Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

upper limit for fish health at 25C and PH 7.5 is 1.0 PPM

measure again this arvo and decide

thanks all.

Only thing that worries me with a water change would be the ensuing drop in temps unless I filled buckets with hot water, added declorinator and then put it in. Will test again this arvo.

El, 2nd grow bed was leveled up last night ready for gravel, 1/2 tonne in the trailer is washed with a fire hydrant, just needs a quick rinse and in it goes on Saturday arvo.

Do it in bits then Mon, slow and steady the turtle won the race. Get some buckets doing the room temp thing in the house, ma won't mind just this once?

Should be warm here over the next couple of days, you could warm up the water in big buckets outside in the sun but i guess you'd have to be careful about loosing the O2 unless you blow some bubbles through it. Or is it possible to rig up a temporary solar heater with a long length of heat rated blue line pipe from the tap to the fish via the sunshine?

All suggestions are viable, I must go to the plumbing shop and get a length of that pipe.

This afternoon's eradings

Nitrite .25
Ammonia between .5 and 1
Nitrates >10
Ph 7.2
Temp 24

So at the moment the only thing worrying me is the ammonia, but it doesn't seem to be worrying the fish. They came right up and practically bit me when I dipped my hands in to get the water in the test tubes. I am wondering how long they can go without food? It's been about 4 days since they have had any bar a few pellets to show my BIL how hungry they were.

curious......................mihgt have to mosify my assumption (and curent theory) that cycling will only start once you have fish in there, becasue you are the second one i have seen that has had nitrate increases about 2 weeks too soon!

You've had your ssytem filled with water for a while monya?

Maybe its the life cycle of algae and microbes in the water that give the nitrogen cycle a kick start.

If you have 0 NH3 and 0 NO2 in about 2 weeks then it proves it

Re: the water change, PPM wise you're better to do it at once....for example, if you changed out 50% water then you'd have 50% the PPMs.

But if you changed out 25% and then another 25% you'd have 56% the PPMs, even thouh you've changed the same amount of water...........trust me, the maths works out.

Temp wise GF might be right.

Are you Chlorine or chloramine there monya?

i have done 50% water changes with no de-clorination on my inside tank, only becasue we have chlorine and the water and tanks have been sooooooo dirty that i fu=igure the CL might be neur=tralised fairly quickly........but this is just what i tell myself.

You could always use water from the HOT tap stu

Chlorine here.
Water has been cycling thru the biofilter for about a week now. Remembering that about 10% of biofilter medium was already established and about 5% of tank water was established, so I was hoping to get a quick result. Am going to do a vacuum of the tank to get a bit of skunge out, then top up with hot water

COOL!

you can remove the chlorine by;

boiling it
leaving it in the sun
airating it (the more vigerous the quicker it dissipates.

All good stuff!

DO you have saper blue barrels? fill up one and leave a bubbler in it over night- job done.

OR get a blue barrel, put a few airstones in it and half fill it with cold water and add HOT water to obtain the right temp. the added heat will help the chlorine de-gass.

Joy to us that are still on chlorine

PS: your PH dropping to 7.2 has afforded you higher ammonia levels but slower bacterial reproduction. Its a catch 22. LOL

Ta, the pressure mounts LOL, lots of little lives on the line, and I know I am walking a fine one!

make it sound so much denser when you divide it down and get 1 fish per 10L doesn't it

great going Mon - just keep taking deeeeep breaths

I've got 1 fish per about 7 litres ATM

Mon, you do realise that at 1kg each you're 4x over the 'accepted safe and easy' stocking density? LOL you're as bad as me! BUY BUY BUY........uuuuuhhhhhh shit, i bought too many

I saw some barra in a pet shop today, about 10cm long for $29 each