Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

after being lured into the joys of AP we bought a $200 fish pond from the Quokka including pump, rocks, fish, 410??L moulded fish pond. and got a bit carried away with the blue drums ($20 ea from salvage warehouse) ... we have 12!!! but we plan for a 1000L tank in the back yard after this small system gets going.

Ok so we've got the little fishpond set up at the front of the house (so my two small children dont fall into it while playing in the backyard) with 3 half blue barrels using a flood and drain technique. 10 seasoned goldfish in residence at the moment. feeding on pellets 2x a day. water is tap water with a ph of 8 or so.. media is pea gravel.. currently have about 6 punnets of various seedlings in the grow beds that still look like seedlings after 2 weeks LOL

My Question for today is: are we getting close to cycliing??? my answer is "not a chance". Here are my scores... Ammonia zilch. Nitrite zilch (although it could have been a smidgeon last week sometime). PH is 8 (is that too high?? add sea shells right???)

When we set up the pond he had some goop and crud still in the rocks so I added that to the water too, after reading about that in the forums. I know it could take us up to 6 weeks in winter to cycle. I am not testing it every day!!

Will try to post some pictures next. Thanks for your help
Priscilla

Yes Priscilla... could easily take 6 weeks to cycle....

Don't add any shells/shellgrit... let your pH move as the system cycles...

We add shells/grit to pull acidic pH back... adding them to your system with your current pH wont do anything...

some early pictures

We have regulated flow to the GB with a tap system since those pictures were taken, and now they flood reliably

Nice little system...

japris,looks good,Im currently setting up in tom price,getting bits and pieces up here is a bit tricky,but nearly ready,keep up your great effort and I will also post pictures soon,,cheers loosebruce

Welcome...

Well started my system in winter as well. After two months, I only just started seeing my seedlings advance... Just hang in there... Spring is on its way...

Hey is that your fish pond right next to the front door...

Jessy: yeah its near the front door for now.. but we'll be moving it into the backyard once I've got the space and the 1000L tank ready

iavnsng: I'm trying not to test too often and to be patient!!!! (which is easy considering my 2 children keeping me on my toes)

loosebruce: nice to meet you, my husband is in Karratha as we speak on FIFO, home on weekends. He says it was warm up there today!! we used to live in Mt Isa so I know about hot too.

Quick question: there is a brownish growth in the pond, over the rocks and up the walls. I haven't been testing every day, more like once a week. So what is that stuff? Is it the good stuff?? can you even see the good stuff??

We accidentally emptied half the pond last week in runoff so I hope that doesn't effect things too much.

I'll get some more readings tomorrow, but over the weekend ammonia, nitrite are zilch and ph still around 8.

Brownish residue on surfaces is often normal (bio-slime) so long as it is just a thin coating on surfaces it is ok. If it is like a growing blob of semifloating goo, that is not so good and you want to get that sucked into the grow beds rather than leaving it to build up in the fish pond.

I've had patchy brown (what I hope is just) bio-slime on the sides of my tank for quite a while and it hasn't caused any dramas.
My tank is white and although the sides are covered you can see the brown on the walls quite clearly, it's a little unsightly.
I've been meaning to scrub it off and turn the pump on and let go through the GB's but I keep putting it off.

I might take TCL's advice and get onto it sooner rather than later.

Oh yeah cool system by the way japris, do you get many people walking past and asking what you're up to?

Oh no, if it is just bio-slime, don't bother scrubbing it off. Actually, bio-slime is good to have coating pretty much everything so long as it doesn't clog up the pipes (generally only a problem with way too small plumbing/pipes.)

I have told all my neighbours and any passing real estate agents (a few houses for sale in my street) about our aquaponics set up and how it works.. getting the word out there!!! yes this is one reason that I have the first one in the front yard. Hoping to put out vegetables from these gardens available to our neighbours.. or just grow the herbs and lettuce at the front.. or something!!

Its a great conversation starter and my husband likes a talking point

TCLynx... what is considered to be "too small pipes"? we have (but probably shouldn't have) 2x1000L pumps pumping our AP at the moment.. I think this might be overkill however my husband is content with this setup ["I don't need to ask for directions" !!!] through 20mm or 25mm retic pipes.

I bought 3 very small koi today to add to the system.. not sure if this was a good thing to do but I couldn't help myself

plants are looking good.. will just run out now and check the ammonia and nitrites and ph....

ph is about 8
nitrites and ammonia are zilch.

ok so my understanding of this whole cycling business is that the nitrites will go up when the first lot of bacteria start to develop, and then come down again when the other kind of bacteria are developing.. is that correct??? maybe I should go and get some bacteria from BYAP!

the plants look fine and I can tell they have perked up in the last few days of sunshine, they all look healthy and have grown somewhat since first planted.

all suggestions welcome

When you build the bigger system you will probably want a bigger pump but 20-25mm pipe from the pumps is fine. I was speaking of spagetti tubing like used for some hydroponics or drip irrigation being too small (I was trying something using some of it and definitely way too small and it would clog up every day even with filtered AP water.)
Some itty bitty fountain pumps that have like 5 mm tubing would probably not survive long as fish poo clogs up tiny pumps)

To get the cycling started, you probably need measurable ammonia before you will start to see the nitrite spike. However, some system that start out with very small numbers of fish and lots of water, sneak the cycling by without anyone noticing because they never really got a big spike and by the time anyone tried testing, the plants had already used up the measurable nitrate. Of course if you suddenly increase the fish load or feed, always test because spikes can happen whenever changes are made.