Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Cucs, Zuchs, Squash, Pumpkins, Gords, and mellons are all quite closely related so I wouldn't worry about it.

Murray/Fiona.... could you do me a favour.

Take a pH test of about 10-20ltr of your water...... fill a box or tub with the maidenwell soaked in the same water and let it rest for a day or two...

Then retest the pH and post the results.

Loooking through the Maidenwell site and talking to Col it would appear that the product has a "natural" pH of 5.7 ..... great for hydroponics, but I'm not so sure with AP (which tends to drift toward 6.0 + anyway).... unless your starting water is >7.0....

I would have thought that most dolamites would have been more like 8.5 - 9.0.... and Col agreed...... which would be perfect to buffer the natural tendancy of an AP system.....

But Col swears blind (can't explain it) that the pH is 5.7 !!

Hi Rupe,
shall do

I did similar to what TT suggested. I started with a few silvers and catfish in Feb to get cycling, and then got some trout in mid/end March. The silvers and catties didn't do much over winter but have started growing now.

Hi KE, thanks for that. Where did you get the catfish from?

A year ago Monya organised a shipment of silvers and tantans from somewhere east for myself and Nova, not sure what hatchery.

We tried the test that Rupert requested. Our tape water registered as a 6.8, one bucket had maidenwell straight out of the packet soaking in it and that one registered lower than 6.2. There is a second bucket has maidenwell that was washed first, this one registered lower than 6.2.

The only thing we had to test the ph with are the strips, which we have decided are probably not the best indicators. Will invest in a more appropriate testing unit and try again.

Thanks guys, even allowing for the strips perhaps being somewhat unreliable, it would still seem that the Maidenwell will have an immediate and quite larger affect on pH......

Considering the natural tendancy of the ammonia cycle toward <6.5 in itself... it would seem that you may have some serious buffering required in the (near) future.....

Maybe the maidenwell could be an effective offset to a limestome granite media..... or maybe a seperate bio-filter barrel?

Were you thinking of using the maidenwell in all the growbeds?

Do a pH check on tap water that has sat around a while, too....just in case there's dissolved CO2 in the equation, too.

Well Rupe - he has gott a whole ute load of the stuff

TH - is it too late to take it back. Look slike it could be more trouble than it's worth

Suggest that they might be able to offset it by using a barrel full of limestone as a seperate bio-filter....

Apparantly they're short of growbed volume anyway VB and asked exactly that question.......

I've got to admit when I talked to the bloke I was a bit sceptical.... even coco-coir is less acidic than this stuff....

Even weirder when you consider most diatomaceous earth products have a pH of 8.0 - 9.5

Would have been great if the source water was coming in at around pH 8.0.... perhaps they could onsell some to Tony of WA who has exactly that problem.

Perhaps you could balance the effect of the Maidenwell in each growbed by deliberately including a layer of limestone pebbles on top..... might help hold the maidenwell down as well in the wind and/or flood cycles

Might take a bit of a juggling act to find a balance but might prove to be really stable and benifical in the long term

at this stage we are going to run a biofilter on the continuous pump, allow for some settle in time, cycle and monitor the outcome. we are thinking up ways to incorporate the limestone (if needed) into the biofilter.

Well hello all,

We have been trying to catch up on some of the small jobs which will go toward getting us up and running. We are now at a 3 pump stage.

We have a float switch pump in the sump, which will hopefully house a small family of yabbies. The second and third pumps are in the main pond, one is a continuous which will eventually run on the biofilter (still to be made), and the other is sump pump which will be on a timer to fill the gb's. Having a little difficulty tracking down an electric timer, so for cycling purposes we are using an ineffective click one that we had at home.

Excitement plus, we are nearly ready to cycle. Just have to get this timing thing happening.

the following photos are a little peek.

Just another couple. We have placed a truck air filter over the gb outlet to help catch the silt we missed on the initial wash.