Thanks Jeff, oh well this is all an experiment so I am going to do a 100% water change, and try some some cheap gold fish until I can keep them alive.Then I will add the channel cats. I am wondering if there was some bad stuff in that IBC or blue barrels I am using. Hopefully a 100 % water change will be enough to flush the system. Oh well off for a 50 mile drive to lowes(one way) to find a connector to be able to flush the IBC instead of just siphoning it out.

Another question that has been bothering me is I have not seen any algae growth in this system! Do you think this might indicate something wicked is going on?