Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Saginaw Valley State University Green House of Michigan was so inspired from Back Yard Aquaponics’site that we have started a simple system. Our system uses two Rubbermaid tubs, a 300 gallon fish tank and a 50 gallon plant tank. We have 6 large gold fish (8 inches) at this time and as long as they don’t croak we will be adding more. We will be adding more fish as soon as the ammonia levels are at their proper levels. Our system was started at the beginning of September. I will be adding new pics every month to show the additional growth of the plant beds. We plan to add another grow bed in the future.

Great looking system Dusty - welcome.

You have done well Dusty. Welcome to you and your new system and looking forward to watching it develop.
Faye

Way to go, Dusty

I'm the nutty professor who started Dusty on her aquaponic path. She is a great student.

We've been reading this website in great detail over the past 2 months. I want to thank all of you for providing us such valuable information......and inspiring us to move ahead

I cant tell you what a thrill it has been to read this website.

So far, we have only one grow bed. I think we will need to get two more, because there's too much fish water volume. Any advice anyone? I understand we should run at least a 1:1 volume ratio, preferably 2:1 (grow bed to fish tank). Right now it's 3:1.


Great fun.

Way to go, Dusty.

What? 3:1 Where does that come from?

If you currently have 50 gallons of grow bed and 300 gallons of fish tank I think you are currently running 1:6. Just keep the numbers of fish low until you are finished cycling. Then as you add more grow beds, you will be able to add more fish. You currently have enough filtration space available to really only take care of 25 gallons of heavily stocked fish tank. You can probably manage up to 300 gallons of grow beds before you run into too much trouble with water level fluctuations at which point you would need to think about things like sump tanks.

Anyway, welcome and it looks well done so far! I like the fountain.

Thanks TCL for the advice.

I like your new system on your website.

We are pretty much newbies here. I teach engineering. What am I doing trying to grow food? Having fun for sure.

What a great learning experience this website is.

Ummm.....can you help us with a lesson on starting the system......letting it run for the right amount of time under the right conditions to ensure a good crop of bacteria? I sure wish there was a book on this.

Thanks

Chris Schilling

Actually I believe there is a book and video if you wanted to order it from the main web site.
http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/further%20information.htm

As to cycling. In general it takes about 6 weeks under good conditions.
Do you have a test kit yet? You need to be able to test fresh water for
pH (and high range pH too usually)
Ammonia
Nitrite
Nitrate

Anyway, At a pH of between 7 and 8 and temperatures between 70 and 90 F cycling will often take about 6 weeks. To get cycling started you need an ammonia source, since you already have fish in, you got a source. Keep a close eye on the ammonia levels since you only need a small amount to get cycling started. Too much ammonia and you hinder the process as well as kill your fish. getting the ammonia up to 1 is as high as most of us would want to go during initial cycling with fish. Any higher and you need to be doing partial water changes to keep your fish alive. Don't feed very much and if the ammonia gets up to 1, stop feeding till it drops. Pretty much the same with Nitrite, once the bacteria has changed some ammonia to nitrite then you sill start to get a nitrite spike. You want the Nitrite to elevate enough that the next level of bacteria will get to work but you don't want that to get too high either since it is toxic to fish too. Adding perhaps 1 ppt of salt to the water can help the fish survive the nitrite spike up to 3 ppt salt in the system doesn't seem to affect most plants. Be sure the salt is non iodised and has no anticaking agents. Most of us use plain solar pool salt or water softener salt.
Back to cycling. Be ready to do partial water changes if the Nitrite gets up over 1 and be checking for nitrates to see when the bacteria have started converting the nitrite to nitrate. Once that happens you should shortly start to see the ammonia and nitrite levels drop to 0. Keep up the testing as you slowly increase the feed to whatever is appropriate to the fish. Once you are feeding at the appropriate amount while the ammonia and nitrites stay 0 you are cycled to that load of fish. Hopefully your plants start taking off at that point because they then have good nutrients to use. If you find that you can't get the feed to where you want it without the nitrites rising, then you may have reached the limit of your grow beds and need more.

Thanks a million TCL.

I'll buy the DVD.

I appreciate your advice.

It turns out we have a 150 gallon tank, not 300.

We've been doing partial water exchanges, the ammonia is between .5 and 1.

Great advice. Thanks.

+1 for TCL's post, next time do it without fish first

What are the other water tests (pH, Nitrite, etc) saying and the temperature?
It is probably ok to let the ammonia get up to 1 so there is enough to get the bacteria going but let us know your system water pH and the source water pH (let source water sit out to air for a day before testing pH to get a more accurate reading) so we can better advise what you should do.

Ammonia becomes more dangerous to fish at higher temperatures and at higher pH.

Gold fish are usually very tough though and will often survive (even seem to thrive) in conditions that other types of fish may suffer terribly in.

How long has the system been running with fish in it?

Do you have any Nitrite yet?

Cycling is much, much faster if you seed the tank with some sludge from a cycled tank. Do you know anyone with an aquarium? Cuts time from weeks to days. Beware: if they have disease etc you will transfer that as well.