Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Cool thanks guys

matt

The shell grit works a treat. I put a small stocking filled ball of it under the grow bed returns and it buffers the ph nicely.
The trout are a real hoot eh

A bit of an update,
Trout are still feeding very well and water tests are still fine,
I recon that the trout have grown already. they are very feisty.
Every time I come to feed them they come to the surface and put on a show.
Ran out of nitrate test but are able to test for ammonia and nitrite. all still OK on the 300l of GB. Plan to hook up my back up battery and pump which i received this week.
Hopfully my 2nd system has cycled soon so i can transfer some trout to the other system.
I am noticing that there is a fair bit of fish waste(poo!) on the floor of the tank. considering the system set up I might have to siphon it out every now and then.
everyone likes photos.

regards
Matt

Lovely pic of the fish

So guy's
Just added about 4 kg of shell grit to my unoccupied parts of my GB,
until now I really didn't think of whether or not this could effect my fish or if I was meant to add it in small portions
Can anyone give me some advise if I've done the wrong thing??
and if so what can I do to limit the effects?
Maybe I should of read up on it first

Regards
Matt

As I just posted on another thread Mattyry... shellgrit is a self-regulating carbonate buffer process...

It kicks in and begins dissolving (for want of a better word).... when the pH gets around 6.8 .... then ceases, when the pH gets to about 7.4 ...

So you can't really have too much... and the plants (and fish) won't mind the Calcium....

Guys,
I added the shell grit and the last 3 days my PH has been stable at 6.8
the only thing that I've noticed is that it changed the water color to a brown/ green color. (The shell grit was a slight tan in color)
Fish still feeding and GB still seems to be doing good.

Anyone else had coloration issues when adding shell grit??

regards

Matt

Well I may not know as musch as most here, but from my friends using shell grit, harvested right off the beach :], in thier aquariums so i figure the colouration will just go away after a few days as all the smaller bits settle, probably in the growbeds. Either way it shouldn't be a bad thing as I saw someone point out its self buffering and too much calcium doesn't hurt fish.

cheers [:

Here's a bit of an update,

All is still going well, transferred 7 fish into my second system to keep the bacteria ticking over, also swapped 8 trout for the same number of silver perch with Bundybear. so now 35 fish in the original system and is still ticking over with out any issues in regards to the ammonia, nitrites or PH. Did have a problem with my bell syphon, I thought it was letting air in, but after I sealed it up it still didn't work. I put it down the the amount of water that is needed to activate the syphon. I think my pump began to drop off a little because of fish gunk!. Anyhow changed the pump over which had a little more flow and she has had no problems since. I actually think that I could decrease the size of my stand pipe which may fix it as well! (Since my other system is running with this pump now and is having no problems activating the syphon, just has a smaller diameter stand pipe!)
anyway fish have grown and plant growth is starting to take off.
Though I'll give a video a go. (Abdul inspired me) hopefully it works! I wanted to take a better video but unfortunately my battery ran out.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYvTs1EySAI[/youtube]
Regards
Matt

Hey heyyy matty, plants looking good

And I'm happy to see I'm also adding value to the forum the same way its added so much knowledge to me.

Just mind that you need to post only the end bit of your video address in the you tube link like so outube]AYvTs1EySAI[/youtub



Fine looking boy you have there, how old is he? and fine looking fish too

good one Matt, thanks Abdul, I couldn't get it to work.
Glad your system is coming along so well, mine seems to be taking forever!

Patience Dale patience, we're both awaiting our systems to get up and running

Here's a quick video of me feeding some trout.

Measured three random trout to get an idea of how big they were getting.
smallest one was around 200mm and the largest around 250mm. I think the ones in this video are even larger... It's the first time i've seen the silver perch that are in this tank sine i got them... Make sure you turn the volume down when you watch it as the sound track is very loud.






regards

matt,

loving the soundtrack matty fish look very nice, and big!

how are the plants doing? only saw a glimpse of some small ones poking up in the vid...

Hey mate, how are those SP going? couldn't see them in the video?
If you've read, I've had some losses in my system. are you salting your system? Maybe wise to salt to 1ppt just in case. didn't notice any problems till a few weeks after the swap so I havnt ruled out that it might be just been caused by stress either.