Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

My system is about 600 gallons. It has 2 IBC totes with 4 100 gal grow beds 12in deep and 4*8 floating raft, all going sump tank to take it back. I filled with RO water and added one gallon of Maxicrop liquid sea weed at start, and one gallon of stress-zyme over a period of 2 weeks. At one week my nitrites showed up and at week and a half they went 5+ from then to now even after a 50% water change. Any water change is a big deal due to RO only making 75 gal. per day. My ph was 4-5 I don't remember straight from RO after adding Maxicrop it went to 8-8.2 and stayed till I trying bring it down after readying ph lock out when plants looked so bad. with phosphoric acid I got it stable around 7.05 after a week of adding and waiting. I need to know what im doing wrong or is damage plants too far gone or what to do next? I added ammonia about every 4 days when it dropped to .25 should I stop adding completely till nitrites fall? my nitrates been reading around 20-40 most days after week 2.5 till now. ill add pictures and any info would be so helpful please.

Having trouble uploading pictures keeps saying image file invalid I'll keep trying to let y'all see it

Hi
Take a deep breath. Step back. Have a beer. Do nothing.
Let your system stabilize.
Pictures are good.
I live in the UK. What’s a good beer in Texas?
I phone; E mail to yourself select medium then upload

overview

Got a few questions for you before I say much;

1. Do you have fish in this system yet?
2. Any other nutrients added other than what's in the Maxicrop and Stress zyme? Fish food? Anything?
3. Sounds like pretty much all the water is RO water in this system - Is this correct?

No fish yet will add when my nitrites will ever get below 5+ and can handle dose of ammonia in 24 hour period and nope only thing added was two listed and dosage of ammonia every few days and yes no tap or rain water just RO and the gallon of liqued sea weed stuff, the bacteria stress-zyme hoping it was speed it up, and the pure ammonia .... side note I had watered some tomatoes in pots that I had in green house that I got from tank b4 I lowered pH from 8.0-.2 and nitrites were way up b4 50% water change and the couple I watered looked stressed bad close to what the aqua tomatoes looked like before it started dying. But beans and corn and most of cucumbers look great? And lettus looked less stressed/ purplish stem and leafs after lowering pH and water change ... didnt know if anyone came across this experience before?

Well what I thinks going on is you have some deficiencies because of the removal of minerals and organic compounds by the Reverse Osmosis process. You'd think having rocks in a grow bed would give you what you needed but I don't think this is always the case. I'm not saying you shouldn't use RO water but I am saying you need to add some of these things back in. Some of the guys down in Florida that use RO water may have a different take on this since they're more likely to have done this. I'm going to suggest adding Blood and Bone meal to provide some of the nutrients. Some of the people here use it when they don't have fish in their system. Gordon (Gunagulla here on BYAP) uses 100 to 200 gms every two weeks in a 6000 liter system, you should be able to figure the comparable amount to adjust for the volume of your system. Your system sounds like it's part way along in the cycling process but not completely done because the conversion of the nitrites is still slow. The fact that you do have nitrates makes me think there is more going on than just the delay because of cycling. The upward curling of some of the leaves, the purpling, the lower leaves showing chlorosis - it's all kind of a mish mosh but to me suggests more than one deficiency

Cheers

PS - Take your time on adding the fish till you're sure everything's working all right

Forgot to mention the B and B is just sprinkled on the grow beds. Gordon had 9 500L grow beds so figure about 50 gms per 1000L of grow bed media.

Just update I added blood and bone meal at 1/2 cup per 100 gal table and everything is visible better corn/bean/tomatoes all 2-4 inches taller after stalling out so the suggestion deffently helped only thing is cucumbers are growing buds like crazy but leaves still looked bad so I added 1 banana split in two beds to help potassium. I pulled all bad leaves that had no chance coming back on tomatoes mostly its tall and stringy but deffinently growing healthy leaves now as is squash

Glad things are doing better

On the banana split, try to just back away and leave it alone, no additions for at least another week. It takes a while for the blood and bone to break down and you will slowly add nitrogen and other nutrients as it's converted by the system. It's easy to get in a cycle of adding this or that and the problem with this is that some of the nutrients compete with each other for uptake by the plants so in the end you can cause a deficiency by adding the wrong thing at the wrong time. After awhile you'll either get to where you have a regular schedule for adding supplements or you'll get to where you can recognize most of the common deficiencies like Iron and Potassium and add at that point (probably a little of both).

Cheers

pH controls nutrient availability so try and maintain around 6.5-7. Also adjust pH slowly as too fast can harm fish, bacteria and plants (most affected to least in that order). How much ammonia are you adding? How many fish are you planning to add to system once it stabilizes?

Understood first system so I'm sure like everyone at some point panics haha ...

And as to ammonia each dose I'm adding 2 oz or about 30ml of "dr tims "Ammonium Chloride Solution for Fishless Cycling as I can not find in hardware or big store any ammonia that didn't have surfactants in it... in the past I addef it every 4-5 days. ammonia now is gone in less then 24 hours but nitrites are still high 5+ and getting 40+ nitrates so now I kinda don't know what to do wait till nitrites get lower or just add ammonia at my continued new pace of every other day I was worryed about that if I didn't feed them that the bacteria would crash

... my fish density I may be way off so leave correct me .... planning on putting 80, 40 each tote of 3-6 inch Mozambique tilapia

2x275 gallon totes that stays around 260 gallons each connected together and 100 gallon floating table and sump that always has about 25 gallons in it due to float level... so about 650 gallons of water with filtration of 4x100 gallon tables which are classified as hydroponic reservoir Tank ( 53"x53" x 12" deep )
Plus floating raft 4*8 that's hydroponic table of 100 gallons

If u can follow how I tried to explain it please speak up if my fish count are way off I would think that 80 is max 60-80 is my goal

Also on grow beds chances are until I get more experienced I'll probably always over plant if worried that I don't have enought sqft if bed to fish ratio

PS. Sorry to all y'all metric folks just classic american education ... or lack thereof

I would assume the chloride will kill off your bacteria. I would hold off on adding this until you get a confirmation . Anyone know if this will kill it?


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Hey RossBoss, . I know the feeling of panic when the nitrites spike on adding my first batch of fish, and the desire to tweak and fiddle when monitoring it all so closely and reading everything there is available to glean some insight on what is happening...

My recent reading on fish stocking rates in the 'Oft Repeated Rules of Thumb' thread says 25 litres of wet media per plate sized fish (600g cleaned). You have ~400 gallons of growbeds, which is around 1440 litres (1 gallon = 3.8 litres). Not all of it will be wet, so say 1200 litres should provide biofiltration for a maximum of 48 fish at maturity (if they get to 1.5-2lb) - and that is with a mature system with bacterial colonies that are resilient and quick to adjust to increased N loading. You might want to investigate additional filtration either with more growbeds or a radial flow filter to remove some solids if you want stock so many fish. Or save yourself from further frights and stock lightly for the first season and see how you go.

There are graphs of my water testing results through cycling and addition of trout on my system thread - I filled my system in February and got my trout yearlings just over a week ago, so its a steep learning curve for me. I am following yours with interest.

http://store.drtimsaquatics.com/Ammoniu ... p_190.html

As that's the only ammonia I have added since beginning its well on its way in cycling and its advertised what to use if no other source of ammonia can be found


Oh OK well how much would u figure a floating raft adds to the 50 max? it has 100 gallons the flows constantly after water been threw media beds but floating table has no media for large bacteria colony but got like 70-100 holes if all are planted for filtration I never got a clear idea how its adds to fish ratio

So saying I add 60 that are 3"s long it will be weak on ammonia production due to such little fish so the fish will grow with my new system and bacteria?