll leave them for now until I have fed them up a bit and then re-locate them back into the FT. i have adjusted the SLO's to stop any further fish from gettin sucked up.

The grow beds in this system are going very well, I have a couple of large tomato plants producing all the fruit the neighbors and ourselves can eat. One the the beds is full of lettuce, chard, pepinos and beans all are going great guns and yielding good volumes.

I have some time off work in a couple of weeks so I'll get some picks together and get around to posting an intro.

In the mean time, i am enjoying hours of reading on this forum and have discoverd some great post's.
Thanks again to all, have a safe Holliday season.
Cheers :drunken:

Wildfire

Hry Blind Freddie, good to hear things are on the up and up and sorry I missed your previous posts, I wouldn't worry about doing a water change to remove the salts I've found when I had my salt levels high it didn't really take to long before it started coming back down god knows why or how but before I knew it my refractometer was saying I had 1ppt again.

Also something I experienced last winter with my jades was a fungal disease which was more like ulcers, I read a couple years back that jades were seceptable to this particular fungal problem when the tempreture drops below a certain point, that was when I salted my tanks to 6ppt and I dare say I'll be doing it next winter if I haven't BBQed them all

Admitabbly aswell I had way way to many fish to filtration at the point to so water quality probably wasn't the best either which I contribute to the Infamous Murray Gollums DVDs lol

blind freddie

Thanks Wildfire, thats interesting on the salt reduction. i was only wanting to drop it down to get the strawberries going again, although this time I think I'll get a few towers up and running rather than growing in the GB's. That will happen some time in january hopefully. so I'll leave any adjustments till then and see how the salt levels are at the time.

One things for sure , i will always keep a bag of salt on hand in the future. I have not had to use it in the past with Silver perch, i guess their tollerance of cooler winter temps is the reason behind that. I did however manage to keep the Jade tank at a minimum of 18 C through winter by using my black pipe coil heater through the daylight hours and a couple of 300 watt aquarium heaters in the FT and sump at night. Next winter i'll shut the grow beds down at night and leave the heaters on 24/7 and try to keep the temps up around the 20C mark.

The other thing I found interesting was the quality of the fillets from the fish I had purged in a seperate tank at 6PPT with no feed for a week. After 2 days there was no more fish poo in the tank. The fish were still quite fatty (removed when filliting) they tatsed great, used in several recipies. it was just a bit of a shame to harvest them well before thier due date.

Wildfire

I'm not sure what my water temp got down to last winter but out here the lowest outside temp was about -1 and most of the winter I had difficulties putting my hand in the water long enough to pull out the pump guard to give it a clean. The year before I had a heater in there but my electricity bill was double so I won't be doing that again so after I munch down on all these jades I'm going silvers

Charlie

I salted my system to 4ppt about 13 months ago. Its now at 3ppt. Salt will only be reduced through water changes.

blind freddie

Well just thought I would give a quick update on my systems now that all is back to normal.
Normal thats a laugh

as last reported, early Dec 2012 both systems were salted to 6PPT as per Ruperts advise. :notworthy:

System #2 was restocked with 50 Jade fingerlings (smallest ones Ive ever seen). They are now 80-100mm long, at a guess that is. Very healthy, fat and growing rapidly, water temps are now generally in the 27 - 29C area.

Salt is at 2.5 PPT reduced by a series of water changes about 10% of total volume each one.
Most plants are starting to recover from salt. Not all of them made it, Peas, cucumber and celery seemed to be hardest hit.
Beetroot and Sliver beat (giant fordhook) were the toughest and are still looking good.

Future plan is to stock another 100 jade fingerlings into the sump. This system generally runs a little warmer than the other due to the GB's getting more of the afterrnoon sun. I figure this would be the easiset to heat through the winter.

System #1 is going very well too, the 29 Jades are packing on size some are already nearing plate size.

Salt is down to about 2PPT by simiar methods as syst.1 about 15% changes Want to get this one back to nil PPT, ASAP then replant Strawberries.

Future plan is to harvest jades before winter as temps drop and restock with silvers. For a few reasons.
I dont want to heat both systems through the cooler months. I also want to restock my pond/ small dam in the back yard with silvers after the local cormerant ate the last lot. I'll grow them for a while in the AP system then realse them into the pond when they are to big for the birds to eat..

Thanks again to all who helped, a big thanks to CC Bear who assisted on the ground when things were going pear shaped. And too all who offered wise words :notworthy:

rsevs3

Charlie wrote:

Not everyone understands what salt actually does for fish. Its not some kind of super barrier that keeps them safe from nasties. Salting a system improves the protective 'slime' coat on your fish and assists in mitigating against nitrite poisoning...both help 'fight' disease...but more importantly, fish naturally contain an internal salt content which is expelled through respiration and activity. When an infection occurs, fish become distressed, respiration becomes extremely rapid and exhaustion occurs very quickly. This opens the gates for further damage. Adding salt 'replenishes' and 'equalises' the inner and outer salt content thus calming and strengthening the fishes ability to survive.

Kung Pow Super Mod

blind freddie, 100 fish is way too many for 800L, let alone the amount of grow beds you have.

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