Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

My water in my green house system has turned cloudy. Ph is 6.8, no ammonia or nitrite reading. Temp is 15c. Have not fed in four days, though water us still not clearing.

System is 1 year old and I have not disturbed the media. Fish seem OK. Any ideas?

Cloudy with solids or white cloudy

If it's cloudy like somebody has added a dash of milk to the water then I'd be borrowing a test kit from somewhere to double check your Amm.

Kinda milky cloudy. Test kit is only 6 months old.

Sent from my HUAWEI Y300-0151 using Tapatalk

according to fish sites i looked up, it could also be a bacterial bloom.

Was thinking that maybe you need to clean your growbeds?

I only have my pool to go by. Sometimes it gets cloudy or has algae growth. No matter what i put in there it will never clear up unless I physically clean my filter daily. Then once all is clear I don't have to clean filter until it gets cloudy again (although I should)

Aquaponics works with the same principles, but the growbeds are the filters.

it the temperature your problem.. seems like that low temperature is causing your calcium and magnesium to precipitate out of solution.. are you getting any foaming where water is entering into the FT..?

Very minor foaming. The temp in my other tanks is lower, though no issues in those. I'm away for two weeks now so have told the caretaker not to feed for a week. Will see how it goes. Is there a test to tell between precipitation cloudyness and bacterial?

Sent from my HUAWEI Y300-0151 using Tapatalk

Well, no guarantees but if you were to take some of the water and just let it stand in a glass of water a precipitate would probably settle out where the bacteria would likely stay suspended because many of these are motile by flagella. If you had a microscope and a way to estimate bacterial numbers, it's either 10 to the 5th or 6th for a bacterial cell count that gives you turbidity (been too long, sorry I can't be more exact, it's going to depend on the line of sight and how much volume you're looking through - my experience was with test tubes). Of course it might not be bacterial even if it's a living organism.

I sometimes get this when it enters the growbeds.

A couple of whisked egg whites and a good filter changed on a regular (2 or 3 hourly) basis.
Floc it and strain it.

Cheers IanK

How did you go Mattyoga, did it clear or did you find out what is was?

or maybe you made a fish pavlova?