Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

hello

i was wondering does any of you monitor water hardness or EC/ppm?
in which area do you work? my AP works on EC 0.9 at the moment, not very stocked
?

good day/night

Hardness and EC would appear to be remarkedly unimportant in an AP system molj, particularly a mature system. Unless of course you have extremely hard water to start with.

Certainly nowhere near the importance attached as would be to a hydro system.

pH, ammonia, nitrite and nitrate are important to monitor. Hardness and buffering is good to know at the outset, just so you know how quickly the pH may shift. Most of us don't monitor hardness/ph regularly.

if ever.

all fo the above

actulay it kinda irks me that i can get hold of a great conductivtiy ORP PH TDS meter through work thats waterproof ( floats actualy ) and all i need is the PH

i can also get the nitrate and nitrite strips but as we all know they not too acurate

*SIGH *

Water hardness test - close you eyes and punch you finger into the water...if no pain then the water isn't hard

I have only done the 4 in the master test kits with importance being placed on pH and nitrates now my system is mature...any major changes (like adding fingerlings) then I check the other 2 for a period of time for any rise in readings

hmm..

yeah well i have the meters from before so the pH meter is handy

i guess ammonia, nitrate,nitrites digital meters are too expensive?

good news, i've located a barrel(tank) for holding rain water(1000L) for 50$!
i also might have access to free pvc oil barrels, which would have to be cleaned ofcourse but i don't think that would be a problem

i also have a possible second location for my AP, it's on a car garage, flat surface and lot's of sun
now the only thing that bothered me was that i can't dig in the tank, i would have to have a setup like Faye has

my biggest concerns about this are the water temps in summer again, it would be harder to isolate and keep the water under 25°C if the surrounding temps were over 30°C

what do you think?

cool, things are falling into their place

i have to say that ive never seen them but the may exist

you may need to think about doing 2 species, say trout and perch.
Can you find a graph of the temperature range that you get during the year? This might help with which fish could handle your temperature ranges.

you'd be surprised of the temperature buffering capability of even 1000L.

I dont think my water gets too much above 26ish even with mid 35C days.

the bulk of the heat will be gained or lost though the growbed and associated pipes, so a little shade over these would also help.

delgrade, i've seen some digital titrators but that's not what i'm looking for, i've also learned in school that they mostly use titrations for determing accurate values

creative, here are our average temps, the system will be located 200m lower in a valley, our temps are closer to these..
http://www.arso.gov.si/cd/izbrani_meteo ... /P192.html

i'll ask for perch, it's hard to locate breeders at us

a question

i can get pvc barrels for free(for growbeds), used for oil, now i asked my father and he said they can be cleaned enough, your thoughts/experiences on this?

steve that's comforting to know, i really wanna be sure about being able to controle the temps

do you mostly use an bypass pump or an submersible one?(heat issues)?

thank you!

Regarding the barrels, a good detergent soaking should shift most of the oil. Then cut them for the grow beds and if you can, leave them out in the sun for a few days.

molj- thanks...

jaymie, exactly my thoughts, thank you for encouragement!
so let's see:

-i can get growbeds for free
-1000L tank for 50 euros
-a good pump for ~150 eur
-plumbing ~150 EUR
-gravel for free

i think the total cost should not exceed 500 EUR(fat rounded) for a basic setup with fish included, that's pretty good when u know u don't need to buy some expensive fertilizers to run the system and then waste your money down the drain in some point...i mean, you can always eat the fish, you can't eat the fertilizers hehe

any thoughts on inline or submersible pumps? inline gave me far less problems in RAS systems, but i never dealt with systems over 200L so i can't really imagine the temperature buffering capacities of bigger systems

look how the basil's doing

hmm that's strange, i can't see photos or icons, any thoughts on that? i can't even edit posts because i don't see icons hehe
help:) browser issues, got fixed ,nevermind

ok now the basil photos are in my gallery if you want to check them out, i thought things will be easier if i upload the photos to my album first, i was wrong