Arapaima Pond Build

[fishdance]

It's really starting to come together. Nice to see the photo updates. It's already looking great.

Will you have UV to control green water or hoping the bio filter and biofilm will starve the algae from nutrients?

Are you able to bury the bottom drain Lines? To protect as well as hide them. If a tap valve gets broken, the pond would completely drain (?).

Also if air is essential then you can add a second air pump sharing the same line for redundancy. If one pump fails, the overall air volume drops so its immediately apparent but air supply continues until you repair. It doesn't look like air will be critical unless you have high stocking rates and the main fish is air breathing.

I forget to reply to one of your previous comments about 30kg bottom drain covers. Flat covers are easily influenced by water currents so a fish swimming past would move them. The trick is to attach a weighted column to underside of cover which extends vertically down into the drain pipe so it can't flip over or move sideways more than the drain width.

 

[Luc70]

It's really starting to come together. Nice to see the photo updates. It's already looking great.

Will you have UV to control green water or hoping the bio filter and biofilm will starve the algae from nutrients?

Are you able to bury the bottom drain Lines? To protect as well as hide them. If a tap valve gets broken, the pond would completely drain (?).

Also if air is essential then you can add a second air pump sharing the same line for redundancy. If one pump fails, the overall air volume drops so its immediately apparent but air supply continues until you repair. It doesn't look like air will be critical unless you have high stocking rates and the main fish is air breathing.

I forget to reply to one of your previous comments about 30kg bottom drain covers. Flat covers are easily influenced by water currents so a fish swimming past would move them. The trick is to attach a weighted column to underside of cover which extends vertically down into the drain pipe so it can't flip over or move sideways more than the drain width.

Hello Fishdance,

No UV Control planned for now. Relying on the filter, and aside from that, the stocking is quite light.
Bottom drain-lines stay as is for now, though likely will paint all if the contractor does not do that, to protect them from UV-related deterioration over time.. Yes there's a chance of damage, but there's no foot-traffic there except for a few staff working on the pond for cleaning.

A damaged drain-valve would not drain the pond unless the leak is in the first chamber (where the water flows in.. The inlet to the filter is at the bottom of the pond, but once any other drain-valve would break, the worst that would happen is that water from the automatic top-up valve keeps flowing into the filter, and draining at the damaged valve/outlet. Potentially the pumps would run dry and get damaged, but the water in the pond remains stable after dropping about 15cm.
Even with damage to the first chamber drain, the leak would likely be detected within 20-30 minutes by personnel or security guard and can be solved by putting a stand-pipe into the filter chamber's drainage outlet.

Airpump is not essential for the pond survival from what I've seen on Sunday. The returns are Venturi based, sucking air through the vertical pipe on top of them, so it's not coming from the air-pump.

As for the bottom drain cover, well, new pond doesn't have them anymore, so that problem has solved itself, but thanks for the insight, never thought of that.

Bit of a bummer. Contractor got cold feet for moving the fish. So we're now searching again for a crew to move it.
Will be updated in due course.

Cheers,
Luc

 

[Luc70]

The water-supply will partly be from the industrial estate and in part from rain-water harvesting.
To ensure the water quality is constant, we will be filtering the water through a sand-bed. Big improvement over the tap-water use in the old factory, and it will help with removing 'food' for the algae as well, even before it enters the pond.



Here's a picture of it at the backside of the factory. Obviously, the rest is sprinkler/fire installation, including a diesel-powered emergency pump.
The dark grey wall in the backside is a 30,000 Litre water tank for the sprinkler system.

Cheers,
Luc

 

[Luc70]

While waiting to get some time to check around for moving the arapaima, I did get an idea for a temporary tank to move the fish.
Since we're moving the factory, there's some access platforms for machines that will be moved as well.


Never mind the stuff all around it, one of the reasons we need to move to a bigger factory...lol..
But the platforms in the background are modules of about 1500x2000x2200mm
Tip one of these over and you have a water-tank frame the size of a truck bed.
Put plywood inside and a large tarp, put foam between the ply and the tarp to give it a padding and put it on a flat-bed truck and fill it 3/4 with water.
A lid on top and it could move the arapaima.

Of course, very slow driving, likely get some escort for it so we don't run into problems while driving.
Then we'd only need a stretcher of some kind that will hold the fish securely to transfer from the pond into the tank and back into his new pond.

We'll figure something..

 

[Dorado71]

only 1 word...WOW on such a project...cant wait for the paima to go in and see it swimming inside.

 

[Luc70]

only 1 word...WOW on such a project...cant wait for the paima to go in and see it swimming inside.

I really hope to get to that as well.. .sigh... don't like moving him one single bit..

 

[fishdance]

I'm keen to visit you and your marvellous pond (thank you for your hospitality) and will visit some fish farms and fiah shops or snorkel some countryside streams while I'm there. Just have to wait out the Corona virus scare...

I've got plenty of experience catching and moving big fish and happy to help but I don't think I'll be there for many weeks. Virus depending.

 

[Luc70]

Well, the pond is ready. Contractor said he would get feeders to start cycling the pond.
Will be collecting about 30-40kg of filter gravel sometime next week in a 200 litre drum filled with pond-water to help seeding the new filter as well.

We're still looking around for an experienced crew to move the fish.
As a side note, our contractor said he could easily sell our Arapaima for over 300,000 THB, which is about USD 9,500 because of his nice color and scales. That's without the value of the other 6, which I guess would fetch another 150-200k THB combined.
Funny, putting 500k worth of fish in a pond that cost 250k to build...

 

[Luc70]

Bunch of feeders in it now and it's running. Plants in the backside will give shade.


That's doesn't look half bad..


And the feeders happily swimming around.
They must be thinking they're in heaven now.
Just wait till your big, badass boss starts claiming his pond...lol.

 

[Hendre]

Looks super good! It's great to see tankbusters in large ponds.

Are you at all worried about jumping?