Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Indoor over summer trout tank setup

Hi Everyone- For those that may remember a month or so ago I was asking Cecil a ton of questions in one of his posts about how he aerated his well water as well as asking him a ton of questions in PM's about indoor setups and what it would take to keep my Brook trout over the summer in an indoor tank. Originally I was planning on running well water into my pond directly above a large 5x5x10 cage holding 45 18"+ brookies. I ran the setup for a week and although the trout were healthy I always had the thought in the back of my mind that they wouldn't make the upcoming summer heat!

I knew it would cost me more money but would be well spent for future use if I were to build an indoor "flow thru" tank. I already had the degasser setup complete that I built a month ago so all I had to do was move that setup up to my old shop on the property where I already had well water. I then picked up a 700gallon stock tank from a local farm supplier (it wasn't the ideal tank as the bottom wasn't smooth, as it had 2 raised spots for a set of forks to slide under it to pick it up) but it was ALOT cheaper than the other smooth bottom tanks so I figured I would give it a shot. I didn't feel like cutting a hole in the bottom of the tank for a drain so I made a horizontal drain coming out the side of the tank in a hole that already had a bung installed. The horizontal pipe is 4" off the floor of the tank and drops down in the very center to touch the floor, I cut a series of fish mouths (no pun intended) in this vertical pipe where the solids and water can get sucked up and out of the tank. The water then flows the 2" PVC and into the pictured drain setup. The tank water level is controlled by the two vertical and upper horizontal pipes. There is also a gate valve in the lower section to quickly suck out solids and collected matter that is either on the bottom of the tank or trapped in the lower drain setup (you can see I plumped a 1/4" line from just infront of the gate valve up to the point where the water "water falls" down the 2nd vertical pipe. What this does is keep slight water movement constantly going towards the gate valve but does not allow the solids to make its way up the 1/4" tubing there for trapping all the solid mater in the last few inches before the gate valve. From this point the water then exits the building and drains out into my bush lot.

I added an air stone powered by a linear pump which is sitting directly ontop of the center drain. The added air not only helps with aeration but is said to help the swirl effect of the setup.

I currently have 28 brookies in the tank an a few rainbows and browns (I decieded to harvest a few and put them to good use on the dinner plate, as well as I lost a few due to intense heat the last few days they were in the pond). I am pumping aprox 1.5gallons per minute into the tank and having it drain out constantly.

The last part of my setup and what I truly believe is helping my setup imensly is that I installed a bung half way up the side of the tank and a few inches behind the tank inflow. From this bung I am sucking water out of the tank, thru a 1/3hp jet pump set at 5gpm and pumping it back up thru the degasser setup. It is taking gasses out of the tank water, adding oxygen once again but most enough creating an intense swirl in the tank when the 6.5gpm come out the inflow. All the fish are constantly swimming and facing the inflow direction of the tank and the solids are no longer seen anywhere on the tank bottom like they were the few days I didn't have this part of the system running.

It has now been 2 weeks and I have only lost 4 fish (2 browns, a rainbow and a tiger)which was my own stupidity for not covering the tank with mesh imediatly after putting them in the tank....I left for a couple hours and when I came back the 4 of them were lying on the floor dead.

The water temperature in the tank is a constant 52 degree's and the fish are VERY active and feeding hard.

My hopes for the setup was to use this summer after summer to grow out some nice eating sized brookies by keeping them thru the summer heat but I am very temped to go a few steps beyond that and run it all year long with a smaller perch tank directly behind the trout tank...will have to see what the future brings!

Here are some of the pictures!
Ryan

Awesome! Could you do a little video, too please?

Just wanted to give an update...All the brookies lived (even after being in only 4 inches of water for 12hours....left the gate open by accident and didn't realize it! I was luckly I had my drain setup the way I did or they would have had no water!) After being in the tank since the last week of July I was going away for a week last week so I decieded to put them all back down in the cage in the pond seeing the pond temps are down in the low 40's to high 30's. The setup worked great, I had next to no floating solids and non on the bottom of the tank (even with the pallet fork ridges this tank had). After running the re-circulation system for a week or two I decieded I was getting enough swirl in the tank and dropped the well water input back to just 3/4 gallons per minute. Amonia levels were perfect and there was no signs on stress even with heavy feeding. My solid's waste trap worked great and I could go a few days before pulling the gate valve and and would have a huge rush of solids where the drain exited my building.
The

The best part of my whole system was the growth of the Brookies...when I put them in the tank they were aprox 18" long on average and were aprox 1.5lbs (they were starved in the pond from late May till July to keep thier activity levels down). When I pulled them out last week the average brookie had grown 2.5" and of the 5 fish I weighed they had grown to 3.5-4.5lbs and there was one even larger that I didn't get a chance to weigh. I was ammazed at the growth in 2.5 months. The strange part was that I also had a few rainbows in the tank and their grown was even more pronounced but I had one Brown in the tank and it didn't put on length or weight and was one of the more active fish in the tank I thought!

All in all, it was a great experiment and I will be putting them all back into the system next summer and a few other younger ones I got this fall from my supplier.

Ryan

great set up there, I assume the stacked 5 gallon buckets are your aeration baffles? Whats the ultimate goal here.... grow out for dinner table? it appears that brookies at 3-4 lbs is about maxing out there growth. Sure they can get bigger then that but what are your plans once they get to say 5-6 lbs? selling or eating... BTW the best fresh fish I ever ate were sea run brookies averaging 3 lbs from the Sutton river where they were running from Hudson bay....yummy!

Salmonid

Ryan,

Thanks for sharing. Awesome results!

I hope to bring my trout inside eventually too (new fish not the ones I have now) once I build a pole building. Mine won't have much flow through though and I will probably use 12 foot Intex pools for tanks. The plan is to have a hatching tank and fingerling tank, a 12 foot Intex pool for the first year class, with an empty second one the first year. Then another year class is planted in the empty pool and the following year the first pool is harvested and planted with a new year class etc. That way no moving of fish and I can have continuous supply on an annual basis.

A question for you... Did you notice any fin issues after harvesting from the tank that you did not have before putting them into the tank and cage? That is my only concern about raising them in tanks. I've been told as long as my densities are low I shouldn't have any issues but...

Hi Cecil- all of my trout already had fin issues due to the guy that I get them from has concrete raceways and they are jambed together like cordwood! I would say though that there was no issues to the fins on mine after being in the tank. This summer when I was up at one of the largest Ontario Ministry of Natural Resorces rearing stations for trout in our province I did ask that question about fin damage after hearing you talk about it in the past. They said that they don't have any issues with it with there long narrow ruber/plastic lined raceways even with their high stocking densitys.

Here is a picture of one of the males that was in the tank up until a week ago (the others were just bought a month ago and are the largest I have bought yet...14-16")





As far as my plans for the trout... they will be for food and they will be harvested in the spring (the large ones from this year) but I will probably keep one or two nice looking males just to keep and see how big I can get them!

Ryan

Ryan,

Thanks for your response.

What is your well pump rated for and is it the same one as your house? Does it have a bladder tank and is it a simple matter of closing a valve to reduce flow?

Cecil- The well pump is setup for 10gpm and I have a 81gallon presure tank http://www.homehardware.ca/en/rec/index....sure+tank+water

The well water presure tank will run the well pump in the house for 2 1/2 minutes aprox and at 1gpm flowing out to my shop for the fish and nothing else using the supply in the house...it will take almost 25 minutes before the pump fires back up again.

This sumer for the re-circulation pump(has a 2.5 gallong presure tank on it) I also added an 10 gallon tank to the system that my father had that he was no longer using. I was pumping 4gpm thru the buckets and back into the tank with the re-circ pump to give me enough swirl in the tank and keep the fish swiming against the slight current. With 4gpm the jet pump would run for 1 minute, 15 seconds and would shut off for just over 3 minutes. The jet pump is 1/3hp and runs on 110 volts.

I had two check valves that I took a picture of an added below. One check valve is on the line for the well water and the other is for the re-circ line. I also made sure that I had the "Cut-in" preasure higher on the well water system so that the re-circ water could't by any chance make it back into our domestic water supply 300 feet away.

To control the GPM of water in both systems I had purcased PSI regulators made by WATTS but I could never get a 100% constant flow rate. I landed up going with a brass gate valve http://www.homehardware.ca/en/rec/index.htm/Plumbing-Electrical/Plumbing/Repair-Hookup/Appliance/Fittings/3-4-Brass-Copper-Gate-Valve/_/N-ntj8m/Ne-67n/Ntk-All_EN/R-I3282398?Ntt=3%2F4+valve I found that the gate valve let me adjust the flow down to almost nothing and kept the gpm at a very constant rate and amazingly didn't change with the changing psi from the pump.

All in all, the whole system worked great and next spring the only thing I am going to do is get another 81gallon presure tank for the re-circ system. The tank will cost me $450 but I figure I will save that price alone in 6 months due to our high hydro rates up here in Ontario. By changing the draw down cut in and cut out pressures I will be able draw down almost 10 minutes before the pump cuts back in.

Here are two pictures of the valves and my current presure tank setup. I labled the valves and stuff just with Paint so you could see what was going on.

Ryan