Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Short term.... net out as much of the dead algae as possible... it will begin to decay and upset your oxygen and water parameters...

The hydro guy said nutreints were above 2000 as the ppm reader could only read up to 2000 and my water was above what his test could read, I have several handfuls of shell grit in the bath/pond and some in the grow medium.On another occasion i have removed nearly half of the water and replaced it with rainwater (which i checked and seems nuetral)

I ahve been feeding a little heavier asthe plants were yellowing and tomatoes and caps were dying when i first started and thought this would increase the nuteint level while i waited for the fish grow and to start pooing enough. AS i said the plants and fish seem the happiest they have been since i started but this could be the weathers influence(30 to 42 degreesC) I will check the water temp today but last time it was about 24 degrees C.

I have some pH downer which recommends 2 gms per 40 ltrs of water so i might put 10gms in bit by bit over the next week the reason i havent done this is the " If it aint broke dont fix it" method as i have an ability to make things even brokener with very little effort. I was also wondering if planting more would be a way of utilizing the extra nutreints as i intend to add more perlite grow pots to use the water overflow from the main grow pot.

Thanks for your feedback.

Paul

Sorry the pH downer will at 2gms per 40 ltrs is supposed to drop pH by .4 per 24hr period so about 10 gms per week for maybe 3 weeks?

Your shellgrit will probably mean you wont go much beyond pH 7.2/7.4....

Yep a 0.4 change in pH each time would be comfortable.... shade that tank though... and ease the feed (halve it)....until you have the algae under control...

My test kit just arrived so i actually have some numbers :Temp 24.5 d C, pH between 7.8-8.0, Ammonia 0 ppm, Nitrate 0-5 ppm, Nitrite 0 ppm. Is this good?

Have been pumping out 50-60 ltrs and ajusting this to 7.0 pH and adding this back into the fish pond after lettting the solids settle. Im doing this every 2-3 days as to not freak the fish out with a radical change. So far the pH has dropped slightly by 0.2 but i think i may need to be a bit more aggressive and drop it faster to get it down 7.2 because whatever is causing the alkalinity seems to be effecting the water as fast as im adjusting it.

Water colour is just off clear with a light 3cm wide band of algae that covers the bath just below 'low tide' which the gold fish are happily eat away at.

I have shadeclothed the whole AP which everything seems to love (except the algae) I will post some photos once i work out how to do it.

Thanks.

As the algae clears... and the system matures... your pH will probably move anyway...

Your test results are fine... and the shading should have great benefits to everything...

Thanks for your feedback RupertofOZ have done what u suggested and all is well sorry for such a late reply have been busy re designing need more fish now and all will be good, this ap is an experiment to prove that my plans work so time to build "THE BIG ONE" ready for spring