Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hello all,

Just started with a 275 gallon IBC fish tank and 1 raft (1/2 of an IBC) these were my levels before they brought our fish:

ph 7.0
Ammonia 0
Nitrites 0
Nitrates 160

I am in Central FL so no plants yet (will start seeding cups in about a week) still too hot & steamy.

Fish have been here now 1 week (50 large tilapia fingerings, some are now 4-5 inch)
Levels now read:

ph 6.5
Ammonia 0.25
Nitrites 5 ppm
Nitrates 0

When I contacted the guy I bought it from he said to add some well water (my well water is 7.5) and everything else was fine. When I told him I thought the nitrites would harm the fish, he said "no, only high ammonia levels do that". My gut tells me that something is out of balance...

Any advice??? I'm nervous.

Oh we have been dropping in two handfuls of catfish pond food to the fish twice a day, one at a time though to make sure it was eaten before adding a second handful. Are we feeding them too much?
They go crazy like piranhas at feeding time and now even come to the top of the water when I show up.

Thanks,
JJ

Hi
As I understand your description of your system you have little or no bio filtration.
Without bio filtration the fish will pollute their water and die.
First action stop feeding.
Switch pump to constant flow
If you can relocate at least 40 of your fish.

Read the, ‘Nitrogen cycle’
Most people use media beds ( gravel,clay pellets, lava rock etc) for growing crops AND bio filtration.
You could add an appropriately sized commercial pond filter.
All of these things will take time to establish.
Patience is a key part of aquaponics.
You can reduce the effects of Nitrite poisoning with salt but without an effective bio filtration system in place first IMHO you are wasting your time.
Good Luck

hi jj,
have you got any Growbeds.? if not get it happening..
high nitrites will kill your fish, do a partial water change and stop feeding them, if you have no growbeds, do a complete water change..
how long have you had the fish,? how long have you had the system up and running. did you cycle it first or just put the fish in when you finished building it.?

Yep get some grow beds happening soon, or go to your local pet shop ect an buy a really good filter that may help.
But you really need grow beds or media of some sort to hold that amount of fish.
The fish will pollute there own water and it will kill them.

Hello everyone,

OK to update. We have a biomedia filter attached to the system. However, when the folks delivered the system they kept having trouble getting the "flow" to balance out. The problem turned out to be a piping problem, but while they were trying to figure it out, they took out a lot of the bio media "pasta wheels". One of the guys said "you have too much in here", and he took out A LOT! Mind you, it was 3 more weeks before our fish were delivered.

Fast forward, we didn't feed the fish for a couple of days, did a partial water change, and also got a lot of rain which sped up getting more fresh water in the system.

Levels yesterday 8/16/15:

ph 6.6
Amm: 0
Nitrites 0
Nitrates 0

So, from what it sounds like, I need to get more bio media and add to the filter, and get my plants going quick..

I appreciate your all of your answers and advice, but one more question:
Will adding more "pasta" to the filter increase the beneficial bacteria over time (patience required), or do I need to help it along by buying live bacteria liquid for aquaponics systems?

Thanks!!!
JJ

Oh one other thing, we bought two more IBCs and we are planning to add two more rafts and two pea gravel beds. Any thoughts? I have one opinion that I should put the grow beds before the rafts, but I am open to suggestions.

Ft-GB-filters-dwc-sump would be my preference. The media do a good job of pre filtering solids.

..
Got to say that I can't see how you can have a new system with no ammonia or nitrites and high nitrates..

I would guess that it was a false reading or you added a fertiliser of nitrates..

I have an API test kit and the nitrites test gives high readings for EVERYTHING, from tap to AP water.. I can only assume that something has happened to the reagent..
..
.

>>Will adding more "pasta" to the filter increase the beneficial bacteria over time (patience required), or do I need to help it along by buying live bacteria liquid for aquaponics systems?

bacteria population is maximised with surface area, so more media = good, though ultimately there is a finite population your nutrients will support.

Media and biofiltration helps with the ammonia-nitrite-nitrate phases but not utilisation of the nutrients.
So ultimately you need some way of doing that ie. grow beds = plants = nutrient use.
else you have to do regular water changes.

You could look at some form of short term high nutrient uptake - some pampus grasses etc like to be wet and will grow very quickly and suck out nutrients. You could run a couple in something like half drums as they like to be in deeper media than normal GB's and will go beserk. May be quicker than vegetables. Some aquatic plants can help - but you may not want to do that in a fish system (works good for ponds etc).

don't bother buying live bacteria liquid. Your population will build fairly quickly anyway particularly if weather is warm and nutrients are available. You just have to survive the 3-4 week period that it will take to get your media and biofiltration functional at a basic level. Probably best to minimal feed and do water changes as required.

There is a small advantage in using existing AP water (and sometimes media) when adding or expanding a system. Works great when expanding your own system as you have control over what is in it. You can source water from someone elses active systems but run risk of diseases and algal spores etc.

Quickest way with new beds is to get a couple of small deep media beds going and then progressively move part-amounts of the old media in with the new media. That will assist faster population growth. However in your situation getting adequate number beds going ASAP basically will result in same thing within similar timeframe.

[edit] stating the obvious but if you go for a rapid growing high nutrient uptake species be mindful of management as many of these get out of control and can become weeds. Keep trimmed, remove any flowers before they form, and keep them in a seperate container and *not* in the ground. Else they will take over. Simply burn them when they have done their job or keep cutting back. You could try and get sterile forms or one of the similar swamp grasses but not worth the effort for a short duration solution.

Hello all:

First let me say, you folks are great... I am feeling very "newbie" at the moment. I now realize that I didn't give enough info in the beginning, so please allow me to back up and give a few more details.

We bought a system from folks selling them here in Central FL. Here in sunny Florida, people are just now getting ready to plant their fall gardens - nothing grows during June, July, & Aug. Even in conventional operations, this is the time when people are improving soil, and starting seeds indoors. It's like a sauna here.

Our system includes a 275 gal IBC fish tank, Cone-bottomed 15 gallon swirl filter, Bio-media filter which is about size of a 2 gallon square, and 1/2 of an IBC is holding the raft with 42 available plant slots. I will try to post pics tomorrow. Our purchase also included the "maximum" number of fish for that size fish tank, and cycled water that was taken from their very large master system.

It is piped in the order above: FT, Swirl, Bio, DWC (1/2 IBC). Pump in the DWC continuously pumps water thru the whole system, and if there was a power failure everything would balance out with little to no water loss.

Again, during install, while trying to get the flow rate correct, a lot of our biomedia was removed.
Then we were told that our fish fingerlings would not be ready for about 2 weeks (turned into 3).

So for 3 weeks, we had cycled water, biomedia, no fish and no plants.
I was instructed to check the water every few days until the fish came, and then check daily until I "got a feel for my system". Right before the fish were delivered my numbers were
ph 7.0
Amm: 0
Nitrites: 0
Nitrates: 160 ppm

We use the API freshwater testing system, because of excellent reviews.

From there you know what happened from my first post...


I have not had any instruction on plants except "get heat-resistant seeds", and now from this forum I know I need to get going fast on that.

We have a "shade house" in which we keep the fish tank in the shade at all times for temp regulation and to keep algae away. The DWC is under 50% shade cloth, but this should be correct to start seeds for this time of the year here.

We also have a traditional garden box in which I pour the fish waste from the swirl filter daily. An unusual amount of daily thunderstorms have been providing fresh water into the system.

I am by no means knowledgeable, but I've read some books and have been following this forum. A lot of the posts didn't really make sense until we got our own system, but they do now!

I realized that we need some grow beds, so I bought 2 more IBCs with the intention of making 2 growbeds (from the tops), to drain into one sump, and one more dwc tank from the IBC bottoms. This however will wait until I can get the biomedia added and hopefully get a functional system going with just the 1 dwc.

Sorry for the long post,
for now I am watching the water constantly, getting more biomedia to add, and planting my seeds. I am hoping that by the time the seeds sprout, everything may be getting back into balance.

Again, thanks for all the advice. I will keep you updated.

for now I am watching the water constantly, getting more biomedia to add, and planting my seeds. I am hoping that by the time the seeds sprout, everything may be getting back into balance.

seedlings would be better than seeds initially. Seeds take a few weeks to simply germinate and get established and then some before they start to really take in your FT nutrients at required rates. Purchased seedlings are usually 4-8 weeks old (depending on plant) and will be actively using nutrients much sooner.

So recommend go with seedlings at this time and then as you replace plants that you use / new season look to going with seeds at that time. Also since you are getting to end of summer in US, seedlings will give you a jump start on some produce.
Lettuces etc in your DWC wont use that much nutrients quickly - so look to getting something like tomatoes in a media bed as they are heavy feeders or go the 'any nutrient loving plant' route.

If you prefer you can use separate tubs and a small second FT pump with a loop of half barrels or similar in a Dutch Bucket (Bato bucket) - that will keep it off the main line but allow use of the extra initial nutrients while being separate your DWC, new beds and filters etc so you can get them set up and flows working etc.