Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Aquarium question

If you are heating the water consider using water heater blankets to help insulate the tank and save heat loss.

And a top that is insulated if the basement is colder than the water temp that you want to keep.

What's that?!?!

Best laugh of the night so far!

Ive actually put together a native tank when I was a kid, it was nice. Just tough to stock. I had sticklebacks and small minnows of various unidentifiable types. It was cool when the sticklebacks got mating colors on. I had a decnt water flow in the tank to simulate a crick.

It is tough to find a good spot to catch them, and tougher yet to find the time to do it. I went lazy and set up a tropical.

No biofilter for me. Just doing an 80% water exchange every week. My water is stellar and doesn't need any treatment. But last year I still had significant fungus problems after the fish had been in cold water for 15 weeks.

As long as it doesn't sit on the water like a swimming pool. I could see lots of negatives wirh that.

I once blocked off a small room that had a 300 gallon fish tank with a tarp to save heat and the air became foul. Most likely CO2 probably increased too.

A water heater blanket wraps around the outside of the water heater to help hold in the heat. Faced insulation for in between wall studs would also work as a heater blanket. I don't suggest that you put insulation on top of the water.

OK, perfect. Exactly what I needed to know.

Its threads like this that absolutely fascinate me. The knowledge pooled together here is unbelievable.

You can just use that reflective bubble wrap type insulation that you can get at a box store. Simple and easy.

As far as heaters, the elements have an "on time" life, if they are any good to begin with, so it's best to get something a bit larger than required so they last longer. It's still going to take the same amount of watts to do the job. I'm gonna try those 1000W bucket heaters from TSC and see how they work.

As far as 80% water change per week, is that in one shot? or continuous throughout the week?

That would be all at once. I have been blessed with really good water quality and it doesn't seem to affect the fish at all. They start eating within a couple of hours after the exchange.

What about the salt? Are you going to prep some water in advance? What about changing water quality parameters too quickly? Any possibility of accumulation over time?

Do you think there may be some induced stress on a repeated basis?

Look up what a sine wave is and apply this cycle to it.

I completely understand where you're going with this. I am trying to put the same amount of salt in every time.

I think that the more frequently I change the water, the more consistent the parameters are going to be. But I do have to be careful about accumulation of the sodium chloride.

Water evaporates, salt don't. So when you change water, you'll have to determine the correct dose of fresh water to prepared water with what is remaining in your tank. Easier said than done, but you won't be killing a biofilter if you get it a tad out of whack.

I didn't see this post. You'll figure it out.

For what it's worth I do a 20 percent water change in my 250 gallon systems as frequent as every other day to once a week depending on the species and tank load. I could probably get by with less. I once had 75 lbs. of yellow perch in 150 gallons of water and did a once a day water change as a solid back mass of fish made me nervous!

I also flush out around 2 to 4 gallons in the center drain and around it twice a day by opening a knife gate valve on the external stand pipe. Let me tell you that is some foul smelling stuff!

My make up water is premixed with salt, heated, and the iron precipitate filtered out. I've never seen a substantial rise in salinity from evaporation and even if I did it wouldn't be an issue as long as it's gradual.

I have grown both tilapia and bluegills in an outside system in the summer with no salt added as the waste water was used on a nearby raised garden. No health issues whatsoever. The PHD down the road that raises hybrid striped bass for the Chicago gourmet market doesn't use salt either.

That said if given the choice I prefer to add salt.

Yikes that would scare me!

So you don't see ammonia creep up before you do your water change?

What kind of fish load do you have?

I forgot to mention one extremely important point. I am feeding my fish next to nothing. Maybe 2% of what they'd get in the summer. Just enough to keep them from starving. Of course that could also be leading to some of the fungus problems. I need to feed them enough to keep them from getting sick...but no more.

I will have 40-50 lbs of fish....and have never seen increased ammonia readings. Probably because the fish don't have anything to process.

So your goal is to just hold them inside during the winter in a sustaining mode? Stupid question and forgive me if the answer is here, but why not just keep them in a cage or pond then? It would be less trouble and they'd be less likely to delvelop fungus in the pond.

I hold my bluegills and perch over the winter too, but feed them well. Water temps in the upper 70's. The up side is come spring my YOY bluegills are 6 to 8 inches with some even larger and my YP are 8 to 9 inches with a few larger.

Once I can sex the fish the male bluegills go into the trophy pond as do the female yellow perch.

The water inside my cages during the winter gets down into the low to mid 30s. Yellow Perch, yes...Bluegill, yes....redears, a little bit iffy. I mostly just don't want to lose any ground on them.

Can you make them deeper for warmer temps?

Maybe, but it scares me to not be able to monitor the fish. I have visions of the spring coming and finding everyone of them dead.