Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Well dont know why but some thing has gone out of whack seriously, hence the advice sought

Firstly, the system has been running for a few months 4 or 5 now with no problems, but in the last couple of weeks the plants have been withering and seedlings dying and nothing appears to be growing anymore, they appear to have become stunted in there growth, that being said the cherry tomatoes are still doing okay

Did some tests today and this is what I have found

Water temp 26
Salt 2.5
Ph 7.9
Ammonia 1.5
Nitrite 5
Nitrate 30

Previoulsy my readinga have been perfect 0 for ammonia 0 for nitrite and nitrate hovers around the 5-6

Now Ive had a few issues with pumps dying and very slight electrical charges felt in the water and so forth, now Ive fixed all that and have a new pump externaly fitted and it fills all my growbeds beautifully etc but my bacteria seem to have taken a big knock on the head, now at no stage did the growbeds become dry, but I am at a lost. I have as of now stopped feeding the fish, the only thing that has really changed is the pump on time which has has been reduced, but the grow beds are still damp before the next cycle starts

Any advice

Ph to high the plants cant take up the goodies

Looks like through the various interuptions, that the bacteria colony may have become a bit dormant... and is now spiking... effectively cycling back to cater with the load...

Glad you've stopped feeding, as the ammonia reading at that pH is dangerously high...

And luckily, your salt level will be mitigating the nitrites... which are very high... and also high enough to possibly effect the plants...

Your pH level will also be inhibiting trace element take up...

Don't feed... increase your pumping, shorten your intervals... and add as much aeration as you can...

Retest tomorrow and repost the results... any sign of algae... or a "milkiness" to the water??

Yeh dont understand what caused it to go stupid, wouldnt have thought a decrease in the pump on time would make it happen, currently between pump cycles the rocks under the surface are still moist at commencement of new cycle.

Yeh very lucky salt levels were up otherwise I would have had some floaters, I raised that up when I thought the barras had an infection but it was actually just physical damage caused bythem hitting up against things in the tank.

No algae at all, crystal clear in both tanks right to the bottom, no milkiness etc, what by the way causes milkiness, one I havent read or heard about yet.

Im going to start concentrating now on bringing ph down, will drop a bit of acid in each day and see if I can start to make it move

I say this at the risk of re-starting the discussions on water turn over that was going on the forum a few weeks ago. Make sure that based on your stocking density you sufficiently turn over your water. It is not only about keeping your growing media moist but also about keeping the water sufficiently filtered so that the fishes want to stay alive in your tank.

I personally go with one entire water volume or more turned over every hour so that if my water test parameters are out, I can immediately eliminate the question of whether I turned over the water enough...

Salt mitigate against nitrite poisoning, it does not do anything to mitigate ammonia toxicity... at your pH and water temp, ammonia is toxic at about 0.35 ... as Rupe suggested, I would flick the switch to continously pump the water through the growbeds overnight.

Test again tomorrow, if the ammonia and nitrite levels are dropping, then I might conclude that you are not turning over your water often enough... but others might say otherwise...

If ammonia does not drop, I think I would advise on a water change...

Well IMO, do not try to lower the pH now until you know the problem... your fishes are now in survival mode based on high ammonia and nitrite levels, do you think they would like it if the pH changes as well??

I agree about water turn over.
Just because the gravel is still moist, all that means is you haven't killed the bacteria and plants in that gravel. If you have only been pumping water into the grow bed for say 15 minutes ever few hours and that is only turning over a fraction of your fish tank every few hours, I expect that is where the spiking ammonia and nitrite levels are coming from, especially if you have growing fish in the tank.

While the water is just sitting in the fish tank, it is not being filtered. The only time the grow beds are helping clean your water is while the water is going into/through the grow beds. The grave still being moist in the drained grow bed doesn't do anything to remove the ammonia and nitrite still in the fish tank until you pump the fish tank water through the grow bed.

Mmm easy when everything is working right isnt it. Its when things go wrong that the difficulty starts to arise.

Hydroponics is so much easier, but having fish is certainly nice, well I wont do a water change until tonight if necessary, theyve survived until now with the readings, will see what happens by the end of the day, if still high then I will do a big water change

Movement of water was not really a problem, I think on this new pump Im turning more water over than I was before, it will pump through the beds about 600 litres of water in 2 minutes 900 in 3 minutes

Ive started my emergency BYAP pump up this morning and set it to run non stop all day today through my big grow bed, ive left the rest still hooked up to the main pump and will let that continue on its new cycling time.

One of my barras is obviously not happy, he has bulging eyes and there redish

Bacterial bloom, as far as I know. That can come from a variety of factors, but these can be summed-up as "good environmental conditions for bacterial reproduction". I don't believe that those bacteria are the ones we want: more likely to simply be opportunistic ones eating excess food etc.

Just for reference in this thread, what is the Fish tank size? What is the total growbed volume? And how much were you pumping just before this spike came to your attention? (as in how much water turn over each hour? or how much pumped during each pump cycle and how often were the pump cycles.)

Okay tanks are two 1000Lt units joined with a big pipe to maintain constant water levels, 50 small fingerling silvers in one tank and 11 mid sized 30cm barras in the other tank

I used to flood the main growbed 500 litre in 4 minutes and the 3 small growbeds 60 litres would just fill and drain in this time as well, now I would run the pump for 5 minutes every hour, had no problems for quite some time, but in the last week or two everything has kind of crashed, starting with the pumps and so forth,

my changes in the last two weeks are:: new pump and additional growbeds with a reduction in pump time due to increased capacity of pump

My setup at the moment is one 500 litre grow bed and 10 small 60 litre growbeds, so I have 1100 litres of filtration, these flood in under 2 minutes, I was pumping 2 minutes to the hour, but now today am pumping 3 minutes to the hour, Im kind of guessing that the bacteria need a minimum flood time over them,, on top of this I have my BYAP pump flooding the 500 litre bed today constantlly, so will see what my readings are tonight

Ive ordered a repeat timer, so My next goal will be to run the pump twice an hour 3 minutes at a time, but my current setup wont allow me to program in 30 seperate cycles at 3 minutes each only 15 cycles

simso I am big fan of water turn over and recommend water to be turned over once an hour, I have 5500lts of water with a 12000 lph pump at head height probably pumping 10000lph I run one hour on and one off, but in winter 40 mins on and one off, so what Litre per hour is your pump? and what is the head height and pumping distance.
I had spikes all over the other day and found a dead smelly trout so check you don't have a dead one, also aphids have completely killed on corn plant

At a 1 metre head, flow rate is 455 litres per minute, seriously this pump can move some water, took a photo of my single crook barra, his eyes are bulging, so Ive removed him and quarantined and upped the salt levels, hopefully he will come good soon

Gotta hurt, the rest are okay, just not this poor fella

*Frack*... that is some bad looking eyes... makes my eyes water as well...

From what I understand, you have 2000L of water... and your pump moves 455 litres per minute, so I would set the pump to run at least 5 mins...

just curiosity, are your water test results the same for both 1000L tanks??

One thing that I have read is that as temperature increases, there is less dissolved oxygen in the water. So one way to look at it is that it is quite possible that your filtration was effective a few months back based on those pumping times, but it may not be as effective as temperature rises, since there is less dissolved oxygen for the nitrification process.

Man I would put that barra out of it's misery, I personally think you have to much flow 455lpm is super high and as ivan has suggested you would only need 5 minutes on and 55 off at that pace, at my flow the pump out tank level drops about a foot and the drain in tank raises the same during the cycle, tanks are connected by a 65mm hose, you probably aren't getting a full water cycle in 5 minutes, you can get a 6000lph pump at 1 mt head about 5000lph and run 15/45 cycle, pump would cost around $60-80,
see what the super guru's suggest