Watched your videos over and over trying to figure out the flow. It appears to me that you just run a pile of air to keep the water in the take moving so much that the particles end up going out the skimmers. High amount of air makes the waste partials light.
Do you stop the pumps to feed? How do you keep the feed from just shooting out the skimmers? Sinking feed high fat?
What my son and I see doing is to raise some of our perch that we trap out of our pond. Some young perch that are hatched in the pond but can over populate the pond quickly. Just wondering how many perch would equal one tilapia for your 25 fish per tank calculation. My son is so excited its not funny.
Cheers Don.
Don,
You're right about the flow. I've spent MANY hours and MANY dollars trying to figure out the best way to get the solids out of the tank early and this is the best way that I've come up with.
The water enters the tank at the top rear from the barrels above. It flows to the bottom and towards the front where a 6 inch airstone pumps the water and the solids up and toward the skimmer.
I don't need to stop the pumps to feed because the airstone keeps the surface water flowing past and beyond the skimmer to the back of the tank. So as long as I dump the feed behind the skimmer, it just flows to the back of the tank and stays there. If your feeding sinking feed, some of it does end up in the skimmer but not much.
About the 25 fish per tank suggestion, one of the other guys responded about using weight instead of the number of fish and he was right. My suggestion is 1 pound of fish AT HARVEST WEIGHT per 5 gallons of water. So if your perch will weigh 1 pound, you shuold be comfortable with 50 fish in your tank.
Keep it fun and your son will stick around. When it becomes more work than fun, well you were young once. Steve
