Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Sigidi,

When cycling, time is not a really good measure: chemistry is. Test your water: when you get 0,0,(something) for ammonia, 'ites, 'ates then you are cycled. As many folks have pointed out, bacterial slime squeezed from a working aquarium filter or adding 25kg or so of rock from a cycled AP growbed will work wonders on reducing cycling time. Bacteria you may have introduced from other sources may help as well. I'd bet you could get cycled within a week with a good dose of bacteria and you could risk it and toss in the silvers even sooner. After all, you are only looking at getting about 5kg of fish (or 2kg? Beats me) and it is pretty cool for them to be eating/excreting much.

Daily nitrite testing while cycling is not too often and will tell you a lot without needing to bother to do the other two tests more than once every few days. This is after ammonia has reached a fairly stable level!

second testing results;

Temp 14.4
pH 7.4
Ammo 1.0
Nitrite 0.375
Nitrate 5

as compared to first;

Temp 16.3
pH 7.5
Ammo 1.5
Rite 0.125
Rate 4

The water is a grotty colour at the moment, as we put the lower bed online and had tried 'washing' the gravel using a half 44gal blue plastic barrel, with a multitude of holes drilled in the bottom, continuously turning the gravel over by shovel while also being sprayed continuously for around 3-4min per load (each load was 3/4 wheel barrow) washed and turned over, washed and turned over.

A long process, although the water ended up pretty grotty, I'd hate to think what it would look like without the washing???

I've finally hooked up a good sized pump (although our ebay pump still hasn't arrived ) it is a bit large on the capacity of our system. I wasn't sure what it's specs where and 95% of the time it just sits around here on the farm doing nothing, so I did a net search and found the DanG thing is 10,500lph, max head of 18m, with max lift of 7.5m - should do the job hey?

I've got it on a digital programmable timer, it floods the beds in about 7min, but I've got it running 10 min every 2 hours as it's limited to only 10 on:off cycles. Is that too long a break between cycles? Would it be better to get one of those pin timers to do 15 on 45 off? I was just a bit worried about having it on for 15min as the beds fill in 7min, I didn't want to run it for twice that long?

What are the thoughts? I have taps into each GB to adjust flow and a tap back into the FT for the 'surplus' water, should I keep fiddling with the flow so the pump can stay on 15 min and then I can use a pin timer? I 'spose it's nicer to have the pump on for a shorter time when thinking about the electricity bills? but I only have 10 cycles I can program if I wanted to run the pump for shorter than 15min?

Wow!! I just wanna say thanks to all here for help they have given not just here in my thread specifically, but also on the forum as a whole. Thanks to all

Allan, as long as the GB overflow will handle the pump running when it is full let it run for the full 15 minutes, it is important to recirculate the water through the GB's as often as possible, turning the whole tank over through the GBs once every hour is often advocated by many of the gurus here as aids greatly with aeration as well as filtration of solids. You could put a bypass in and recirculate some water directly from the pump into the FT instead of running it through the GB if the GB's won't handle the full flow.

Also, the more it runs the faster it will cycle, probably: those bacteria like to be fed! Once you are cycled, the bacteria can generally keep up.

Don't worry about the water being cloudy, it will eventually clear.

How long to clear do you think Derek?

I've got fish coming today!!!!

Sig it will sort it self out, Don't *frack* around with it, your test results will probably go up when fish arrive and water will clear, keep your tank shaded on the sunny side as well, your system is cycling well by your results so far, if you start water changes etc you will be back at the start, as long as fish are happy don't panic about high Amm and Nitrite they will settle in a few days, if Amm goes way high then cut feeding for a day or 2

Sigidi, if you're running an overflow standpipe system... then a 15/45 timer period would probably be preferable... and is the standard system employed in the BYAP kits...

Don't worry about the extra time the pump is "on" after the bed is filled... it will merely overflow.... as long as the bed can drain within the 45 off... and usually we try to doso in way less time than that....

The plus is by running 15/45 rather than 7/90 or 15/120... or whatever... you'll be turning over the tank through your growbeds more frequently... especially important for your plants during summer... and providing both better oxygenation and filtration IMO...

The advantage of the "pin" timers... is you can vary the sequence easily... i.e drop cycles out during the night over winter etc... plus they have an over-ride "manual" switch... that allows you to run things continuously if need be...

I am looking for a new timer...ROZ, do you have a brand name for this timer, so I can see if I can source one ??

Just the usual bunnings ones Jessy, the HPM two for $8 ones.

Heading into two years of continuous use on mine, still going strong, all 4 of them

I dropped mine....its stuffed...and the closest bunnings to me is over 1000 Km away Sometime it really shits me living so remote

Arlec and HPM... are probably the two major brands... about $8 a timer...

Joel could mail you up one... actually I think he has twin packs...

The boss just bought one home today - HPM was $5 or she could buy a twin pack for $15...WTF!!!

So our pump is now 15:45 24/7

I also 'designed' a filter as I am wanting to see my FISHIES!!! - got 'em in will, post pics a bit later, only got a few mins now...

Jess you can get them on Ebay posted for about $15 or even Deals Direct