Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

great stuff Jimmy, that will help you loads to getting cycled quicker. Keep us posted, we expect a trout bbq in 6 months time

Absolutely! Look forward to it.

Readings this morning:
Temp 14.7 (got up to 16.2 by the end of the day yesterday)
pH still 7.8 (tap water is coming out at about 8.4). Added another tablespoon of HPO4.
Ammonia still 1.0 ppm
NO3 still 0
NO2 hard to say - I think it might be between 0 and 0.25 ppm

Can't monitor DO but it looks good. Fish still seem alive & well. Not feeding yet.

Thanks again to Monya!

jimmy, the natural tendency will be for the ph to fall from now, so only add the ph down to your top up water to meet the ph of your tank water, you could stop bringing it down in your system I reckon.

Thanks for the advice - I'll stop adjusting and just monitor the pH. It must have been naturally reducing given the difference between pond water (7. and tap water (8.4), even prior to adding HPO4.

I'm not adding any top-up water at the moment - don't want to increase the pH any more than it already is, given the high ammonia load. With no plants taking water out of the system at present it's only losing water via surface evaporation, which is relatively low in this mild weather. Hopefully over the winter it can be water neutral (just getting natural rain recharging it), and I'll only have to turn the tap on in summer.

You could try zeolite. I'm not sure where you can get it cheaply, but it'll soak up excess ammonia (so long as there is no salt in the system). Each night you have to take the bag out and soak it in a saline solution to "recharge" it.

I really don't know whether it works well, I think you'd need a 5-10kg bag (and I'm not sure you can get those). Anyone had good experiences with zeolite?

This morning's readings:

Ammonia 1ppm
Nitrite 0.1ppm (estimate - certainly >0, but < 0.25 which is the next grade on the scale)
Nitrate 2.5ppm (estimate - think it's between 0 and 5 ppm)
pH still 7.8
Temp 14.6

Looks like nitrogen cycle is beginning!

Fish look happy. When should I start feeding them? They've been in since Sunday night.

wait another day or so, but you could chuck in say 10 pellets just keep them interested

Wow, that didn't seem to take long at all.

Last year when I didn't have enough gb's I set up a half drum with a few bags of zeolite. It sucks the ammonia out of the water very quickly. It allowed the bacteria to catch up. Think I was having high nitrite readings so by the time the zeolite filled up on Am the Ni had caught up.

Most good pool shops have 10 kg bags of Zeolite

I like the look of this system. Something different and it looks nice and neat.

Have you got anymore recent pics?

I'll post some more pics on the weekend.

Meanwhile I've had my first loss

The plus side is I don't think it was water quality related for the following reasons:
1) Readings are still satisfactory (NH3 = 1ppm, NO2 = 0.25ppm, NO3 = 5ppm, T ~ 14 deg C, pH = 7.
2) The other fish seem happy and are feeding when we throw in a tiny handful
3) The dead fish was found on the ground next to the pond

I suspect it jumped out! I hope that doesn't happen too often!

Don't count on it. I lost 8 in a day. They all jumped out on the same side of the tank - it looked like they were trying to go "upstream" (i.e. up the return) and were missing and jumping straight out. I put a bit of shade cloth over that section and I haven't lost one since.

Wow, sorry to hear that.

My suspicion is this one jumped out of the top pond and it nearly made it down to the sump...

Anyway, I'll get onto it today - there's child- (and hopefully cat-) proof welded mesh over all the ponds but I'll cover this up with a finer mesh to prevent our small friends jumping through

I do now!

Here's a view looking down over the growbeds and two top ponds. In these top ponds, I think I'll put some freshwater mussels and edible water plants.


The top two ponds overflow into what I'm calling the "middle pond", which in turn overflows into the sump. These two lower tanks contain all the trout at the moment.


Here is the sump and utility box (contains a 4-way powerboard, the air pump and a timer-switch for the water pump). Note also the pig, an eccentric wedding present from my Dad...