At some point I noticed that the Aquarium was leaking and I needed to do something about it. I took apart the aquarium carefully and painstakingly cleaned the glass of all silicone. Then my Mom and I siliconed the parts back together very carefully. Then had to wait while the silicone cured. Finally I was able to re-fill the aquarium, and it BROKE!!!!!
Lumber liner shelf tank
Lumber liner shelf tank 2
So, I decided to try building my own tank for the quarantine aquaponics system with some lumber and liner on the shelf unit where the aquarium had been. This did work for a while until the pressure of the water broke the shelf away from the wall.
Shelf tank with water broke shelf
Argh, for some reason I don’t think fate likes this location for a quarantine aquaponics system. I suppose the aquarium outside was just asking to fail eventually but I’ve not had much luck with other small tanks either. I did finally hook up another tank for small fingerlings.
Fingerling system
This one had a problem with the fish knocking the screens off of the outlet pipes and then the fish getting caught in the pipe. I even cut one fish up with the ball valve once. Not pleasant realizing I’d done that. Keep in mind that when you kill fish in a small quarantine aquaponics system, the water quality can go really poorly very fast. All the more reason to make sure the quarantine aquaponics system is very robust. I’ll have to go back to the drawing board on that one I guess.
I think the next version of the Aquaponics Quarantine system will need to be much bigger.
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