Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

well by goodness im on automatic!

timer is set and working really nicely
20 mins. on 40 off

i salted the FT as i did lose one of the big cats
and they looked just like the little ones i had lost

so i salted at rate hydro gave me in his calc
how often should i salt the FT . once every couple of weeks or so?

its a blessing to get this timer operating , here is link to the brand im using

http://www.intermatic.com/products/time ... 00rcl.aspx

the top right pic is the one i have. i also went and added 2600 gph sump pump with float switch
in ST

water tests all look pretty good but ph stays @ 8
ammo is almost flat to maybe .12 so that was my issue i was NOT cycling system enough. now that it runs every hour, its looking a lot better and plants are happy and growing

hurrah!

You probably don't need salt that often and the system won't loose salt nearly as fast as you need to top up water so you probably won't need to add salt for quite a long time unless you have to do some big water changes.

good to hear you got the timer working

well i surely spoke too darn soon. shortly after i posted all was going great. it was'nt

lost all my fish again! just like getting hit with a hammer between the eyes going out to watch water flow and finding all of them floating

i immediately ran every test i could run and all was fine only a slightly elevated ammo even the temp was great

i had plenty of DO too. so all i could figure is that something i cant test for is killing my fish. fine one day all dead the next. so its something mean


SO what to do. well i had plants up and i thought about converting to HP for 1 day as i have a few hunfred pounds of water soluble ferts. so i decided to pursure that being as im total death to fish OR so it seemed it was me (somehow)

so i called the supplier of the fert i had for some branded HP fert prices and while talking to the rep he asked what medium i was running. so i told him granite and inert filler.


he sent me a .pdf on the 5-11-26 hydro blend with a nice cordial note that this will not work with inert filler

"This material is compatible with most insecticides and fungicides. Do not use in combination with
Bordeaux, lime, highly alkaline materials or nutritional calcium sprays. If compatibility is not
known, test on small area before use."

bottom line is "filler" i was told was inert and nothing but hard clay is far from that. basically "inert" is a farce. so big agribiz does not have to comply with any usda or msds warning label on said filler

according to wiki entry on filler. it can be anything from what i was told it was "clay" to kiln dried/fired hazardous wastes and anything that can be used as a carrier for commercial dry ferts.

well when i saw that lime and calcium warning and hearing the HP salesman say no to filler with their
soluble. i was like oh geez its the so called "inert" filler i had in my GB thats killing my fish

im not 100% sure but im 99% sure thats it. enough so i started tearing the whole system apart today and dumping GB's. and sure enough they were so sludged up with what looked like thick dijon mustard it has to be my issue.

system has not been running long enough to be this gunked up but this stuff is way nasty looking

so im dumping it all , rocks and everything because
ill never get it all out of the larger stone.

all the supply lines and even the drains are thick with this stuff.

i also called the former boss at the ag store and he told me this load of filler came from a different source than what we used to get. geez of course it would be different and then he says i dunno what this load is. gee thanks for telling me!

so im in the rebuild stage again

bottom line is even if you only have 1 GB make darn sure what you are putting in it for medium.

take no chances. dumb noob mistake will cost me a lot of time and work. a lot






"

sorry of hear of your troubles...

If the stuff is so toxic, I wonder why they are selling it at all ?

Well, this way they can sell it to the unsuspecting public instead of paying the hazmat folks to take it away.

The problem is too much regulation! Let the free market decide!

Right...........

now im wondering in the years i worked there and knowing how many tons of bulk fert i sold, how much of it had real clay at carrier and how many had something far less friendly ill guess all 4-500 tons

nobody ever says anything about filler, well except the guy buying the ton of fert. and even then he does not think about what it is or is not. he would prefer it be N P or K of course. so would i now, ack!

from the gardenweb wiki quote

"The bulk of the product....what's not accounted for by percentage weight of NPK....are mostly inert fillers - sawdust, soil, sand, industrial waste, etc. Even some ingredients that could be quite toxic, like heavy metals. These make up the bulk of the volume in synthetic fertilizers and are added so that a) the product is easier to distribute"


now how in the hell can anyone label this mess inert?

Johnny, I do not know what the "filler" is but not far from my house there is an agro fertilizer plant along the river and one of the byproducts of its production is radioactive gypsum. Nasty stuff. People were getting it for free to use in their driveways to make the road bed out of then cover with limestone. I can't understand why Louisiana has more children in St. Judes Cancer research hospital than any other state in the nation!. Fillers, man you really never know what or how bad the stuff is you are getting nowdays. We've got mountains of the stuff along the Mississippi river leaching into the groundwater. They were dumping it into the River until the lower parishes complained it was getting in the drinking water intakes. Some people do not realize we don't want to eat that shit!
Sorry about your fish but they made good miners canarys. Gravel and lava rock still seem washable and safe unless they tried to color it to make it more retailable. Good luck with your rebuild, I wish you the best!

Yep, it is really misleading. They should list active ingredients and the rest should be "other ingredients" rather than "inert" or anything else that implies non-activity. Not such a factor when one is talking about plants and fertilizer, but, as folks have noted on this forum, plant-safe is not the same as fish safe. Really.....unfortunate.....that you had to run into it this way and incur the loss of fish, labor, and money.

thanks brothers,

is also better i find out now

but life has taught me , it can always always be worse or get worse

and brb its just another fine example of how greed will kill us all

i had seen them mountains of filler in la. and also in mississippi. was in some of the literature samples from the fert vendors courting the company that i worked for.

not piles but mountains of it.

Arge is right. I hate when you get a product that you can't find out what the "inactive ingredients" are.

As to why they sell the stuff, well because they can and of course it is far cheaper to get people to pay to haul it away and spread it all over the place for you rather than having to pay for hazardous waste disposal.

well im getting it taken down and cleaned slowly but surely. i only got the drains unhooked, GB frames taken down and 1 as in one GB unloaded and cleaned

i cannot over state this woe. that if anyone has the slightest doubt if something you want to use in your home-brew AP is safe or not. figure that its NOT safe.

iffy blue barrells? NO
caustic smelling IBC? NO NO
unknown media? oh hell NO!


pre test everything even if you have the AP addiction monkey and must have one running asap

take your time and make very darn sure all is well
because Murphy lives well and is waitng to pounce.

especially on the anxious. /signed

Don't let it get you down Johnny... keep plugging mate... have the sense that you're not easily beaten anyway...

i dunno rupe i went for a couple of days there where i did question wth i was doing and was very angry with self.


none of us feel good after losing fish. i do hope to one day be one that does not lose fish except to old age or frying pan

here is pics i took before i started destruction mode






im really thinking about just 3 lines of dual beds to cut down on breaks in piping and multiple valves would require building GB's but totes have so much wasted space.

i even toyed with idea of center row being NFT pipes or channel/gutter whatever i can come up with here in deadwood i mean live oak

system worked fine after i added second pump so im trying to think if i should rearrange anything different while its torn apart

cool dave the fish farmer got me some limerock so i can make better stronger (and level) pad for main FT

and i know i someday want an inside GH tank for winter tilapia try. i know i can keep GH to 60 degress in our coldest weather just like it sits
and with a bit more work to 70 and a lot more work like double poly cover with blower can be 75 inside at 15 to 20 outside and thats with no pond heater

if i only had money and could see better *sigh*


anyway now is time to rethink it. the fouled GB rocks and filler are sure making nice GH floor hehehe

ima off (well you already knew that) but to swamp out nasty poisoned GB's

any ideas or suggestions. please come now