Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

you like brown water i assume?

brown's a nice colour I suppose

It's not tooooo bad. The brown stuff has stuck to the algae growing on the side of the tank. Water is still nice and clear.

The coco peat doesn't seem to be making any difference to the Ph. So I tested it by adding 50% peat to some fish water, letting it sit for half and hour then testing the Ph .. no change. So I must have the wrong stuff ??

Will try some more lemon juice when I get to the shops to get some lemons.

Are there any other ways of lower Ph ?

I was wondering at the cocopeat for PH, thought you knew something

Havnt actually reduced ph myself yet...

whitedog, I started my barrel sys with half GB filed with cocopeat and rest with red scoria.

Had the PH around 6.8, only now it got to 7.2, thanks to 3 kg of shellgrit.

I am using rainwater ( PH 7 ).

Have sieved , left to soak and then washed the cocopeat twice before putting in the beds
but was staining the water until recently.

Overflow from my rainwater tank goes to 2 overflow drums and from there to the sump.
overflow from the FT goes to garden.

So with every rain my AP sys gets flashed. That’s how I got my water clean.

Whitedog, what is the PH of you water before you ad it to your AP sys, its source?
Rain, bore or dechlorinated? must be quite high PH to start with

mentioned this in another thread, dont worry about the ph 8.0 as long as it doesn't go higher. it is certainly better for the bacteria than say ph 6.0

TRUST me when i say that it will drop of its own accord when you're producing bulk nitrates and feeding well. (bar very hard supply water)

have fun

also its not coco peat, it is peat moss that will lower your system pH. Give that a go.

Hi all !

We'll it's been a while since I've posted and a lot has happened in that time. I added 25 trout fingerlings to the existing 4 large silver perch and assorted goldies in a 1000L tank. Over the following weeks I have lost ALL but 3 goldfish ..

Ph has remained between 7.8 and 8 the whole time, everything else is zero. Temperature ranges from 12 -14 ish deg Cent.

A fungal infection wiped out the tank. Initially the trout weren't looking happy so I added more air. I did have an air pump running 24x7 already but it was only a small air pump from an old small fish tank, so I upgraded to a 4 outlet super air pump. Also during the whole time I had another pump going 24x7 just to add a bit of water flow and additional air for the trout.

I salted the tank (and killed half of my seedlings in the process, plus the rest of my plants are not too happy). I used a separate hospital tank for the fish who were visibly affected. Plus several water changes (and resalting).

Oh well, it's good thing I only started with low numbers of fish !

I am now going to try cycling using just ammonia, rather than sacrifice more poor fish. I can't find any pure ammonia locally (only the cloudy type). So I'm throwing food in anyway and letting it rot to produce the ammonia. Not ideal, but I'll get there eventually !

rotting food will not help the fungal size of things as it (the fungus) probably feeds on rotting material)

did the system cycle? did you get an ammonia then nitrite peak?

does "everything else" mean ammonia, nitrite, nitrate?

why not try the urea method if you want to use fishless cycling? there is heaps of info here and i'm sure someone will link you to some of it.

Urea balls Whitedog... bunnings....

Thanks rupe

Brilliant, will give it a go. Thanks !

Yep, by 'everything else' I mean ammonia, nitrite and nitrate. It never cycled, the fish weren't alive for long enough.

Maybe I can paint little eyes on the urea balls and pretend that they are realy fish

When i had my big crash i got some of those plastic floating fish

If you don't want to spend money on the ammonia source, you could always pee in the tank. Wouldn't take much. 100-200 ml every few days is probably all you need for cycling.

Do be ware that with the urea balls, you don't want to dose much and you will need to wait a while till it converts to ammonia. If you keep adding right away, you will overdose before the ammonia reading even has a chance to show up. Same is kinda true of fresh urine but urine comes with the proper enzymes to convert it to ammonia built right in while the chemical urea has to wait around for nature to notice it and take care of the conversion.

Good Luck, fishless cycling is definitely a good way to go.

YAHOOO my system has cycled!!!!!!!!!!

I've been away for a month and when I came back the tank was still full of water (albeit very green), the veggies are growing strong and the system has cycled. My single goldfish is even still alive I think .. can't quite see it with the green water .. there may even be 2 fish in there !!

I've even started eating the veggies that have been growing. How cool is that to step out the back door and pick fresh veggies.

Today I bought 20 more goldfish for the tank, they will do till the warmer weather comes when I'll stock with Silver Perch. When do Perch fingerlings normally become available ? Spring ?

I am tempted to get some Trout and have another go but i'll be patient (hah!) and see if I can keep the goldfish alive meanwhile.

Learning, learning, all the time, the goldfish are in a quarantine tank for a bit till I am sure they are healthy. I've only just noticed that quite a few of you guys quarantine your fish first (doh! why didn't I spot that before).

Even better my husband says that I can get another growbed as a birthday present YAY! Although, he's just placed a caviat on it that I can't get my birthday present till I finally finish getting my private pilot's licence (that's another story!) DOH! Better hit those books again ...

Will post a pic when I get around to it..

Well done WD, silvers are available year round mostly, but you cant move them at water temps much below 20 deg c - they just keel over for some reason