Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi there,

first timer to Aquaponics, and loving the info gleaned on here. Decided to take the plunge and get a system up and running after reading stuff for months

I have a 3 IBC system that I have in the back yard (of course), which has 10 towers and 4 grow beds, and one whole IBC as fish tank, and a sump that is underneath the Growbeds, which was fashioned from Pool liner in a bricked-in existing garden bed, that the GB's sit on top of.

It all cycled, fish-less, then I have been adding Comets to it slowly, as scouts, to see if it's all hospitable.

So far, no fish loss, with 15 comets all looking pretty happy.

I was really after some Sleepy Cod, but missed the chance to get them earlier, so waiting till the couple of websites I have been looking at buying them from, have them available again.

Although....

While the fish are happy (allegedly) I have started to see a lot of brown buildup. In the FT, and where there was a small amount of Algae starting to form on some of the rocks the inlet to the GB's was pouring on, it has turned brown now.

My Strawberry plants have taken a dive too, and it seems that the brown gunk is all over the roots ... originally after replanting them into the towers they took a bit of a hit, then started to bounce back (white roots starting to shoot out like crazy), but now the brown stuff is around, they are decidedly weaker and almost going backwards.

I have been a slave to measuring the water chemistry with the seemingly standard fresh water kit ... and on that front, it started with nothing much of anything (expected) so I dosed a bit with Seasol (seaweed extract) and then a cap (or there about's) every day. So a slight amount of Ammonia was observed from that, over the first week. and that's all.

So I added a cup full of ammonia to the system, and boom, everything started to move, over the next day or so ... Nitrites came up, then Natrates, then everything settled back down, and all I consistently get is a small amount of ammonia, and nothing in the way of Nitrite/Nitrate... Plants seemed to be doing Ok, definite growth. Still Fish-less at this stage, still with the seasol....

So now I have added fish (at about the 4 week mark ... it cycled on about the end of the 2nd week), and either because of, or coincidentally, the brown stuff has appeared.

I have read a few posts about high nitrates, but I am not at all reading that in my measurements.

I get a bit of sun light in one end of the sump, which I will cover up better this weekend, and the IBC's are a dark grey, so no light gets through them.

I have lessened the seasol (stopped in fact this week) ... so I am a bit perplexed with what to do with it... which is probably about right, given my experience is tiny

cheers

Welcome to the forum Binglehousen

Post some pics when you get a chance.

The brown stuff is probably just the normal coating of bioslime that most tanks get. Sounds like the strawberry roots are getting smothered in the towers, do you have any filtration setup prior to the towers? Too much light getting into the root zone of the plants in the towers might also be part of the problem. I'm not sure it's either of these but they might have an effect. Strawberries are very sensitive to salt concentrations so if you've added salt to help the fish with stress that might be the problem as well.

Cheers

I will post a few pics this weekend.

vital to mention, is that the PH has never gotten below 8.. and I have done nought to change it, believing the nitrification would start to bring it down.

As for filtration, I have a little swirl/skimmer bucket set up, and from there it goes into another bucket with some doubled over Japan Mat. Then into the sump

Everything gets pumped back up out of there to the GB's and FT

The towers have their own pump, which is sitting in a little cage of Japan Mat, as well as an in-line filter in the piping that goes to the towers.

Through this I have been able to prevent "blocking" sized pieces from getting to the tower plumbing ... but I still imagine super small stuff is getting through, and building up on the Strawberry roots ??

I have not used salt, and the water in it is either from my RO filter, or rainwater tank (which is only small, and not big enough to fill the system right up) so I have run the rainwater tank dry a few times

The Strawberry towers could be leaking light around the net pots, I have a cap on top of each of the towers, but I will have a good look at that over the weekend too, and see what I see.

If I cover up all of the sump, like I mentioned, and look at blocking more light in the towers, will it clear up a bit, or is it a permanent "friend" ....

it's such a shame, there was really great root activity starting on the towers, lots and lots of fine white hairs starting to spout forth .... and now everything is dark brown

Covering the tank might help a bit but there will always be bioslime .



That's what I think is going on but I'm not 100% on this because I'm not as familiar with this in towers as in Deep Water Culture.

Does all the water pass through the RFF or a grow bed on every cycle, or just a portion of it?

Hi there,

The water to the towers comes from the sump, where everything returns to. But it is pumped from a filtered section of the sump, on the other side of the filter to where all the water returns to the sump.

So kind of a half and half mix of FT and GB returned water.... here is a back of napkin diagram. I forgot to show that the GB's feed back into the Sump, in this diagram

Also, with respect to my question about lessening the brown slime... so it is always likely to be around, but is there a way to help the roots out, on the Strawberry plants... what can I do to lessen the effects of it. (outside of blocking any light getting in the towers as well as the bit of the sump that was exposed to the light) ...

Pics of the system. ... I thought they would show up in the reverse positions, so read from Bottom up

Interesting that the roots started coming back after that rain . It doesn't look like water could have entered directly into the columns to flush off any of the solids. The extra water in the system may have decreased the head height and made the flow a bit more powerful. I guess it would have diluted the solids a bit especially if the system overflowed some.

Do you have any packing/support media in the towers. if so, what is it?

No packing in the towers, it is a bit experimental, they are just in net pots with 10mm gravel ... they have tiny circular-pattern sprinkler heads at the top of the towers, that just spray a fine spray/mist ... when the plants were first transferred to the net pots, apart from a few days shock, they powered and grew roots all over the shop.

Interesting you mention head height ... I noticed that all the sprinklers seem to be spraying a bit harder after the rain, yes.

So lots of rain can enter them through the net pots. Any rain that hits a tower anywhere above a net pot, will end up running into there too ... so potentially a wash of sorts helped.

Clearly a greenhouse of some sort would help in a few regards (but that isn't going to happen sadly)

... also of note, after the rain, and a day of sunshine, the brown on the gravel in the GBs where the water inlets are, has turned green in a few cases.

Also, just to bring back a question from above. Is the nitrite/nitrate curves I saw at the beginning of what I suspected was the first cycling, and then nothing showing up since for Nitrite and Nitrate ... is that something I need to figure out, or is it normal behaviour .... are there better times to check, like not after feeding ... After feeding ... 1hr after feeding ... before and after etc...

cheers

I'd say this is fairly normal. Not so much the timing of it as the fact that it happened . Some areas will remain brown, mostly those that don't get much light.



The type of Seasol would matter. Some have nitrogen in one form or another and some have little or none. If you're dosing with Seasol and expecting to see nitrite or nitrate, you won't, unless you have a version that provides a nitrogen source like ammonia.



Based on your earlier description I would say you are cycled. Basically if you provide an overabundance of food for the plants (including algae), then your nitrate levels will build. If your plants use all of the nutrients as they are produced then you'll have no detectable nitrates. Many systems run well this way including mine at times. It would be nice to show some nitrates just to know that you are providing enough but not having any is not an indication that the plants are having problems. Ideally you'd like the system to be balance so that you're showing some nitrates but the levels aren't high and aren't going up. It's not so easy to do this and it's not critical anyway. Shoot to have the nitrate levels read from 0 up to 40. They can be much higher without any issues being seen but I would avoid this if possible. There does seem to be evidence that very high nitrates will affect fish health.

The conversion from nitrite to nitrate is pretty fast so in an established system you usually see little to no nitrites. If you do see significant nitrite levels then it may indicate a problem with your biofiltration or that you added too much ammonia for the existing bacteria to handle quickly.



I don't concern myself with this too much but I think levels will be highest within an hour or two of feeding. This is just a guess on my part though.

Thanks Scotty435,

things have started to change back to normal ... in that the strawberry roots are starting to sprout little white hairs again... haven't looked at them all, but the 5 or 6 that I inspected around the towers were all showing at least > 5mm long new white hairs.

Given what's been said here, it sounds like a collision of things that looked pretty gruesome ... more fish, which added to nutrients, bio slime/Algae started to get happier with that.... up to that stage it was a consistently low Seasol based diet (the one used is the white bottle, label says, "The Seaweed Solution - Complete Garden Health Treatment" ... no mention of nitrogen or anything else around the label)

The rain could well have washed away some of the problem, and also filled the system up more, which in turn could be adding to the betterment ...

I will just keep my eye on things and see if the above is actually happening