Tuesday, July 28, 2015

20kWh week inside, and fish have been moved!

The fish are outside!  How great is that!  I put one in on Friday to confirm it wasn't toxic water, and it survived till Monday, so they all got moved last night!
Not great for them; they are pretty freaked out.  I'm trying to quickly source some structure to place in their tank so that they can feel safe and relax a bit. But they're out there!  Huzzah!

The tank they were in was unable to keep up with the bioload, and for the last 2 weeks was cloudy from high nitrites and nitrates (and likely, as well, ammonia).  But they soldiered on through it!  So now it's about sourcing a cheap source for pellets, and ensuring the filter is getting enough water through it, which doesn't look like the case right now.

The indoor part of the setup, with 1 heater and 3 filters, 1x4' T5HO fluorescent light, and a supplemental light for the plants growing in the filter, takes 20kWh of electricity per week.
In Manitoba that's about 7 cents/kWh, so, quick math says about 30$ so far. 
We've been enduring a heat wave that has kept temperatures quite high here, so the heaters in the IBC have not been going hard to maintain temperatures.  I'll get a monitor out there ASAP.

Interesting note from the transfer process: fish don't like to be netted, brought into the air, and then put into a bucket that is just barely bigger than them.
Also, some fish can make a 3 foot jump from 10" of water.

Some pics!
Me with a lot of water on me.  Those guys can SPLASH.

See the tails (a little beat up) in the middle of the pic?  They're in the IBC!

This is them pretending they're flounders and lying on one side to keep an eye on me.

Monday, July 20, 2015

Preparing the exterior aquarium

Still gotta wrap this in plastic and seal it up as much as possible to insulate it, but here is the exterior aquarium as of yesterday.

Running a 300 watt heater that I am sure works, and a 300 watt heater that might work to heat things up, it may be slowly warming.  I may use the end of some spray foam cans to seal and glue it all together.

I plugged the power meter into the downstairs tank on Sunday at 5pm, so in one week I will be able to estimate the per-week cost of running this setup.



Tuesday, July 14, 2015

Prepping for the move to the outside tank

Maybe 3 people will ever read this.  Huzzah!
So, the IBC is full of water, and the heatwave we're experiencing is really helping by increasing the temperature of the water.  Now, I have to come up with a way to maintain the heat.
1 - Insulation!  I will surround it with an inch(ish) of styrofoam, including the top, and leave a hatch for feeding
2 - Heating!  this is the problem.  The fish will smash any glass heaters, the heaters will melt the side of the IBC, so what do I do?  At the moment I'm thinking about floating a glass heater with it's plastic guard in a piece of styrofoam.  My hope is that would be sufficient: one 300 watt heater.  With the insulation, it should be sufficient, right?

I realized yesterday I can move one or two first, lowering the nitrogen pressure on the downstairs tank, and literally testing the waters of the outside tank.

This may still work!