Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Morn'n all y'all (thats plurel for ya'll which is country for youse)
1st mistake: I used a red gravel in the grow bed. Even though I washed it well the gravel bleeds red after a month of flood and drain. Every thing will clear up after a couple of days but once I disturb the gravel to add transplants it will turn the sump and tank cloudy red. It has noit killed the gold fish but for this reason I will go with channel catfish since they thrive in muddy water. I see no solution but to drain 30% of the water volumn when I cant see a foot down. I have plugged a 10 micron water filter in a day. Rather than run and spoil filters daily I now roll up flat filter media around a 1 inch pvc pipe with hole drilled to serve as cartridge. Also I put a 50 micron bag filter on the F&D spout from the grow bed. I wash it every couple of days. It may take a year to get past this but I will not empty the grow bed and replace this gravel.

2nd mistaske I trusted PH papers when it said my well water was 7.4. I did not bother to test it once I bought my titration kit. The FT ph was running 8.4 which is the end point on my kit, so may have been higher. I kept draining 30% and saw no results on ph. Finally I tested the make up water....it is 8.0 from the well. Now I treat the make up water by letting it sit a day in a tank to warm up in the green house and add phosperic acid when filling the make up tank. I bring the make up water to 7.0 ph and after a change FT tank will read 8.0 It takes over a day to rise to 8.2 and then I change 30%. Any Ideas of a cheap souce for phosperic acid?

3RD mistake I ordered twenty 3-6 inch channel cats before system was fully cycling. Gold fish were thriving and growing so thought I'd go for it. Four arrived dead. two a day died untill I figured out the PH. Now have seven left and the nitraites are below 0.2ppm, nitrates 0, water temp runing 65 to 70F. Have lightly planted growbed with garden transplants and herbs. For the last two days I have not seen a gold fish. I belive the cats have recovered and were hongery. I wont reorder untill I have my next system up and recycling. I am feeding fly trapped from the garden and cought under the bug light. I ordered catfish feed a month ago and still isnt in. I had been feeding the gold fish (50ea. 1"long) a pinch a day of flakes. My soldier fly larvae are not crawling out yet. I hate to depleate my earth worm stock but may start.

Hi and welcome

Issue one should become far less of a problem as your bio-filter bio slime build up! It first clearing always takes forever but once you have active bio-slime working, the small particles tend to stick to it as they pass through the grow beds. So once things are all cycled and you have a good strong population of bacteria through your grow beds, when you stir up the gravel or add another grow bed in the future, the cloudiness will clear on it's own much more quickly. I found this to be the case with my media though mine would turn the water cloudy white no matter how much I wash before putting it in.

Issue number two. Test strips or papers are often not very accurate. Use drops or if you have a meter, calibrate it carefully and check it regularly against stuff you know have an extreme pH. I had a meter once that finally took to reading 7 no matter what I dipped it in. Problem was I didn't realize it for a while and had been trying to get my pH down in a hydro system for the cucumbers, well it wound up way down! OOps.
Anyway, well water can be interesting. When if first comes out of the tap, there is likely CO2 in it and very little O2 and if you read the pH right out of the tap, it will probably be lower than if you let the water sit or bubble it for a while. My tap water will test at about 7 right away but will be up at 8 after outgasing the CO2. I don't adjust my tap water before adding it to the system. I found that once the system cycled, the pH suddenly dropped and I needed to add shells to keep the pH up. Only bummer is the shells keep the pH at 7.6 which is a little high for some plants to get their iron. Anyway, once your system cycles, having the buffering capacity in your water may turn out to be a good thing. Only issue is you don't want to add lots of top up water at the high pH if you have much ammonia showing in the system and you don't want to add lots of top up water at any one time if the system is used to the lower pH. Changing pH should be done slowly so as not to shock anything.


#3 Bummer about the losses, at least you hadn't had a chance to name them yet and get attached It seems a pretty common lack of patients to load up on too many fish before a system is ready for it. I fishless cycled so didn't have the worry about killing for through cycling. I highly recommend fishless cycling. That way you can even get lots of plants going long before you get fish. You just have to keep adding the fish safe ammonia source (at appropriate amounts, doesn't take much) to keep the bacteria alive and feed the plants until a day or so before you add the fish. I have channel catfish. 45 of em, they seem to be pretty tough critters. If you have any feed stores around or perhaps a tractor supply, you should be able to get some pond diet or catfish food. At least all feed stores around here carry such things. Otherwise I've heard small amounts of dog food might be ok for them till your order comes in. Or perhaps you can find a small container of koi food to tide you over till the catfish food gets there. I've used a little battery powered had vac (uses the same battery as my cordless drill) to suck up bugs and then dump them in for the fish, they really liked the box elder bugs. How many fish do you have? If you go for your worms, I would only give about one worm per fish at a time. A worm is a big mouth full for a small catfish and it can be really funny to watch. If you have plenty of aeration in your water, if a worm escapes being eaten, it will probably survive in the system for quite some time. I've added worms to my grow beds along with some worm castings for trace and micro nutrients to the plants.

Sounds like you have learned some important lessons! Now we want pictures!!!!!

Hi TCLynx,

What ammonia source do you use for your fishless cycling?

Cheers,
Hamish

One of my system threads can explain exactly how to go fishless.
http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2534

My own special brand of Humonia specially bottled and saved for a time period to kill off bacteria and allow the Ammonia content to become active. Pee in other words or Urine. I also used it to cycle my big system before I got fish. I was using only about 200-500 ml a day or every other day to cycle for the 600 gallon system. The Barrel ponic (or should I say Pee Ponic) system only handles about 200 ml every other day generally.

Thanks for the response Tex.
I have seven catfish left. I just purchased 100 feeder goldfish and put them in the sump. I dont figure 7 cats will give enough poo to keep the plants going. Also I will draw off 5 or so goldies a day to feed the catfish. The system is finally cycling with the lower PH, nitrates 0.1, nitrates 0.
I also picked up the catfish food yesterday. It is floating feed by cargil. I had some dead goldies after 50 mile trip home to feed the cats so did not even open it. Once my 2nd system is up and ready will order more cats. I have an old 7 ft. diameter stock tank that is leaky. I plan to buy a round pond liner and use it as a catfish breeding tank. I will locate it near the garden tho, kinda remote from the greenhouse AP sytem. Then I can use water exchange to feed the raised beds. When I order I will ask for some larger breeders. I wont reorder from the outfit in Tuson as several of theirs arrived dead. I know you have breeders over there in Texas. Do you recommend anyone?

200 - 500 ml a day ,, what do I do with my other 5 litres???.
AHH maybe drink less beer? , no , that is not a realistic solution.
I actually use mine for the lemon and lime trees , no it's not laziness , the lemons trees are much further away from my beer drinking area than the toilet is:)

I figure only saving a bottle or so a day for AP or fertilizer is a good thing since the humanure compost need about half the urine anyway to get hot properly.