Hello all, I'm completely to aquaponics and in need of advice. I've posted a pic of an outdoor pond my dad has in his backyard on that i wish to convert into an aquaponics system. The following is the progress I've made along with a few inquiries I have.
The pond houses comet goldfish and my dad has a pump that pumps water from the pond into a recycle bin filled with gravel to filter the water (pics attached)
So the first thing I did was to test the water levels of the nitrites, nitrates and ph in the water directly above the gravel. I don't know if this was the correct thing to do since I'm assuming there might be nitrifying bacteria present inside the actual gravel that does not begin converting the ammonia in the system until it filters through the gravel. Both nitrite and nitrate levels where at zero, the ph was neutral at 7. My first question, should I scoop out a bit of the gravel, strain the water in it, and test that for nitrates instead?
I also tested the ammonia of the water in the actual pond, which seemed very high to me, at 2ppm (pic attached). I have no experience in determining what an adequate ammonia level is, but these fish have lived there for years, none of them die, and the seem to be thriving, so although the ammonia level seem high to me, I'm assuming it is within some tolerable level since the fish aren't dyeing. I'm aware that ionized ammonium is much less toxic to the fish than NH3 is (or vice versa?), so I'm assuming that the less toxic ammonia is present in the majority
How would you guys proceed from here?
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