Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Pond Boss Indoor RAS for winter bluegills up and running

Update:

No more problems with the siphon. As per advice from Steven VanGorder the author of Small Scale Aquaculture I must have had a small leak allowing air in which slowly built up an air bubble and stopped the siphon. I can back that up as the last one I built that failed, had tiny air bubbles coming out of the intake into the clarifier.

So I rebuilt one making sure to hold the pieces in when glued, and without a 't' which may have been letting air in via the "cleanout." No problems in four days and no change in the water level in the barrel clarifier.

Now I'm waiting for the nitrites to appear to indicate the nitrosomonas bacteria are starting to work. Two weeks and the only thing I'm reading is the ammonia I've been adding to feed the bacteria. I've read it may take up to 8 weeks to get the bilfilter cycling although 4 to 6 is more typical.

I did seed the tank with some alleged bacteria in a bottle from an aquarium supply store, but according to some guys on the NANFA site it's not effective unless it's a particular brand of which mine was not.

I'm going to have to chop ice to get the bluegill fry out of the floating cate to plant the tank. With my luck I will have all kinds of fungal problems from handling them in the cold water even though I will acclimate them (fry bluegills). The story of my life: A day late a dollar short.

Sounds like you've got it down well Cecil.

Cecil,If it was easy everyone would be doing it, although most of the time it seems to end up being harder than we expected.
I'll bet your BG will be real happy to get out of the arctic cages.

Cecil:

Give me a shout if you need a hand. It sure got cold and icy quick!!

Probably the most important thing to do in a RAS is to remove solids as quickly as possible. A swirling solids settling tank would be worth looking at. You would place it in front of your clarifier. A well setup settling tank let's you "flush" the solids out of the bottom as needed, much like flushing a toilet. It really cuts down on the time spent cleaning filter media, and it really helps to keep the whole system running smoothly.

Weissguy is correct. It is the solids (suspended and dissolved) that are most responsible for causing reduced water quality in RAS and natural ponds. The more crowded a system becomes the more important it becomes to process the solids.

Thanks for all the info guys. I definitely know how solids and dissolved solids etc. can dirty up the water and reduce water quality. I've seen it when I was temporarily holding some bluegills in this tank outdoors, when I had to drain the production pond and start over. I ran flow through from one of the ponds through the tank but the water still got pretty dirty.

And a venturi drain will be the choice de jour next time I set this tank up.

I hope to soon put the RBC in a separate rectangular tank
at a level above the fish tank, to allow overflow to return flow into the tank via gravity so another pump does not need to be added. Lots of advantages to that, including isolating the RBC to treat the fish in the tank if necessary, and simply having more room in the fish tank itself to harvest fish etc. With the smaller than optimum size of the tank I'm using now, flow in the tank is not circular like I would prefer.


The big plan it to get experience with what I have, and then try different types of setups and combinations and build everything myself. I'm pretty sure I could build a foam fractionator and swirl separator, which look pretty effective. In fact, a lot of the things they use in RAS technology look like they can be built yourself -- at least on a small scale. I see they make foam fractionators for aquariums. I looked at one at Pet Store the other day, and it didn't look that complicated. Basically air foaming the water and the foam with the particulates and protein flows away.

I'm going to try and use gravity as much as possible to move water to keep utility costs down. And most likely I won't be interested in pushing the limits on carrying capacity. My goal is fast growing high quality disease free fish.