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!  :-)

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Fishcam1

Since I cant really see very far into the tank, I decided to try taking a video of the fish.  I dont have an underwater camera, so I took an old video camera that has a "night vision" setting, sealed it in a Ziplock bag (the kind with a double seal), and sealed the top of the bag with duct tape (good old duct tape).  I tried to hold the camera in the water near the light so the camera could "see" better. 
As you can see in this video, I didnt get a great picture, but considering my resources, its not too bad.  You can see a couple of fish swim by a few times in this video.  Sorry for the camera movement, but I was doing this blind, with both arms submerged past my elbows in 56 degree water.
Maybe with a little practice, patience and a brigher light or two, Ill get better at this, but for now, heres Fishcam1.

Ive seen a picture of someone elses tank with a section of the tank cut out and a piece of plexiglass somehow secured over it.  I dont really want to introduce more possible leak sites, but if I can find out how to seal it well, I might do that next year between sets of fish.

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Fish Apocalypse

So, apparently the fish were not doing the clean-tank happy dance in that video, they were doing the, "holy cow, what did you do to our pH???" dance.  At least thats the current theory, presented to me by both my husband and a friend who is an aquarium expert.

The day after the major water change, I went in to feed the dogs, and there was another floater.  I had planned on draining as much of the tank as I could into a clean trash can until I could see the bottom to see if there was a rotting fish carcass or something that was contaminating the water.  I did not find a rotting carcass, but instead 20 recently deceased fish lining the bottom of the tank.  It looked really weird because they were all facing the same direction, so at first I thought it was the light shining through the slats in the wood...but it was going the wrong way.  I scooped the net through the water and came up with about six dead fish in the first shot.  Some of them were pretty good sized, considering I was expecting a 1-2 year growth period for these fish (I just got them in September).

After disposing of the remains, I did a search to see if its safe to eat a dead fish.  Some people said as long as its not floating, and you think you know what killed it (and it wasnt a disease), they eat them.  My husband said, "You can eat them, but Im not."  Since he has more logic and common sense than I do, I decided to follow his lead.  But, in hindsight, part of me wishes I had separated the floaters from the sinkers and taken my chances with just one....oh, well, there are more fish in the sea.  Or, in this case, the hatchery.

The Apocalypse

I emailed the guys at Liley Fisheries, and they said they have more 4"-6" fish (which is what I started out with), so I think I will clean out and cycle my tank and head back up to Boulder for some more trout...hopefully a little wiser in my aquaculture decisions this time.  I still dont know what started the whole fishy death march.  All I can think of is it started as shock when we took some out, and that led to a chain reaction, ending in my stupid overzealous cleaning.

Oh, well, live and learn.  If at first you dont succeed....buy more fish.

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Cataponics

Since my cats are so fascinated with the fish in the big tank, I decided to make them their own aquaponics setup - aka "cataponics."  It will have a little fish tank with fish for them to watch and a "grow bed" containing cat grass for them to eat.  Technically, its not really an aquaponics system yet, since the the tank and grow bed are not connected.  The little "water pump" that came with the tank is more of a glorified air pump, so its not strong enough to get the water up to the grow bed.  Ive got a few ideas on how to make it work, but I will probably get my husband involved since hes pretty smart about those things and always seems to see the most obvious solutions that I wrack my brain trying to figure out.

Fish Tank (No Fish Yet)

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Nosy Cat 1

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Nosy Cat 2 - Cat Grass Seeds on Grow Media (Fish Filter)

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Decorative Rocks Cover Seed Might Keep Cats from Pulling the Entire Thing Out When They Eat the Grass

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