Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Karen

To determine whether the ammonia is at a lethal level you will also need to look at the temp of the water. With a ph of 8 and an ammonia level of 1 if the water is in the 70's F you have hit killing levels.
Would be really concerned at an ammonia level of 1 straight out of the tap. TC is probably right re the chlorine and the ager but would have a talk to your water board to determine what they are putting in it.

Well, things are going to have to wait a few days. Last night one of my hoses came off, and 2/3 of my water got pumped out onto the floor. Luckily, there's a drain in that room. I have aged water waiting, I'll refill tonight.

I'm very glad I didn't have fish in there. I'm going to finish the cycling w/o fish anyway.

I have some readings at home that I'll share when I get back home. =)

*grabs and holds onto the P word*

Bummer Karen... but like you say, it could have been worse....

Amacafish:



The tests for the water straight out of my tap are unbelievable:
Ammonia: 0.5 - 1.0
pH: 8.4ish
Nitrites: 0
Nitrates: 0-5ish. But not 0.

When I add a cup of lemon juice, that drops my pH into the 6 range for awhile, but it goes back up to the mid-7s after a day.
I remember someone else in a diff. thread saying that for the first few months their pH was really high, but then it came down to reasonable levels. I'm hoping that'll happen to me, too.

Tonight I went back to the fish store and picked up some more supplies: some water ager, and some bacteria (Biospira - claims to be able to cycle a tank overnight. We'll see!) and a filter/pad that'll draw out any heavy metals that I have. I have copper pipes! I mean, they drop down from the ceiling to right above the sink. How could I have not made that connection?

I added the ager and the bacteria tonight, after refilling the system with my backup water. It's cycling again.

The fish guy told me that my city adds a massive amount of chlorine/chloramine/ammonia to our water. In the spring especially, and guess what it is for us northern hemispheroids? I think that will be a battle for me for a good while. Maybe I should have bought the big bottle of ager.

molj:

Nope!

Sleepe: The water comes out of the tap at about 52F/11C, and I have a 200w heater, which has brought it up into the mid-60s/~18C. I did know that the higher temps make the problem worse. I just dumped too many problems onto the fish at one time...

Rupe: Yeah. Much worse. So I declined to go into HSM, I just turned off the pump and let the water drain/evaporate. It was gone this morning, so on I went! Handy to be doing this in an unfinished basement with a storm drain on the other side of the room.

Thanks for all the help and advice! It's one thing to read everyone's threads, and think "hey, this won't be so bad" and another to actually start juggling the variables oneself...

I added some filters/gravel and water from a mature fish tank system last night.

Readings this morning:
Ammonia: 4
Nitrite: 0.25
Nitrate: 10
pH: 7.6 - 7.8
Temp: 67F / 19.4C

Is there a record here for the highest ammonia?

I figure the high ammonia is either from the stuff I added last night, or there's a dead fish in the system somewhere I haven't found.

But at least the plants have some food, now! Time to see if there's any bacteria to work that Ammonia number down...

*patience*

10 days later, and my ammonia is still nearly off the scale. I have to admit to being a bit baffled.

Being an impatient sort (oh, no! Not in AP!) I got the filter scrapings from a friend's fish tank, and also bought some beneficial bacteria. I added the first dose of bacteria on 4/2, and the second on 4/9.

My nitrite and nitrate numbers are moving, and my plants are growing, so is this just a case of there being such an unreasonable amount of ammonia in my tap water that even a good chunk of bacteria can't deal with it?

Last tests, from yesterday:
Am: 4+ (maybe even 8. Very dark green)
Nitrite: 5+
Nitrate: 10+
Temp: 68F/18C

What does one use to get rid of unreasonable amounts of ammonia? A ton of water ager? Salt? Or just find some more patience? I think there might be some shoved under the bed from before my last cleaning spreee...

I want to add fish!

On a related note, apparently it's still too early here in the frozen north to find duckweed in the wild.

I started the system on 3/26 or thereabouts. Back then, the water coming out of my tap only had an ammonia level of 1. Dumb city water...

Quite frankly with those levels you could almost run the system without adding anything (tapponics )

Your ammonia levels are increasing......with no fish or other sources of ammonia? What the heck?!

I know that decaying stuff that contains nitrogen will produce ammonia, as will breakdown of chloramines....could that be a possibility? Any debris in the gravel like uneaten food or a mouse?

Another possibility is that your test kit is faulty: try testing some distilled water or having a fish store test it. Apparently some kits expire and start showing high ammonia readings. http://www.bestfish.com/tips/091798.html

If you really do have those levels, one thing that really sucks ammonia out is almost any water plant: duckweed, water hyacinths, some algae, most water plants you could get from the fish store.

Spring is coming! Don't lose hope!

I know! But ... I have been doing small top-offs with some aging water, to which I've added water ager which supposedly deals with ammonia. But maybe those top-offs have been enough to keep the ammonia levels up. Gar.

As for the test kit, I did have the idea early on that it might be the kit malfunctioning, so I tested some distilled water. Ammonia levels were zero. Tonight, reminded by you, I did that again. Still zero. I also tested some bottled water I had lying around(1) and again with the zero. I retested the tank, after rinsing the testtube with distilled water (just in case the slight wetness was enough to throw off the test that badly) and got the same nearly-off-the-scale results.

I'm pretty sure there's nothing dead in the system.

I was hoping to snag some duckweed from the river a few days ago, but it's too early in the spring. I could buy some plants from the store, but that seems silly when I'll be able to gather all I need in a month. OTOH, I've paid for things I could wait for in the past...

*buckles down some more patience*

(1) I usually don't use bottled water, I won this bottle!

Interesting. EPA maximum allowances for chloramines is 4ppm, exactly your reading. Looks to me as though your municipality is using river or lake water (Lake Erie?) and treating the heck out of it and you are lucky enough to be near the place they add the chemicals so you get max dose. Ahh, the joy of city living.

I suppose not all water sources are quite like when I used to break through ice on the river beside my campsite in Wyoming and dip out a drink of water....

Let's see: you've broken down the chloramines and gotten some starter culture, nitrites are increasing. I'm sure ammonia and nitrates will move soon too. "P"

My ammonia has dropped to (nearly) zero! Yay!
My nitrites are still raised a bit, between 1 and 2, so I'll let things cycle a bit more before I add fish.
Alas, I was fiddling with the plumbing to add a duckweed tank, and now I have a leak... so I have to wait for some silicone to cure as well before I can add fish.

Excellent!

PS: cute gif.

good to hear, sounds like a simple cycling problem, but be aware of the following;

water ager that removes chloramine WILL leave you with free ammonia & the original chloramine level. ie 4ppm chloramine = 4ppm ammonia in aged water.

If you have a water ager that professes to "detoxify ammonia" like ammmo-lock then you should be aware that even though it binds the ammonia so it is non-toxic, your test kit WILL, i repeat WILL still register this ammonia.

hope this helps.

Steve

I may have missed it, but what kind of fish are you going to buy? I drove by Lake Calhoun yesterday and the water looks bitterly cold.