Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Well as everyone knows about me, I can't just leave things alone for too long. I think I may need to do a new diagram of my system to show what it's like now compared to what is was when I wrote my article for the mag.

Anyway, spent time today tinkering a bit with plumbing to tidy a few things up a bit and then took it into my head to see if I could get a loop siphon working on one of the beds that was running constant flood.

Well I got the loop working without much tinkering (adjusting the inflow rate to that bed isn't really an easy option as it is essentially an overflow feed from the fish tank.)

So a quick cut on the drain plumbing and slap on fittings to go to some 1 1/4" sump hose tubing to loop up and into the vent from the drain and a flexible cap where the plumbing originally went (so I could change back easily.)

About all it took to get the siphon operating nicely was trimming the end of the tubing where it went into the vent and then adding an extra little cut just below the top of the vent to help as a breather. I actually only get about a half way drain of the bed but that is more flood and drain that a 1 foot deep bed ever gets with a siphon.

Wow I got lucky that it worked without much tinkering as I wasn't about to mess with the inflow to that bed.

And some more pictures about the place.

and more of the picture fix

And finally the view of the corner of my property from the road near the park. I don't think anyone can really complain about the view of my AP system this time of year!

Powering on as usual TCL....

I'm starting to think that the bug zappers might be providing more food to my catfish than I realized

Not quite sure how to really check this without spending hours standing by the tank in the dark getting bit by bugs myself though

When I do check on the new fish in the quarantine tank after their 9 pm feeding they are definitely eating bugs under the zapper as well. (I've been slowly upping the feed for them and watching the ammonia and nitrite as I go since I'm sure I will hit the limit of that system before I reach the limit of what those fish are going to want to eat soon.)

Perhaps you could hang a piece of flywire under the zapper to catch the bugs for 24/48 hours just to see how much there is... I guess it's going to change quite a bit at different times of the year.

Yea, I think that is a big part of it, lots of bugs now in the heat with the daily rains.

Perhaps I've nearly hit the limit of the quarantine system. Tested this morning to make sure things were good and then I adjusted the feeder up just a little. I got home this afternoon and there was extra food in the quarantine tank....Uh Oh, not a good sign. Scooped out what I could quickly and did a water test. Ammonia was only a trace but the nitrite was up at 1 ppm.
Feeder turned off.
Got a scoop of salt to dissolve in after I dumped a little bit of water. Added salt and topped up with a good bit of water.
Time to hope for the best.
Will test again in the morning and see where I'm at.

I think I need to look back in my system thread and see how long I've had these new fish. If it's been more than 3 weeks, I might tie into the main system for them.

Argh, Nope, we got the new fish on May 27. So I got at least one more week before I want to connect them in with the main system.

Next morning all levels in the quarantine system were back to good. I turned the feeder back on but cut out the 3 pm afternoon feed since that is the one that had been shortly before I saw the problem yesterday and I don't think the sun coming down through the shade cloth that time of day is a good time to be feeding them anyway. By this evening I checked the levels again, all still good.

Do nitrite spikes usually develop and then go away that fast without associated high levels of ammonia or anything?

Feeder goes off at 6:40 am, The morning levels tested at about 8 am were pretty good with only the slightest trace of nitrite (well below .25) The feeder goes off again at noon then 3pm and at 4:45 pm when I got home and looked around I found food floating and I tested the water. Only got a trace of ammonia but the nitrite was at least 1 ppm. Feeder off over night so they missed their normal 6 pm and 9 pm feeds as well as the next morning's 6:40 am feed. at 8am the next morning all was good again Turned the feeder back on but cut the 3 pm feed out of the schedule. 8 pm tonight all was still good.

go figure.

It is really interesting to see how systems respond to things like that. I was wondering the same thing when I started upping the feed rate and noticed a slight nitrite spike - 0.25 only. No ammonia ever showed up. If I continued to feed at that rate would the GB eventually be able to handle it? For instance, in your setup TC, if the fish had eaten all the food would you have ever noticed the problem? Would you still have had the spike?

Just be glad you caught it!

If all the feed had been cleaned up, no I probably would not have noticed the spike at that time. But I guess I'm lucky with my catfish, if there is anything wrong, they do tend to go off the feed so it is a helpful indicator of water quality, or predictor of incoming weather.

But since I know I have too many fish in this quarantine set up I am doing daily ammonia/nitrite tests to keep an eye on things.

It is interesting that the quarantine system has been running a pH quite a bit lower than normal for that system. I'm not sure how much is because of the constant flood and how much is just from the heavy bio-load but even with all the shells that usually keep the pH at 7.6, this system has been running between 7.0 and 7.2. Kinda exciting for me.

Well thinking that I did find the feed limit for that quarantine set up. I've seen another nitrite spike that went away again by morning. So I've backed off the feed a bit in that system and am only feeding twice a day now and hopefully I can get the new quarantine set up ready soon as I have too many small fish for just the two little 100 gallon tanks but I'm not really keen on putting them in with the big guys (I have a feeling many of the little fish would become food for the bigger fish or if not food, they would just be beat up and probably wouldn't get much food themselves.)

Ok, remember a few pages back (115 I think actually) where I got those neat new towers to test out. ZipGrow towers is what they are being called.
http://backyardaquaponics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=232039#p232039


Anyway, I thought I should post some updates about how my testing is going.
I've only had them going just over two weeks I think. That front porch system is still tied in with my main big system as there hasn't really been time to properly cycle up those towers and I'm not interested in exposing the fish to cycling without aid.

In the fingerling tank there on the front porch I now have a little 50 watt Quiet One 4000 pump and I've currently got it feeding a gallon every 2 1/2 minutes to each tower and the excess sprays back down into the fingerling tank for extra aeration. Originally I was spraying about a gallon per minute into each tower and that was too much and I was getting water flowing out the slit in the top and down the plants. Nate feeds his towers about ten gallons an hour. I'm hoping that 24 gallons an hour per tower will work out ok since that will put me filtering aprox the amount of water that is in the fish tank each hour.

Currently there is also a spray from the main system going into the fingerling tank and the overflow goes through the grow bed next to the fingerling tank and back to the main sump. Once the towers are cycled up, I intend to shut off that extra spray from the main system and run the towers with the fingerling tank as a separate system to see how it does. Currently there is also an air stone in there but I don't think it is really needed (other than the fact it is the battery backup.) I think the front porch system could get it's own little battery backup and be a 50 watt stand alone that could probably even run off solar. Anyway, that is the plan I'm testing. Based on Nates initial findings, the towers should be able to support plenty of fish, I think my limitation on that system is going to be simply the size of the fish tank.

Right now I have 60 Fish where I should really only have 20 (and recommended numbers should probably be down around 10-15 for catfish and to tell the truth, I don't think a 100 gallon tank is big enough to grow out even 1 eating size channel catfish but that is just me being soft and not wanting to keep a big fish in a small tank.) I'd better hurry up with my new 300 gallon quarantine set up.