Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Ok I had posted about my green water, my system has cycled I think. Water has cleard, some plants growing but I have allot of gunk build up in the upper dump tank. This only my starter barrelponic system. I have 9 bream or sun pearch, have some tomatoe seeds up, collards and two different types of lettuce growing. My wife likes to over do it on the seed planting and I will have to thin allot of them out I am sure.
My water readings today were ph=7.6, Ammonia= between 0-0.25ppm, Nitrite= 4-5 ppm and Nitrate= ~5.0ppm. Fish seem to be doing ok, have been real slow on feeding them. First of all they came out of my pond that is for catfish, I feed the catfish with floating catfish feed, so I have been putting that in as feed in my barrels. The bream wont eat it until is has time to soak and get soggy. I have taken some pictures of the dump barrel (sorry for the quality) and it has alge built up and also some brown gunk on the bottom. My wife thinks it might be uneaten fish food, but I am not sure....any thoughts on the gunk?

Adding the rest of my pictures

And the last of them....some plants.

Great way to keep those barrel halves from bowing out. I agree you may have to thin some plants out , Not sure about the gunk a mixture of algea and fish food?
Nice.

Your Nitrite reading is still really high, looks like you are not completely cycled yet. To be cycled you want both ammonia and nitrite to be close to 0 if not definitely 0. Nitrate is the only reading you want to be much above 0.

With Nitrite readings that High, I would be either doing water changes or adding salt or both.

The gunk is probably a combination of uneaten food, fish poo, and dead algae. To help get it into the grow beds you might want to occasionally dump an extra bucket of water into the dump tank right as it is dumping or perhaps use the hose to spray the gunk around as the tank is dumping to help move it into the grow beds. Not too big a deal until you notice an odor from it, then it is a bad thing. I don't get too much trouble with gunk in my flush tank because I turned the "top tank" on the barrel system into a media filled flood and drain grow bed to catch the gunk. It doesn't look like you have a top bed/tank at all.

I have a top bed, but I have it pulled out right now. If you look at the whole system picture you can see that the pvc goes up higher, I put a T in so I could pull that top system until I get things lined out. I like your idea though, I might put in another bell siphon into the top bed, add some gravel and put it back into the system. I actually have it rather high and my wife would never be able to reach the top
I was going to siphon the "gunk" out, do you think I should let it hit the grow bed media?

Thanks

Gunk (the solids) are generally good in the grow beds so long as they don't get to be too much (too much is when you are highly overstocked for your grow bed capacity.)

I have an old set of pool steps behind my barrel system that we use to climb up and tend the top bed.

+1 to what TCL said.... you're not quite cycled yet by the look of your nitrite reading... and your nitrates are still (relatively) low....

When the nitrite drops to zero and your nitrates climb.... your plants will show a growth spurt... and your "gunk" will probably disappear, and your water clear...

I'd be concerned about your nitrite level... and salt as TCL suggested ....

We are talking normal table salt?

Sodium chloride, yes table salt, be sure to get the non iodized stuff. Water softener salt (the plain solar stuff not the pelletized stuff) will work too same with swimming pool salt. I found the plain water softener salt to be the cheapest at the grocery store. It does take more work to disolve it though. You want to disolve the salt in water before adding it into the system. Salt crystals on the bottom of the fish tank can burn the fish.

There is info on the forum about the amount of salt per amount of water and the ppm of the nitrites. 3 ppt of salt is generally safe for most plants. Look in the useful info section for a thread on salting for fish health. I believe I was figuring out how many pounds of salt would be needed per 100 gallons of water. So much easier for those dealing with the metric system.