Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

So question for you guys, it is currently very much winter around here and I got to thinking that it might be better to use the snow around our house for replenishing my AP system rather than our city water, is there any reason why I shouldn't? (I will let it melt and come up to room temp first of course!)

Also I have lake Erie (Part of the great lakes in the US) pretty much on my doorstep, during the summer would that be a smarter place to get my water so I don't have to worry about the things the city adds to our water?

Thanks everyone!

Snow would be very much the same as the rain, test the PH. It takes a good amount of snow to get 1 gal of water. How are you going to melt it to get enough? The lake water is not a good idea as it contains pollutants. You could be introducing harmful bacteria to your fish and system.

I had wondered about that and my wife was concerned about the lake water as well.

My AP system is a very small one about 15 gallons or so, I only need about a gallon per week. I just packed a 5 gallon bucket full of snow and brought it in, figured I would test the ph once its melted and at room tempature and then dump it in and grab another batch, we don't lack for snow around here

At 1 gal a week you should have no problems keeping up. You sure do have enough snow. I grew up North East of the Columbus area. Do you have access to any well water for the summer?

You can check with your water provider to see if they only use chlorine or if they use chloramine. Chlorine is easy, just fill a bucket with water and add a bubbler for a few days or let it sit out in the sun for a few days to let the chlorine out. Chloramine is a whole other story as it won't just go away with time.

So long as the snow is relatively clean and you don't have a lot of smoke or pollution around it should be fine. I suppose in summer you just need to put some buckets and a rain barrel out to collect enough rain to keep a good amount on had for topping up.

If using rain and snow water, make sure you get some buffering shell into your system to keep the pH up.

Would lake water be bad if the lake contains fish?

No access to well water around here, I am right in the suburbs here so everyone has city water. The next two beds I am adding I am going to be putting crushed sea shells in them, am planning on adding the first new bed in February.

At the moment I am not sure what the city adds to the water here, I have been running the water I add into the system through our Brita water filter plus letting it sit for a few days.

As for the lake, you will find places that living things are where there is radioactive material around, just because something can survive in it doesn't mean you would want to eat it later. If lake Erie wasn't known for being so bad I might think more about using the water from there but for now I am going to just try and use Snow and rain where I can.