Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Might be raccoon prints.

Looking good!

Nice, less than 3 hr after adding 250 mL hummonia. (3 pm 2/8/2008)
pH 7.4
Ammonia .75
Nitrite .25
Nitrate between 5-10 ppm

Those buggers work fast since I expect that adding 250 mL should have brought me up over 1 ppm on the ammonia.

Will be interesting to see what the test shows tomorrow evening. I may be tempted to test again tonight to see how quickly things are working. I won't have time to test in the morning as I'll be leaving for work early, I hope I get home to test again before midnight tomorrow.

These guys nearly made me jump out of my skin last night. At least that was before I saw what make that freaky noise slapping the window, then I just had to pull out the camera.

Time lapse testing anyone?

I did another test at 8pm
pH 7.2
Ammonia between .25 and .50
Nitrite ?between 1 and 2 I think as I seem to have difficulty reading the colors
Nitrate 10 perhaps a tiny bit more.

I expect the Ammonia to be 0 by the time I test again tomorrow and I'm really hoping the nitrate is coming down by then too!

Tamo,
I thought of raccoons when I saw the prints but I always thought they had a little more hand shaped print. If those are raccoon prints, I'm quite supprised at how large they are as I always thought southern raccoons were small compared to the ones up north.

After some googling, it looks like you're right. The front paws are kind of hand-shaped, the backs are more typical animal-like.

Hay, I managed to get up early enough to test this morning and then I got done with work early too so I tested again!

6 am Feb 9, 2008
pH 7.2
Ammonia 0
Nitrite .5
Nitrate between 10 and 20

1 pm Feb 9 2008
pH 7.6
Ammonia 0
Nitrite .25
Nitrate 10-20 ppm

Oh, and score! As I pulled into the neighborhood coming home from work today, there was a 10 gallon fish tank sitting on a stand at the curb!!!!!
Inside was also 2 little air pumps and a light. There is a lid for the tank and all the stuff works, I just checked the aquarium for leaks and all seems good. Just needs a little cleaning. I guess I just got my fry tank.

TCL You must be living right.....

now we are talking cycling! Things seem to be going well.

7pm Feb 9, 2008
pH 7.2
Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 10
So that is about 31 hours after a dose of 250 ml into the system which I expect had brought the ammonia up close to 1 or 1.5 ppm.

Looks like things are going well for a system that got it's first dose of ammonia on Jan 24 2008. That is 17 days into the process. Looks like I only have a little more to go on this cycling thing.

I dosed again with 250 ml at about 7:30pm and we will see how the readings are tomorrow evening when I get home from work.

i'd say you're pretty much done.

i remember seeing a doc on fishless cycling that said when your ammonia and nitrite drop to zero 24hrs after dosing to 1ppm then you're done

well it had not quite made it to 0 after 24 hours but I'd say I'm close. I did several tests in the 24 hours after that last dose to see what kind of rate of change things happened at. I expect that the dose I did tonight should be the winner but I might not make it home by 7pm to check tomorrow.

Anyway, I think I will continue dosing this system and use it for the pee ponics trials and I'll use the gravel from the two extra troughs I have set up with this system at the moment to help kick start the big system where I plan to have fish as soon as I get some gravel and grow beds hooked up for it.

I have to say, I think fishless cycling is the way to go as it is much less stressful than if there were fishies in there that I was worried about killing. Lets see what I think after I get some fish and have a few of my own issues in a real situation.

Starting slow and doing tons of reading on the forum has been a really great way to go. Thanks

are you sure they weren't just moving it?

They were out in the yard when I stopped and asked if they were tossing it out. It happened to be next to a huge pile of full garbage bags at the curb. The house has a for sale sigh and it looks like they are cleaning up to move out. This isn't the first fish stuff I've found on the curb or pulled out of a dumpster!

just teasing TC