New Quarantine systemFinally, I moved the waterfall tank back by the two North Grow beds on my big system and turned that into my new Aquaponics Quarantine system. Tank over 200 gallons and about 200 gallons worth of grow bed.
That should be enough to make a decent quarantine system I would hope.
Trick with a small aquaponics system though is that there needs to be enough flow and aeration to keep the dissolved oxygen up for the fish as well. The choice of pump for such an aquaponics system is very important. I found that with too many fish, tilapia would not eat well if I didn’t have supplemental aeration in that tank.
After this, I’ve decided that an aquaponics quarantine system needs to be a full complete Aquaponics system in it’s own right. Keep some fish in it always right up until stocking it with new fish to be quarantined. Smaller fish might be kept in larger than normal numbers for a time but then the numbers reduced after the quarantine period and keep a small number of fish in the quarantine system to keep it cycled up and ready at all times.
While the plants can keep going in an aquaponics system without fish, the bio-filter if left without fish will be reduced and a sudden increase in fish load will entail cycling the bio-filter back up to the new load. The mineralization of solids in a system might provide some ammonia to the bio-filter bacteria but this won’t be enough to keep the bio-filter cycled up for a heavy fish load.
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