Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hehe, dunno, not the religious or historical or anthropological type :-)
But we can adopt Triton if he fits the bill... Also the God of home power Saws and workbenches :-)
I'll only get upset if you or some other zealot decides to become the reincarnation of Triton, and build himself an harem

Wouldn't the god of home power saws be Tim the tool man Taylor.

Couldn't we play god in turns, a week each!
I'm not against the harem...(nobody's seen this!!!)

yeh, but it doesn't sound nearly half greek enough

roflol! So who;s on harem shift this week? :-)

OK... so it's Timatsi "the tool man" Terzis .... that Greek enough for you Steve

being that AP utopia seems to be in Costa Rica and it's TreeDude's thread... perhaps the god should at least have a tropical name and nature. :-)
We really should stop this Hijack too, apparently they're not allowed anymore

Well - hijacking the thread keeps me from torturing pictures from AP paradise so perhaps it will be allowed?

Well, speaking of paradise - the search for water test kit has only turned up PH and Amonia - is this enough or do I have to keep searching?

It would be nice to be able to test pH, Ammonia, Nitrite and Nitrate. Can you get mail order stuff down there? However, pH and Ammonia is enough to get started with if you keep your starting fishload low. Just realize that when your ammonia readings go back to 0, you're still not done cycling, and the nitrite spike is imho, the worse of the two spikes.

Treedude, I would never attempt a system with fish if I couldn't tell for certain what the pH, NH, NO3 and NO2 concentrations were.
Plus if disaster strikes, it's imperative that you know exactly why, so you can fix it faster. Get some mail order tests, if you can't find them locally.
What do the local breeders do? suck it and see? taste the water? Not worry cos fish are so plentiful in your area?

any chance of getting some one from a neighbouring region / country to mail a master test kit to you?

I should be able to find the remaining - the amonia kit says it does NO2, NO3 and of course I have the PH too.

I am sure I can find the full kit in the Central Valley - which is three hours away. I am going to need to do a run there in a month anyway so I will get one then.

I might also be able to contact some friends in the Central Valley who can through it on a bus and it will be to me the next day for nearly free.

How's it going ? The system must be done now, i suppose.
Any pics?
Cheers

Okay - update. Plumbing of course is a challenge - thankfully I am not doing it. Running 220 to the pump, water supply, etc is in progress. There is 3,000 liters of water setting in the tanks and it is being tested to make sure all is level and the water is moving from section to section. Gravel is partially sorted - but the powerwasher needed a hose so we didn't finished on Saturday.

All is going well - but we do have other things to do at times. We did just make a deal for 2 more 1,000 liter tanks. Someone wanted us to make some furniture - but didn't have cash, but had two brand new 1,000 liter tanks to exchange for a very good price.

I am not ready to attach them yet - but it is nice to have them waiting in the wings.