Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Shed starting to take shape, all I need is to add a tile fire and my bed

Strange how it's happened to you too Gnash. Mine came down in a similar manner. Must confessed I haven't checked it again in the last couple of days. Have ripped out a few tomato bushes to see if the nitrates go up a bit.
(have found some female zucchini flowers finally).

Shed's looking good. Have you got your barrels plumbed up and ready to go yet?

i'd use the low range ph on it with a sample like that. too close to the end

Not much to add except the ph has dropped back to 7.2 tonight, I still can't work out the spike.
I have been thinking about getting 20-30 rainbow trout for this system for the winter months.
If the water temp stays below 18oC for the next 2 weeks I think I'll give it a go.

All fully running seemore, hopefully see some growth happening soon.

Go for it Gnash

I would love to be able to try trout but my tank is @ 24c and won't get anywhere near 18c until July or so

Makes for a good long barra season tho

If they were avail

Yeah I'm starting to wonder, min temp was 21oC 2day, if the water temp doesn't go down by 15th April I will forget it and concentrate on a long barra season hopefully starting in sept-oct.

I have had trout to 25 deg [with air ] no problem

Check your pH morning and evening for a while to see if it is swinging due to O2 depletion or CO2 buildup. This is most likely to happen with plants or algae in the system.

I must say that even with my relatively hard water, when I cycled my first system, I was rather suprised with the sudden drop in pH as the cycling was getting close full tilt. I hadn't been expecting my pH to get below 7 but it was suddenly down to like 6.7 and I needed a fair bit of shell to stop the drop. I was fishless cycling and the huge drops in pH seemed to occur the day/morning after an especially large dose of hummonia.

My tap water measures 7 if I measure right away but goes up to 8 if allowed to aerate before measuring. Now days my pH is pretty well stuck at 7.6 due to my use of shell mixed with rock as grow bed media.

Good luck with the cycling!!!!! Get some shell!!!!

I will be checking up this week Gnash
C1

I have full aeration 24hrs and a big air pump so i wouldn't think it was that BUT you never know?

I will persevere for a while but getting shell sounds like a good idea.

Oh my aching kidneys and liver

Can't wait, ya got my number

Trout OPTIMIUM growth is under 18-20 (depending on which study you go by) but it's not until you hit 25s that it becomes dangerous (apart from all the other implications of increased temp such as lowered O2 and fish susceptibility to ammonia)

I'm going Trout, shame there aint many Canberrans doing it, I could do a bulk order.

Talk to Uncle Yarra about his plans Gemmel... he's out Sutton