Fishy mis Adventures Part II Trout Rapture

One fish, two fish, dead fish....*sigh*.....

Recall from Part I, when we decided to take out a few fish to eat, my thought was, "what can it hurt?"  Well, apparently, it can hurt a lot.

The next day, January 4, I found a floater in the tank.  I dont know what caused the fishs death.  In reading about humanely treating fish, I came across a lot of catch-and-release articles.  A couple of things I learned - first, try not to take the fish out of the water at all.  Its like suffocating them.  Next, if you must handle the fish, make sure your hands are wet.  If you touch a fish with dry hands, you are effectively "burning" the fish by removing some of its protective slime.  Also, the protective slime is part of the fishs immune system, so besides causing the fish pain, you are damaging its immune system.  I read on several different sites, that often, if you release a fish and dont handle it properly, it might swim away, so you think the fish is going to live, but it actually swims away and ends up dying.  See photo below.  Note that this is on a standard-size dinner plate (10" or 12"? Im too lazy to go measure it).

Big Dead Fish

Knowing that, when we removed the fish from the water, we tried to put the ones we were going to eat back into the water immediately.  Also, we did not touch the fish with our hands.  I dont know what caused this fish to die.  Maybe it was just shock.  But, it turns out, it was about twice the size of any of the fish we ate!  I think it was the granddaddy trout in our tank. 

OK, so one fish down.  I think I should be down to 30 or 31 fish at this point, so everything is still good, right?

Wrong.

Today, I go down to take care of the dogs, and there are FOUR dead fish floating around.  And a sort-of-alive one hovering near the top of the tank.  The nitrate levels are off the charts.  The water level was a little low, so I added some water, but the nitrite levels were still out of range of my little chart, so I did a 50% water change.  During the water change, yet ANOTHER dead fish comes floating by....AHHHH!!!  Frustration.

The only "good" thing about todays experience is that it has been unseasonably warm all week, with today being the warmest day yet.  It was about 65-70 degrees outside today, so at least I didnt have to do this in subfreezing temperatures.  Its a rather wet and messy process.  It did, however, take me three tries before I found a hose that wasnt frozen, but at least I didnt have to carry the water into the house in buckets.  My back is too old for that kind of work. 

Anyway, heres another picture of fish carcasses.  :-(

This is starting to seem like a rather morbid blog....

More Floaters

Now heres where the trout rapture comes in....this is weird.  My son and I were shining the light in the tank, and it seems like there are only two fish swimming around!  Hopefully, the rest are just so healthy and fast that theyre avoiding the light every time we move it and hiding in the corner (is there a corner in an oval tank?  whatever).  Usually, we can see a bunch of fish shadows swimming around, but now we only see a couple, so my son is convinced the other fish have been raptured. 

I still dont know exactly what happened, but Im guessing one fish died of shock and floated in the water long enough to contaminate the water and kill the other fish.  I just checked the nitrite level again, and although its a lot higher than it should be, at least it seems to have gone down a lot since the water change.  Im hoping that if I dont feed them for a day or two, the level will stabilize.

On a happier note, my plants are still alive.  Actually, I dont know that I would call the plants "happy," but they are alive.  Theyre a little yellow, and growing really slowly, but they are still alive.  If I decide to continue with this, I will have to come up with an artificial light solution.  Here are a couple of pictures taken January 3.  I think I planted the seeds at least two months ago, so you can see that the growth is extremely slow.  I think if I had planted these outside in June, they would be about this size within a week or two.

The good thing is that I didnt lose very many plants when we had the super-sub-zero temperatures a few weeks ago.  There is a gap in the dog door that lets in raw, cold air, and I was afraid it would freeze my plants.  I think it got down to about 40 degrees Fahrenheit, so it was pretty close. 

Bed 1 - Strawberries on the Right, Lettuce and Herbs on the Left

Bed 2 - Sickly Tomato Plant and Some Broccoli and Herbs

Well, thats about it for now.  Not much excitement this winter until recently, so there really wasnt anything to report.  Hopefully the next update will have better news!

Thanks for stopping by!  :-)

Continue reading

Bizarre Beans

The bush beans seem to be growing freakishly tall.  It might be because theyre trying to find full sunlight, so theyre growing toward the window and wont branch out much until they find the amount of sunlight they want.  That could make for a really strange sight from the outside of our window in a few weeks.
 ? ?????

Beans want sunlight

??????? ?

?

?????

Growing toward the sun

?????

?









In contrast, below is a picture of several bush bean plants.  You can see they are a lot shorter than the indoor ones and they branched out a lot.

Bush beans growing outside in full sunlight

Since were going to get even less daylight until next spring, I might need to consider supplemental light.  Maybe I will use some high-watt fluorescent lights in the overhead light fixtures and keep them turned on for several hours per day.

Below is a picture of what I think are tomato plants.  I planted them several weeks ago, and theyre just now sprouting.  Maybe it was too hot for them before, I dont know.

Tomato plants (maybe)

Continue reading

Successes beans and Failures peas

Fish update - had a couple more floaters last week.  The nitrogen levels (bad stuff) were off the charts.  I added some bacteria (aquarium starter found at Petsmart) to hopefully take care of the nitrites, and turned the water pump on 24x7, instead of running it for a half hour every hour.
The nitrogen levels are back down near zero now.  I dont think it was because of the bacteria.  It was probably the water pump.  Running it half time just couldnt keep up with the waste from the fish.

Plant update - I think I will harvest as many of the beans as I can tomorrow to make room for leafy greens (probably spinach and lettuce).  The beans are looking good, but the plants themselves are starting to wilt a little.  Im pretty happy if I just end up with a few beans.  I really didnt expect any, since its not recommended to grow flowering plants for the first year.  I really just wanted to see a plant growing, and thats what I had at the time, so I planted them.  Plus, it seemed less likely that the beans would wash away than something smaller, like a lettuce seed.  Here are a couple of pictures.

Beans - October 6

Beans - October 24

The peas, on the other hand, arent doing so well.  Actually, the ones that are near the window seem to be doing OK, but they are not flowering.  Not sure if thats because they take longer to mature, or if theyre just not happy plants.  The ones furthest from the window wilted and turned brown.

October 15 - Dead Peas :-(

I also recently planted some strawberries.  I know, another flowering plant.  But I figured they make good potted plants, so what the heck?  Plus, I think they were on sale at Gurneys since its the end of the season.  The way they are shipped, they dont look like much.  But they are doing surprisingly well so far.  Guess well see what happens this winter.  I think I bought ever bearing, so even if they dont flower any time soon, they should survive the winter indoors.

October 6 - Strawberry plants received

October 15 - Strawberry plants

October 24 - Strawberry plants - doing pretty well

And heres one last picture which illustrates why I am doing this as an indoor project.  This was a big storm for the first one of the season, but once the sun came out around 3:00pm, it almost completely melted.  I thought we were going to lose some tree branches with this storm, but the sun came out just in time.

October 8 - First Snow of the Season

Continue reading

Rainbow Revival

Last night, I went down to take a look at the tank.  A single fish (which my son later named "Bob") was swimming around the top of the tank very slowly.  He bumped into the sides and didnt move much when I touched him.  Obviously, this is not healthy fishy behavior.  All of a sudden, another fish popped up to the top, head first, with slime and goo all over its head.  Then it just floated to the top.  Another dead fish.  :-(

The nitrite reading was still higher than my little kit can measure, so I decided that today would be a good day to do a partial water change, hopefully before I lost anymore fish.

I started out bright and early at 8:00am, which I realized actually was pretty early for a water change, since the water that had dripped from the hose the day before was now frozen....

I did 4 or 5 30%-50% water changes (I lost count).  The entire time, Bob was the only fish we could see.  Even with the tank 50% empty, I would shine my little pond light all around the tank, and only found evidence of one other fish.  I even moved a pole around the bottom of the tank, trying to detect any dead fish at the bottom.

BTW, Bob was not looking too good.  He has a damaged fin and sort of odd coloring for a rainbow trout.  Not very encouraging, but I figured at least if Bob lives until spring, maybe we can share a little trout pate or something.  And that seemed like a very big "IF."

By 12:30pm, I finally had the nitrite level down below 1.0.  This might actually be bad, since I might have replaced so much water that I have to cycle the tank all over again and deal with another nitrogen spike.  But, I did what I could to save Bob.  I still couldnt figure out what could have possibly happened to the other 20 or so fish...

A while later, when I walked into the room, I heard a big splash.  Was that Bob, rejoicing over his clean water?  Or trying to escape the too-clean water?  Or was it several fish???  I waited a while and walked back in slowly, making sure my shadow didnt extend over the tank, and I saw at least five big, fat trout swimming around near the top of the tank!  Its possible they were at the top because they were distressed, but anyone who has ever had a goldfish bowl can tell the difference between a sick fish and a happy-clean-bowl fish.  At least, thats what Im choosing to believe tonight.  I guess well see tomorrow morning.  At one point, I saw at least ten fish swimming around near the top, disproving my sons rapture theory. 

Here is a short video clip for your trout-viewing pleasure.  Sorry about the bright light in the tank, but it was the only way I could reduce/eliminate reflection on the water.

Quick plant update - as I mentioned, my plants are not looking too good.  Its pretty obvious that the light from the window, especially in winter, is not sufficient to sustain healthy plants.  I purchased a couple of fluorescent grow lights at Wal-Mart for $11 each.  My husband is convinced that I am now on some government list of illegal plant growers, but I think the government is too inefficient to keep track of, or follow up on, that type of thing.  Worst case, some D E A dude shows up on my doorstep, I will be happy to bore him with a tour of my aquaponics setup.  Only instead of introducing him to my fifteen cats, I can introduce him to each of my trout, and send him on his way with a sprig of basil and a head of lettuce.

As for the cost of running the lights everyday, I calculated that running the two lights for 12-14 hours/day will cost about $10 each per year, so I was able to convince my husband that its worth the $20 a year.   All I need to do is get a few good heads of organic lettuce and it will pay for itself.  At least, thats my theory.  If Im wrong, I think I have to give up a few nights of space heater privileges next winter to make up for the 20 bucks.  Stay tuned....

Continue reading