New Quarantine Aquarium Aquaponics System outside

Well, getting ready for some new catfish so we moved the aquarium outdoors to become the new Quarantine Aquaponics system.
We decided the big aquarium indoors was too much moisture for the house and we needed more storage space in the spare room. Well why not set it up outside? I did add a cover in front to keep the sun off the tank as the algae would otherwise have taken over and heated up the tank quickly.

Quarantine of new fish for an aquaponics system is a pretty good idea since you don’t want to risk introducing parasites into an existing population of large fish. However, I’ve had lots of trouble working out a good quarantine system so far. It takes time to get an aquaponics system cycled up and suddenly loading a small system with a large load of fish all at once is usually going to tax even a fully cycled system if it hasn’t been getting constant doses of ammonia to keep the bacteria up to speed. Also, new fish are going to be stressed when you get them and prone to difficulty if the water quality doesn’t stay good.

At least the aquarium Aquaponics system will let me see the fish well to check them for problems.

This system is actually tied together with the bin that was in the ground and another half barrel grow bed so it was actually closer to 80 gallons of fish tank and 50 gallons of grow beds. Worked ok for really small catfish fingerlings but not so well for catfish beyond about 6 inches.