Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I got mine off ebay. I just typed in Reverse Osmosis float and tons of them came up. Only problem is that it only takes a 1/4" OD tube and the RO water tube was 3/8" OD so I ended up having to use a reducer from the T off to get to 1/4 tubing to the float valve. the RO water doesn't come out of the membrane with any great pressure or flow anyway so it really doesn't affect it.

I like to see the water flowing, nice stuff Dan.

Ron here is a link to a plastic float valve that is similar: http://www.amazon.com/Kerick-Valve-MA2S ... loat+valve

Okay AP geniuses!! Help!

So I started out with 4 feeder goldfish, and one died first day due to the cold temps so I had 3 feeder goldies for about a week. I added 5 gallons of perfect aquarium water from my home aquarium on about April 3rd and I also stuck the old filter from my tank in one of the grow beds on April 1st, same day fish went in.

April 7th, water tested 2 ppm ammonia, 0 nitrites and 0 nitrates. I bought 4 more feeder goldfish and put them in there to bring fish count up to 7 as of yesterday at noon. I just checked the water today at 11:00pm tonight and these were the results.



36 hours with 4 more fish and ammonia levels went down to 1ppm and nitrites still zero but nitrates showing 5ppm...

Where is the nitrite spike?

It follows the ammonia spike.... next day or two probably...

My ammonia dropped from 2 ppm to 1 ppm though. I expected it to spike higher.

Don't over think it.

That is actually great advice. Just let it do its thing.

Well it's all cycled but the seedlings in it almost all died due to excessively high PH that will not go down. I have a couple carrots, tomatoes and a pepper still alive but not planting anything else until the PH comes down on its own. I am PH adjusting the top up water and hopefully I can get it to come down. As of yesterday, PH was still 8.4. The fish are all growing and I have 10 comet feeder goldfish and 7 yellow perch in it. Ammonia and nitrites are 0 and nitrates are at 40ppm but the algae on the walls of the FT and sump seems to be keeping the nitrates a little in control.

Here are latest pictures of the maturing system.

System looks good and will be better once the pH comes down.

Looks like a nutrient deficiency on the pepper (new leaves are much lighter) - probably because of the pH. A foliar feeding would circumvent the pH issue and might help.

Wow I never thought about foliage feeding. Would you recommend just maxicrop or some other form of organic fertilizer such as botanic are pure blend pro grow.

Well surprise surprise!!! I seeds the grow bed and had a couple sprouts over the past couple of days and then this morning, something climbed the 5 feet up into the grow beds and dug around inside of there plucking all the rapid rooter plugs out, eating seedlings and making a mess of things.





So what do you think, a raccoon? My FT is all cloudy now also because of the disturbed grow beds. Grrr

Man vs Nature
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