Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I have learned so much from everyone. Thanks

I have noticed that my fish tank is turning murky (brownish). What is going on? What do I need to change to get the water clear again?

Thanks

Would really like some advice on what to do about the murky water?
Should I add some type of filtration system?
I also noted that my kale is turning a lighter green. Could this be related?

Please help me restore the clear fish tank I had.

I am having trouble with the fish water becoming a little brown tint to in so it is more difficult to see the fish. What is causing the brownish color? Any steps I can take to clear water back up? I currently on use the grow bed as a filter. Do not have any other filter Maybe I should?

Thoughts?

Pictures? We have little information.

I have had my bed for 10 months and the plants have grown fantastic. On several occasions, I needed to remove a plant because it was taken over the grow bed and it's roots were the size of a basketball.

Now my fish water i constantly brownish color even though I have 3 pumps and a separate filter take to remove the larger sediments.

So the questions I would like for you all to discuss is what steps do you take periodically to cycle your grow bed besides removing old plants and planting new? There is a lot of old roots in the rock....And my water is not filtering easily thru my grow bed to the siphon drain.

Should I go through the rocks and clear them out a bit?
My water test fine for Nitrate.. Nitrite.. etc.

Any other cause of the brownish water and the cure?

Do you have enough grow bed for your system size/fish load?
How many fish do you have, how much fish tank, how much grow bed?

If you don't have enough grow bed, then the grow beds are going to have a hard time keeping up with the load and filter the water enough. Provided there isn't a lot of extra detritus falling into the water (leaves etc) then at least 1 cubic foot of gravel bed per fish that might grow out to 1 lb should be adequate under normal conditions. This is not necessarily for handling the nitrification but is important to solids handling and making the water relatively clear.

Now if you are talking about simply tinted water (looks like tea or is amber) then that is normal and healthy for an aquaponics system.
However if you are talking about opaque water that looks more like chocolate milk or is so muddy that you can't see the fish, then you definitely need more filtration.

You really can't expect 12 cubic feet of grow bed to filter the water for 200 gallons of fish tank with 50 fish and it is unlikely that any number of pumps sending water through too little grow bed or extra worms or cleaning of the grow bed is going to make it able to handle more than the appropriate amount of fish. Make sure your system is appropriately stocked or add more grow beds.

I made a mistake and let too many of my plants get too big and their root system occupied a large area of the grow bed. then when I removed them the grow bed has lots of little root fibers. This appears to be clogging the flow of water during a cycle. Looking for suggestions on what to do? I have 12 inches of stone and lava rocks. should I take the top 6 inches out and rinse the fibers out? Replace the rocks? Need some advice

Bretsweat

Hi Bretsweat,

A number of people have asked but we still don't know much about your system. If you could post some pictures that would help us help you.

there are a number of pictures of my set up on the first couple of pages.

I cleaned out all my mature plants...reorganized the plants left in the bed....cleaned out the large residue roots...hopefully that will work...

On the brown shade of water... if it is the food what type should I switch to in order to have clear water?

Thanks

When you say your water is murky brown TClynx and Bullwinkle asked if it was murky brown or clear brown. Murky = bad and would indicate that your filtration capacity is less than it should be for the amount of feed you are feeding your fish. If it is clear like tea then that is normal and i have no idea of how to "fix" it because I've never bothered to try because I didn't think it was a problem.

Re your GBs TClynx gave you some figures to work out if you have enough. If you have enough GB volume then I wouldn't worry about cleaning the gravel at all. Just plant some more plants.