Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I have seen so many different views on this, which makes it unclear. My system will be one week old on Sunday. I want to cycle it with goldfish, but not sacrifice them. I want to move them to a small ornamental pond once the system is ready. I measured ph last night and it was 7.6. I can't find seasol here so I will probably end up having to order it online. My confusion is how can you put even goldfish in if the ph is high?! We have plants in and they are looking great but I'm at the stage of being unsure of what to do next. Do I order the seaweed extract or pick up some goldfish?

goldfish will not be bothered by a ph of 7.6
seasol is a brand of liquid seaweed in australia, in the states you can find maxicrop with iron at some gardening stores, or most hydro shops
i ordered a quart of maxicrop with iron - i had 2 55 gallon gb's and only had to occasionally added a cap ful

pH (potential Hydrogen) is a measure of the hydrogen ions in solution. A pH of 7 is neutral. Any pH between 6.5 and 8 is fine for fish. You should expect the water to become acidic over time because the fish waste will be slightly acidic. You can hang a sock of shell grit in the FT which will buffer the water to stop it becoming acidic, but won't make it more alkaline (the opposite of acidic).

To the original question - usually the flow of a new system goes a little like this:-

Design and set up system to your liking.




Fill FT and aerate (to gas off chlorine), I think its a good idea to do this as soon as you can, but I do really only say this because the water in my town is supplied from 700km away and its highly chlorinated. It may not be required in your area.




This is a good time to run your pump/s, check all plumbing, check for leaks, check all syphons and drains etc.



When your happy with this, fill bed/s with media, run pump and recheck all drains syphons etc.




Test water and record for your very first base measurements.





Plant straight away, add seasol/maxicrop straight to FT to assist plants with trace elements. I also add a spoonful of chelated iron at this stage.





The next step can be done a few ways and is up to personal preference.

1. Add a few fish to start the nitrogen cycle. You dont want too many because it can be a bit touch and go if you stock high and the systenm goes through a stage of toxicity before confersion to nitrate colonisation.




2. Or, fishless cycling. (I like this idea for new systems) Use an ammonia source like urea/charlie carp/power feed/humonia to cycle the system. When the nitrate colony is established and amm and nitri are at zero.....add fish.




3. Or, add all your fish to full stocking capacity and wing it. Not recomended but if you know what your doing it can be done.



Hope this helps

Risk mitigation would dictate, why cycle with fish if you don't NEED to? You can use artificial sources of ammonia to start the system cycling. Do a search of the forum for fish-less cycling or have a look in the IBC of AP for some more information. Locally, people use Charlie Carp (ground up European Carp fertiliser, a pest fish in Australia), pure ammonia (available from a pharmacy), urea or urine. Lots of options and no danger to fish!

If you want to cycle with fish, then only add a small number of fish for the system to receive small doses of ammonia; don't go putting 100 goldies into a 100L FT and expect not to have issues and fish deaths!

Seasol is a seaweed extract, look for a similar product called maxicrop (there is also one with extra added iron) Seasol and other seaweed extracts don't contain any notable amounts of ammonia so wont help in cycling a system, but they do contain trace elements and minerals to help plants grow, so a small dose will help the plants get established whilst waiting for the system to cycle; small amounts can be added to cycled systems to further provide any nutrients lacking/absent from the fish feed.

"High" pH is a misnomer; neutral pH is 7.0 so any reading away from that level could be considered "high" i.e. 10 is highly alkaline, 4 is highly acidic. AP systems will find their own pH balance in time, usually(?) just below 7 but this is dependent on the media used and a whole pile of other factors. pH 7.6 is OK for fish, so long as they are given time to acclimatise to the pH and temperature as you add them to the tank.

Add some source of ammonia and continue to monitor the cycling of the system. You're looking for an initial spike of ammonia to be converted to nitrites which will also spike and eventually the ammonia and nitrites will drop as the nitrates are produced. The cycling process can take up to 6-8 weeks, temperature and other factors dependent.


Scott

Damn Charlie... I'm going to stop re-reading my posts and error checking, just to get in before you, once!

But there I go, re-reading and correcting errors!

Wow Ya'll! Thank you that is what I was needing to hear. I was at a store tonight and almost bought some fish but when I looked closer at the tank there were at least 15 dead in there! So I said no way and left! I will order the maxicrop tomorrow. One more question, If I put in ammonia how much and how often?

Thank you guys! I loved the illustrations Charlie! You spoke to the teacher in me:)

Thanks for answering these questions that I am sure get redundant to you! I read through the IBC document today hoping to find my answers before coming here first. I got some answers but I needed more.
Is there one A

Haha I guess if you push enter it posts?.. I was wondering if there was one AP book that you could always go to for specific answers what would it be?

Please Don't give them Idea's.... LoL....

The only problem with that is a lot of Option's could come into Play.. and who do you want to believe..

there are some people who believe that the ratio of fish is 1 fish per 10lt[2.5gal] of water.. So a 1000lt system would have 100 fish in that volume..
In the same way here most of the recommendation for fish levels is 3kg of Fish to every 100lt of Growbed capacity.. [A much better ratio..]

On your system you can cycle with goldfish.. In fact My small system has received most of my small school of goldfish and the system seems to be doing great..[Must remember the Goldfish is like the rat/pigeon of the water world] they can take a LOT of abuse..
They are not like the cannery of the world..

Juergen

and have a flick through this thread, it will help if you decide to fishless cycle

viewtopic.php?f=14&t=10909&hilit=fishless+cycling&start=0

Lol, Charlie! Those animations were cool.

The last one reminded me of my first year into aquariums! Do a pH test...panic! Water change buckets running everywhere...relax. Next test...ammonia!! Panic!! WC buckets...next test pH...etc!

Now I just set up, add fish, change water daily for four weeks and let it be. No point worrying over it too much, lol.

Hi Pioneer Lady, here is another read for different styles of system cycling on page 10 of the IBC manual, plus a couple of tips to follow so that the fish stay safe.
http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/Travi ... onics1.pdf
Just for the record my system started with 100 rainbow trout fingerlings, was cycled in about 4 weeks and the fish weren't sacrificed. Well not until they reached plate size 6 months later.

Wing it - I love it!!!!

At least you learn quickly!!!

So, I took the chlorine out of the water, added 10 goldfish and plants and fish are doing great 3 days later. I have been testing the water daily and it looks like this everyday:
PH=7.6
Ammonia=0-0.25(very faint yellow)
Nitrite=0
Nitrate=)
The plants do need some iron, which I have ordered along with some maxicrop.
My question is , is this,the test resuslts, pretty normal or not? I thought by now that I would begin to see some different numbers in the test. The whole system will have been running for 2 weeks on Sunday.