Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Its all happening mate, stick with it and be patient.

ok tested the system today

PH 7.2
AMM the same about 2-3
Nitrate .25

Did not get a reading for nitrates tho, is this Ok guys? im assuming that the trace taht was there has been used by the plants? they are looking happy(the plants)

Gave the goldies a light feed, how many days can they go without food? didnt want to not feed them for too long.

Also got my spa thermometer today, so put it in and the water is 21degrees celcius.. so I will keep an eye on that so I can guage the water temp fluctuations.

Fish can go weeks without feed and goldfish can always nibble on the algae on tank walls.

cheers faye, the kids are loving the comets at the moment, they are rather friendly when you dont feed them, kids are loving them "kissing" their fingers... had to say to them they were kissing cos if I had said eating they probably wouldn't of enjoyed it so much haha.

temp today at 530pm was 21.5 degree's


on a slightly separate note, my solar system is doing well lately, check it out
http://www.pvoutput.org/list.jsp?id=867&sid=839

ok a further update...

Tests are pretty much the same still, ammonia is high, nitrate at .25 maybe slightly higher, nitrate at 0 and PH is stable. I havent fed the fish again since I stopped 5 days ago.

Starting to see a touch of algae in the FT, only tiny dark spots like grains of cracked pepper, I have doubled over the shadecloth that is covering the exposed part of the FT.

Been checking the water temps, which range from 21/22 in the arvo down to 19 in the morning, tho some of the days have been colder etc so the temp seems to stay fairly constant and only move maybe 1-2 degrees in 24hours.

Plants were showing iron deficiency, so I gave them half a scoop of chelated iron.

ok bit of an update.. was reading murrays forum in the chemical board and happened upon a post that talked about makingt sure you do the nitrate test as it says in the instructions... so curiosity got the better of me and I went and read the book again.... says you have to shake bottle 2 for 30 seconds! I hadnt been doing that.. so shook the bottle, did a test, started shaking the vial and got colour change straight away! Nitrates are quite high! over 100!

Goes to show you should RTFM a bit better, a lot more of a different result when you follow it correctly.

so thats what I learnt today.

Also def seem to be getting a bit of an algae bloom happening, the tank this arvo has definately changed colour from this morning, looking a bit more green. I have shade cloth covering the exposed bit on the IBC.

Neighbours come over for a look today, may have another pair of aquapons in the near future.

They do say that you learn something new everyday and I guess you did Roodog Good work on inspiring the neighbours, bonus points for you!

So I tested the water today, results are as follows

PH 7.4
AMM 4
Nitrite .5
Nitrate 120 or so

It seems I have a high Amm reading constantly, lucky the goldies are ok in it.

Noticed that I seem to be getting solids in the bottom of the FT, so gave it a bit of a stir up, I also added a T piece above the water to divert a small amount back to the FT.. to create a bit more of a swirl in the water(thats what Im hoping anyway)

Havent fed the fish yet, although I did pull of 2 caterpillars from the basil and dropped them in, which got snapped up pretty quick. I have been seeing the fish feeding off the side of the tank, there is def less algae on the sides then there was, even tho it was minimal.

One question I am not sure about, can goldies handle salt at all?

hi roodog
i did the exact same thing for a while i thought i had no nitrates and here i was thinkin that i stuffed up once again now ive got them around 80-100 all the time its just a man thing that we dont read instructions we like to do things how we see fit...... thats my excuse

haha yeah, generally I try and read instructions, figure if I dont I will be anyway lol

Well today I was at work all day, and did a bit of reading about nitrite toxicity... got home and took the kids to see the goldies and I noticed they were not their usual selfs(the fish haha)

So I tested the water for AMM and Nitrite... Amm is down to about 2, nitrates are over 5
I salted to about 3ppt, hopefully that helps them out! They seemed to like the salt when I dropped it watered down onto them

Test this arvo

Ph is the same
Amm .5
Nitrite 5 still high
Nitrate recorded the colour above 0, i think its 10.

Nearly cycled

Awesome Roo! keep us posted..

ok tested nitrite yesterday, still high at 5.

Lost a goldie, I gave them a real light feeding because the kids wanted to feed them, they got a tiny bit.

The fish that died was sort of floating on its side, but was kind of arched to one side??? not sure what that means.


Built a venturi yesterday, and it works, will get a pic. I got my 12v bilge pump in the post the toher day, so I can setup a battery backup. Also scored a bunch of batteries from work out of our big UPS, so will see how they go, the electronics of the UPS battery module were busted but the batteries are ok. Plan is to have the bilge pump to the venturi and to the grow bed maybe, need to do a bit of mucking around with the air intake into the venturi to get optimum bubbles, It currently gets very small bubbles, but i want to try and increase the amount of air ti takes in.

some pics of the venturi....

and some more