Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi Thomas,
Those koi look healthy, if your friend is seriously overstocked you could offer some a good home.
Any animal feed place will sell oystershell grit quite cheaply a 25kg sack costs £7 over here, its a good option if you lives miles away from a beach like me
I use half a "mugful" (500g maybe) in a stocking for my 140L tank and it keeps the ph above 7.1, without the grit the ph used to stabilise around 6.2-6.3. Pro-rata i guess the whole sackful could treat a 7000L tank.

Back from holiday!

My dad and sister looked after the fish when I was gone. I instructed them to feed 1,5% but they won't eat that much - sometimes there's fishfood floating in the pond for hours. So from now on we're feeding only as much as they can eat in 10 minutes or so at a time.
Dad said that the the quarantine with the floating fish that I put in before I left turned all green and he saw nothing floating, so he threw it all away assuming the fish dead - only to find it jumping around on the floor! So he threw it back into the pond. But now there's three of those small ide/orfe that seem slightly paralyzed and have trouble swimming. I found on a website that small fish usually recover if they find enough food, and that a cause of the symptoms can be electricity - so I hope that the pump is not leaking any electricity.
The big koi carps managed to detach the hose from the pump three times while I was gone, bloody terrorists.. The first time dad didn't notice so the water'd turned all green, but after he put the hose back the water became crystal clear (apart from some floating fish poo) again.

When I inspected the fish, I found two of the small orfe that have trouble swimming (they seem a bit paralyzed!), one small orfe with what I think is a broken back (the one that dad'd almost killed) and one carp that doesn't look very healthy (wounds on both sides, sometimes he secludes himself from the rest and just lies there in a corner doing nothing, still eats though). I put the carp into quarantine so he doesn't get fungus.
I also found a dead fish

The dead fish is probably a koi carp x grass carp hybrid, one of the carps I got from the guy I also got the big koi from. He was stuck behind a plant bag so he didn't float up, so I don't know how long he'd been dead. He was bleeding from his belly, and missing a few scales, but apart from that he looked fine.. Bigger than I thought he'd be; 22cm and 165g. Don't know if he was sick before he got stuck.

I'm pretty sure the new carp have parasites on them, but I can't put them all in quarantine and I don't want to use medicine in the system.


Got a new test kit for pH, KH and GH and found the KH to be at exactly 0 and the pH too low.

30th of July (feeding 70g a day)
pH: 5,5-6
NH3: 0,2
NO2: 0,2
NO3: 6
KH (carbonate hardness): 0
GH (general hardness): 15 German degrees

So that's a big problem... I need even more shell grit! Digging up the bag of shells that I put in, I found that there was little left of the part that was buried. Also found an earthworm in the shells, even though I didn't put any worms in the growbed - they must've been eating through the bag or something. Digged up most of the shells, crushed them, also crushed more shells I hadn't added yet. I buried all the crushed shells in the GB and that brought the KH up to about 1 (probably less) in the growbed. Probably getting some more shell grit tomorrow, but I'm not getting them at the beach again (getting shell grit at the store is cheaper than going to the beach and back, not even mentioning the dragging through public transport, washing and crushing the shells if I get them at the beach).
Glad we checked the shells before crushing, or I'd have crushed the worm too!

You can see it digging back into the hydroton here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0bDv0UhoZo.

On the bright side of things, the strawberries are doing great!

This one tasted quite nice.

Came back from a weekend at my girlfriend's - found two more dead fish.

One big one, probably the same sort of fish as the dead one in the previous post, found dead in a piece of PVC under water (not stuck though). Again, apart from one missing scale and a slightly red belly he looks fine. 21cm and 130g - slightly thinner than the average carp but I doubt that he died of hunger. It's another carp that we got from the guy we also got the bigger carp from, and I'm fairly sure this is one of the three carp that we transported in a bucket through public transport - they survived that so I don't think he died of stress either. And the water quality seems okay-ish, except for the low pH.



Second dead one is the sunfish - dad found it floating yesterday (they didn't have time to search for more dead fish). 10cm and 15g. Might have died from malnutrition because I've never actually seen it eating anything, and sometimes they just don't eat food that's not alive.


I'm also missing one blue ide with swimming problems, but he might be hiding somewhere.
Also, the carps are eating less than usual, and they're 'flashing' their belly and jumping out of the water from time to time (possibly because of parasites).

On the upside, the fish that I put in quarantine a couple of days ago seems to be healing, and the strawberries are still doing great.

4th of August (feeding 30g a day)
pH: 6
NH3: 0,3
NO2: 0,5
NO3: 6
KH: 1 or less
GH: 16

I'm adding 30g soda (sodium carbonate crystals) a day to bring the carbonate hardness and ph up without influencing the general hardness too much. Also, I'm looking into how the carbonate hardness can drop to 0 every time, because the soda definately brings up the KH quite a bit (must have something to do with CO2 and bacteria).

Any ideas / thoughts would be greatly appreciated!

No more fish deaths. Plant growth seems to be accelerating.

23rd of August:
pH: 6
NH3: 0
NO2: 0
NO3: 4
KH (carbonate hardness): 0
GH (general hardness): 16 German degrees

Lots of strawberries, and the other plants are now growing as well as the ones in soil as well. Which is strange, because it's not as warm as it was a couple of weeks ago and the water test values are the same.

There is a large amount of sea shells and shell grit in the growbed already. The plants don't mind the low pH, but I think the fish would like the pH to be higher. Using sodium carbonate brings up the carbonate hardness and pH for a while, but the pH always seems to go back to 6 and the KH to 0. Maybe I should just keep adding the stuff for a week or so, but then again I don't want to add a lot of sodium to the system (sodium = salt, and strawberries don't like salt). I still haven't found any potassium carbonate or bicarbonate, so I'm getting even more shell grit for the time being.

tom, if you have no ammonia and the plants and fish are happy then just leave it, but do keep an eye on it.........

is the shell grit in good contact with the water on flood cycle?

how long does the ph go up for?

does the KH go up for the same period?

do you mean sodium-bicarbonate?

Love your worm clip
Faye

Thanks, Faye Steve, I'm sure it's sodium carbonate crystals and not bicarbonate. The pH goes up for a day or less when I add it, and the KH too (probably less than the pH). The shell grit is in good contact with the water as well as oxygen, since I dug out some clay balls and put the grit under it.


Everything is going fine, much better than before. Plant growth is accelerating, even though temperatures are dropping, and the fish are growing well too. The only thing that I changed is that I didn't change anything over the past weeks!

16th of September:
pH: 6
NH3: 0,3
NO2: 0,2
NO3: 10+ (test is inaccurate at high levels)
KH (carbonate hardness): ~0
GH (general hardness): 17 German degrees
Water temperature: 14 degrees Celsius

Overview of the system.


Strawberries are still doing great. They're still producing lots of fruits and, though most are quite small, they're delicious!


This red cabbage, which has been in the system for four months now, finally started growing (together with the other one). With a little hope it'll produce a nice cabbage before it gets too cold.


These came up maybe two weeks ago - I'm not sure what they are and I'm not sure when I sowed them. They look like sunflowers, but it's almost autumn and I'm already collecting seeds from my soil sunflowers (because of the birds) so I have no idea why they would be coming up now. Some beans on the left, not a lot of them, but they're doing fine. I used seeds that were years old (from my old veggie garden) so not many germinated.


This is the monarda (beebalm) plant. On the left you can see the old leaves and still a few flowers, and on the right you see the new leaves which came out of nowhere in a couple of days. I thought the plant was dying off! I made some really nice tea with some of the leaves. You can also see some radishes germinating (even though the seeds are a couple of years old as well).


Beetroots germinating. I've been sowing them every couple of weeks for the past few months but only now a few are germinating. Which is strange, because it was a lot warmer and sunnier some months ago.


Siphon still doing fine, though the pump needs frequent cleaning to keep the flow above the siphon minimum.


The fish are doing much better now. They seem more relaxed and accustomed to their environment. They are still 'flashing' their bellies occasionally, but not as much as they did some weeks ago. When the sun is shining they all pack together and sunbathe, which is cool to see. The two fish I put in quarantine are doing better - the one with wounds healed up nicely and the half-paralysed one still swims funnily but is eating again - so I put them both back in the pond. The water is still very clear, even though there's slightly more fish poo floating around.



This autumn or winter we're going to reinforce the bottom of the growbed with a few beams - that way it'll last much longer. Hopefully we won't have to remove all the growbed media or the fish. I'm thinking about adding a strawberry through to the system as well.
Next year hopefully we'll be able to sow and plant veggies in spring, and have great plant growth with lots of veggie harvests all year round.

Looking good Thomas.... real nice actually...

Thanks!

Everything going well. Radishes are growing a lot, but since nobody here likes them I leave them in for too long. This is the result:

It's penis-shaped and it's forming a new, smaller radish at the end of its root!

is it a horse radish?

Haven't been on for ages, so a quick update.

We had to put two goldfish in quarantine because they had strange wounds. They didn't get better, but at least it didn't get any worse.

The plants were doing fine, even though winter really started kicking in. We had one day of snow a couple of days before Christmas, and it started freezing. Despite of the quarantine freezing over and a layer of ice forming around the autosiphon, the system still worked fine and the cycling kept the fish tank from freezing over as well. The plants coped better than expected; some plants died but the strawberries didn't even stop flowering (though the fruits are all brown). The water has been crystal clear so far, though I didn't test the water values for quite some time now. The fish stopped eating, and they're not moving much any more, but apart from that they look fine.


Now for the bad news. I wasn't home much around Christmas and new year, when a heron found the two goldfish in the quarantine. It came back for more later. Today we put a net over the pond and counted the fish, and found out the heron ate a total of 5 goldfish and 5 ide! That brings the total of dead fish to 14, we have 34 left.

We did find a very unexpected frog in the pond when counting the fish. Probably fell in and can't get out, but since it's still freezing outside we left it in the pond.

Good chance the "strange wounds" were from the Heron... once they find a food source, they'll stick around until they fish it out.... glad you got a net over them...

It's been ages since I last posted some pictures in this thread, so it's time for a little update.

After we added the net to the system, the heron hasn't come back. We haven't had any fish deaths since January.

The system this morning (just after feeding the fish):


Spring is really kicking in here in the Netherlands. Lots of things are flowering and the plants in the AP system are growing very fast. The strawberries are doing great and they're starting to get more flowers. The fish are getting more active by the day and they're eating a lot. Most of the fish seem to have grown even since autumn.

Strawberries and syphon (which is still working fine):


The Monarda Didyma (bee balm) has really taken off in the past two weeks. The stems have at least doubled in thickness and the two plants spread out more than I could've hoped since last year. I have a feeling that they'll take over the system in a year or two!


The onions that I planted about a year ago got bigger last year, but they stayed green during the winter and right now the onions seem to be getting smaller again. I think they're going to flower. The two red cabbages didn't grow big enough to harvest before winter and they were about to flower so we got them out. This year, we hope to put them in much sooner! Last year's lupin didn't flower, but this year it's already bigger than it's ever been. Part of the lupin looks like it doesn't have enough water though, even after putting the water hose right next to the stem! Also, some really small lettuce plants in front that I planted yesterday:


I also planted a tomato. It may be a bit too early for planting tomatoes, but the weather forecast tells me it's going to be slightly warmer than usual for this time of year so I'm hoping that I can get away with it. I plan on building a small greenhouse or at least something to keep it out of the rain though.



Study is not going very well. I had to quit university because I just couldn't keep up with everything around me. I hope to continue in about a year or so, when hopefully I'm feeling a bit better.

In the mean time, I plan on going to Sweden with my girlfriend for at least a month. Not as a vacation, but to go WWOOFing.
"WWOOF (World-Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) is a loose network of national organisations that facilitate the placement of volunteers on organic farms" (Wikipedia) - basically you work on an organic farm for about 6 hours a day and in return you get food, accommodation and of course you learn more about organic farming.

I couldn't find anything about WWOOF on this forum. Does anybody on here have any experience with that?

A form of "wwoofing" has been around for years in NZ... before it became known as that...

And wasn't limited to "organic" farms.... basically any farms.... used to travel the South Island of NZ during my secondary school Xmas holidays doing that...

Wow its great to re-read through your thread. One of the first I read through when I got here. Glad to see things still going. Remember that the cats liked your fish tank. Hope you enjoy your WWOOFing. Keep us posted on how it goes.