Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Sure, some form of Ammonia supply is required before adding fish, but we are only talking about the initial Cycling.
Try a handfull of composting worms in the Grow Bed media: they can provide a safe and natural way of initial cycling and when left alone after cycling, can do a whole deal of good in breaking down solids waste.
I used some cup fulls of water from a tiny system we had inadvertently started with Goldfish in a ceramic urn with a water plant growing in gravel!
Some use granular "Urea" to dose the system (in the USA try to source from; http://us.countrysearch.tradekey.com/urea.htm ), some use a dead prawn head (or other putrescent matter that I wouldn't use) and some use "hummonia", some people even use "sacrificial" gold fish! in the first instance.

I'm just saying that using anything other than these Natural elements just doesn't work in saving time nor effort.
Cheers IanK

If you don't have fish - ever - then you have a (potential) hydroponics system... in which case you need to supply ALL the nutrient requirements of the plants... nitrates (which we get from ammonia conversion), and trace elements...

You might as well just buy hydro nutrient mix... and be done with it...

But to cycle a system "pre-fish" or fishless yes you need to provide an ammonia source.

Urea fertilizer is the commonly chosen "non yuck" factor ammonia source for initial fishless cycling.

Hummonia is the common choice for those who are more comfortable with closing the nutrient cycle. (Aging the urine sealed in a bottle for a few weeks will generally cause the urea to convert to ammonia and make measurment easier as well as killing off possible e-coli that commonly gets from our skin into urine.)

If you are never going to have fish, then it won't really be aquaponics. I've run a pee ponics experiment and it can work fine but if that isn't what you are planning, As in you just want to do hydroponics, well, you might want advise from people who specialize in Hydroponics instead of Aquaponics.

Oh, and I didn't really pay that much attention to all the talk of manure or compost tea. I don't know if either of those is going to be an appropriate source of ammonia (the act of brewing the tea probably either releases the nitrogen to the atmosphere or allows what bacteria may be in there to convert most of the ammonia to nitrate, otherwise the tea would smell strongly.) They might provide a boost of bacteria but I don't know if it would really help cycling much.

This is my problem:

My pond is frozen. I'd like to see how nutrient rich the water is (maybe I wont have to buy a hydro nutrient mix)
The goldfish & catfish I'd like to add to my small FT (found free at the dump yesterday!) are under all that ice.
Worms are frozen too of course. Should be able to find some soon in the greenhouse.
So my sources for ammonia are limited if I want to test the tank to see how the cycling process works.

If you look in the lower left of the photo you'll see my other problem yesterday - escaped cows! I had to stop them from running down the driveway on the one hand, and stop them from running onto the frozen pond on the other. And it was 50° so I'm not sure the ice could hold 2 500 lb cows.

Assuming fish don't escape, aquaponics was quite appealing yesterday.

Here's a better one of the cows:

1 cup compost in 6 cups hard well water gave these readings:
Ammonia 3
Nitrate 160
Nitrite 1
Hardness 300
Alkalinity 180
PH 7.8

Compost derived from what???

being %0 degrees farenhiet that approx 10 degrees celcius can you not take a sledge hammer to the ice and scoop some water out? as this water will already have ammonia readings if that where all you fish are currently, but also remember that your water in you freebie tank is only going to have have as much ammonia as you allow it testing now with fishless cycling wont tell you anything as if you only stick one fish in the tank in the end it wont provide enough nutrients for even one plant but if you put 50 in the same tank you can run a grow bed maybe too so its all relative to what your final stocking density will be

HTH

Not necessarily... in fact almost certainly not...

In such a large body of water... with fixed oxygen, bio-filtration... and feed avaiable... the fish population would probably have reached an equilibrium point where any ammonia production would be dealt with by a corresponding level of bio-filtration....

I'd be surprised if an ammonia reading read more than 0.25 at the most...

So your telling me it certainly wont have a reading and then say it will but no more than 0.25 so which is it a ammonia or no ammonia?

im pretty sure im right yes its only a slight reading but if you read the rest of my post i explain what he is trying to test is pointless anyway as the readings aand nutrients will be different once he adds his fish

I know im only new here but dont stomp me out when im not wrong


sorry for the flamming but i hate it when people say im wrong (when im not) or take thing out of context

Er, normal stuff - garden & kitchen wastes with a bit of chicken/cow poop. Pine shavings and hay too.

I'm new here too but I thought the point was to get the system cycled before you add fish.

I don't think so. It could be 50 with the sun out but the ice could still be a foot thick. Vermont's mud season is probably a bit different than down under - heh. Everything refreezes at night.

I could try drilling it but I'm just as likely to crack a bone as crack the ice with a sledgehammer. My 500 lb bull went out 10 feet without cracking the ice.

Looks like rain all weekend. Maybe I'll be able to check next week - or maybe we'll get 2 feet of snow.

Well it sounds like your compost tea does have some ammonia in it, but the nitrates are quite high already so it sounds like it might be a better source of kick start bacteria than a source of ammonia. Remember that when you add the source into the system you will be diluting it and you want to dose up to at least 1-2 ppm of ammonia to start. However, there are many unknowns about compost so I'm still not sure I would personally recommend using it to fishless cycle a system.