Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hello AP'ers. After lurking this forum for awhile I have finally set up my own mini system. I live in northern Canada where temperatures easily fall to -35C (-31F), so an outdoor system is out of the question. I know after the initial investment of lights, plumbing, and the electricity bill this system will not 'pay itself off', but that's not how I am approaching it. Just a fun little project.

-35 G(130L) fish tank
-30 G(110L) grow bed, bell siphon with 3/4" washed gravel 10" deep (hydroton here costs about as much as silver)
-120 GPH pump, fill and drain 3-4 times an hour. (the displacement of the gravel in grow bed is so great that it only requires about 10 gallons or 1/3 of the overall fish tank volume. This may be a bit stressful for the goldfish but most of their tank is still full so they can deal with it, they aint gettin a sump tank.)
-8 fish. 7 small goldfish. 1 algae eater
-1 light. 3' long 6400k(3600Lumen) 10hours on/14 off, they are beside a window so they get a bit of natural sun, days are very short here tho.

Water: GH 150 KH over 240 PH 7.5 NO3 20 NO2 0.7
note: I peed in the water 3 times, aha... and added about 5 table spoons of sea weed extract, water is pretty green right meow.

System has been cycling for 17 days. There a 4 small leafy house plants and 20 seedlings, all chard and leaf lettuce. The house plants were in there to absorb any nitrate build up before the seedlings got transplanted.
Everything seemed to be going fine until the last two days when there were 4 dead fish. Plants seem to be growing very slow in the system and the seedling in the soil are growing at a faster rate. feel free to throw in your wisdom.

What are your water levels? I'm new so I wont be of much help, but I know you might want to check the levels and let the folks here know what those are at as that is the first place to check when it comes to dying fish.