Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hey Steve

2 IBC's...#1 is the fish tank with the dirty gravel and seasol mix ( am only changing it coz I think I read it in Joels book to do so, plus its not settling/ clearing)

The second IBC is the one hooked up to the house with rain water thats yellow and a ph of 8.6.........this was going to be my alternative to using tap water to do a water change in IBC #1


Am very sorry for being so confusing.....and thanks to all that replied ( I just got my neutraliser so I might use tap water this time)

Is being collected straight from the guttering into an IBC......... I just finished draining it onto my garden and washing it out ( and removing 2 dead birds)...Its now got a mesh filter to keep most of the crap out...I shall try and control the ph in it and use it for topping up the fish tank as required

We've just gotten in three ute-loads of gravel. The first got washed with the fire hose (and the hydrant needed cleaning out anyway ). The next two got a bit of a hose off once the gravel was in the bed. Couldn't be stuffed doing any more!



.

its amazing how the enthusiasm wanes after a coupla shovel loads of gravel

the 2nd option is to place a filter device over the ooutlet pipe to catch any crap being thrown back into the fish tank - water clears in a day or 2

I just used an old towel over a milk crate

thanks Ell.

I use pool chemicals in my fish keeping hobby but I am nice and careful.
That said tho
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_thiosulfate
sodium thiosulphate is the chemical ya wanna buy.
Try find it mail order in powder form. Is cheap and easy and lasts well.
It's the one chemical you need on hand to keep fish if you don't have rainwater.

I dunno, but if you have time, and a large enough tank that has exposure to sunlight, I would just opt to put a fountain pump in the tank, and let it run 24hrs per day until your test kit detects no chlorine (should only be a couple of days.) Not only does sunlight help to dechlorinate water, but exposure to the air also does it (just ask the folks who work at the swimming pool. They will tell you the outdoor pools require more chemicals to keep it at a recommended level than what a same sized indoor pool will.)
Kevin

Our water dept only uses chlorine, I just leave the top-up water in some tubs for a few days and smell it before using it to make sure it doesn't have any chlorine smell.

If it has chloramine you will need a water ager[better be safe than sorry]

yep, moke, if you're lucky enough to just have chlorine then an airstone for 24 hrs or 24 hrs of sunlight will do the trick

not for chloramine though

Even leaving them in buckets for a few days will be enough for the chlorine to off gas, a pump or air stone will speed up the process...

I would avoid letting an airstone or sunlight break down chlorine.
For 1 normal chlorine usually takes around 9 days to completely leave the water.
For 2 even if the water company doesn't add chloramine all it takes is a bit of ammonia and the pipes will make it themselves.
For 3 dechlorinator chemical is cheap
For 4 even small amounts of chlorine can do a lot of damage to a filter colony, even if much much more is needed to kill fish

I just chuck a bit of sodium thiosulphate in, and then if it's for fry or wussy fish I throw a cycled sponge filter in there and run for a day or 2 to eat any free ammonia or nitrite in there.
Sure sodium thiosulphate may not break down ammonia, but plants and bacteria do. WHile there are a lot of ammonia binders on the market I prefer to use standard sodium thiosulphate and then deal with the ammonia released. If it's a lot do smaller % water changes.

ANyway just my views. Seen a lot of people wipe out ponds and tanks using 'aged' untreated water. Myself I use rainwater or use de-chlorinator. But then I clean almost everything with bleach (one day I'll have a stainless steel house) and like having sodium thiosulphate around to de-activate it.
Each to their own... but ya

yeh, the 2ppm residual ammo after aging chloramine is an issue, isnt it..........
Spesh if you're doing an emergency water change to remove high ammonia levels, two steps forward one step back

i've gotten into the (possibly bad) habit of just doing top ups with straight tap water. I figure that if i'm topping up my 1000Lt system with 100L then my end point chloramine level will be 0.2ppm............Any thoughts on this?

Yes, that's crazy and irresponsible!

I would say your playing with fire and one day you will get burnt....
But until then happy days!
If I really HAD to do that, I would run the water thru a household water purifier cannister or 2 first to try strip a bit of it out.
Dealing with our local water (rous...) has led me to develop a few techniques to remove excess ammonia among other things. I finall settle on making a psuedo undergravel filter in my water ager using sacks of swimming pool grade zeolite chips instead of gravel. ok so it was more a pump in the base of a bucket with a long hose attached to it's output leading out of the bucket.... dump a load of zeolite on top of pump (pump is in a plstic basket to keep chips out of it). Basically pump, pumps water out of bucket and more water overflows into bucket, filters thru zeolite and is pumped back out into the water holding container.

There are other people around here that use ozone and all sorts of stuff to try deal with it. Crazy some days you try to w/c out an ammonia spike and the tapwater has 3ppm nitrite in it! Having some treated aged water on hand sure makes it less drama. The sponge filters in our water aging bins are the hardest working bacteria colonys we employ. End of the day they seem to make our water healthier (altho with higher nitrates) than any of the chemical treatments I have tried.