Outbackozzie's Kalgoorlie System

creative1

interesting concept-
The bigger the water body the more stable is the temp.
It is thought that the troughs/GBs, can/will act like radiators. so whatever temp is ambient the water body will be lagging behind when there is a severe change.
You probably have some mornings of a few deg C then get to 35C during the day.
The average temp gradually increasing the water temp.
If the thermal cycle was 12 hrs then your water body will cool down again by morning. AP water bodies because of there limited mass can have a less than even perhaps 16 hrs of heating up and only 8hrs to cool.

Outbackozzie

The site was chosen due to the ease of applying shade cloth over the area

i am not sure about the oxygen thing either springa, i am sure that there will be enough o2 for the 12 hours overnight, at least there has been sofar

maybe should cycle the pump once an hour overnight to cool everything down?

Springa

Yeah im no expert far from it, but i would say if you dont get too much temp drop overnight, running the pump for a bit could only help things. you could allways get a cheap stat to lock out the pump if the temp is too low.

springa

steve

O2 is gonna be based on the number of fish (and weight of course)

i saw 17 big silvers keel over in about 60L of water (holding tank) today while getting the main tank ready. livened up straight away once they were put into 200 litres with surface agitation.

Quote:

maybe should cycle the pump once an hour overnight to cool everything down?

Goldies have a huge tolerance range, somewhere from 2C to 30C its the temp SHIFTS that stress fish out. I'd try and keep it as stable as possible.

I'd prolly go some light shade, from my experience most heat gain / loss is done in the growbed though the medium, even with a buried tank...........and your gravels gonna bake in the sun

janethesselberth

I would run the pump some overnight, Ozzie. As your fish grow and the temperatures rise, the dissolved oxygen will start to be a problem. If you are lucky, you will see the fish gulping in the early morning as it starts to become an issue. If you are not lucky, you will just come out one morning to find them dead.

Neat set-up, btw. I will be very interested to see how it does for you as the plants get larger. Are the troughs anchored so that heavy plants will not tip them? I love creative implementations, and I don't think we've seen one quite like this yet.

creative1

the other thing I was thinking -how well did the sand fit around the bath?
Did you water it in?

steve

C1, wouldn't loose sand insulate more?

i might be compelety off track, just remembering that the reason fiber glass insulates well is because of the trapped air.

Outbackozzie

C1 - The dirt was watered around the bath, i had to jump on the bath to get it to fit, so its pretty tight.

Janet - Pump has been set to run once every 2 hours overnight as of now.

I sorta want to let the plants breath a bit if possible. The troughs will have some big steel tent pegs to hold them down once I make them, plenty of steel bar at work.

Steve - I will get some cloth during the next week, and put it up

Thanks for the input everyones

creative1

I was thinking tight - like what has been done.
I think it is the air that heats up .

steve

cool. i think we may be thinking of two different things anyway.

insulation and adding thermal mass.

I think when we bury it wetap into the thermal mass of the ground to stabilise the tankl temp to the ground temp. for that we need tight packing with good conductivity (like you said

)

i was thinking of insulation which was dumb considering what i just typed

sorry been abit sick today, brain now working.

Outbackozzie

Whenever i fill the system up with water, it overflows out the pvc riser, so under the bath would stay pretty wet i reckon, should transfer heat pretty well. i might go and get that thermometer tomorrow

twintragics

hi outback, neat setup.

Outbackozzie

OK,

Done my first water test today, 1 week after first fill and adding fish.

Water temp is 22 deg c
The water coming out of the grow beds is only .5 deg c higher than the tub water so maybe a bit of evaporative cooling through the media?

PH - 7.25

Ammonia was 4.0mg/L so I did a 1/3 change of water and also added more water height by raising the tub overflow.

Ammonia is now between 1.5 and 3, this shouldnt be too fatal at this temp should it? Everything in the tank looks pretty happy, the goldies were swimming a bit sideways straight after the water change, but are good now.

Added a bit more oxygenation as well, plants and splash

30 deg c here today in the shade, nothing is wilting in the sun yet

steve

ozzie, there is an ammonia toxicity chart in the useful info section. it relates ammonia temperature and more importantly PH to arrive at a safe level figure.

Outbackozzie

Aah good it is ok then

Now with rocks:

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