Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Someone has to! LOL

Todays plans: make 90mm pipe syphon to aid water swapping between tanks. Add some shell grit to the blue barrel to buffer ph

How the back going Mon?

same ole same ole. Waiting on BIL or FIL to stake some tommies and do the shell grit etc. Still can't do a fing thing myself

sheez get better you old fart

yeh well said GF

A great day yesterday. Got the 90mm syphon pipe over the tanks and it works a treat. Did a bit of a water top up. Put some shell grit in. And sent BIL home with 2 good heads of lettuce and the top half of a basil plant!

Good one Mon, did another test with the shellgrit - 10 grams in 10 litres wil raise the PH from 6 to 7.4 in about 2 days (which is a nice slow increase).

I'm gonna work on 1 kilo to 1,000 litres (1ppt) to keep the water buffered in the new system and keep tabs on the results.

My thinking is - it's good to have a guide to work on and prove/disprove it, rather than throw in handfuls and hope for the best

for sure less, good to have some empirical results, i'd cut back on your estimation by a factor of 4 though to start with. The catch is that once its in the grow bed it has a huge volume of water flowing over it and "reacting". different from it sitting at the bottom of a glass or bucket.

Easier to have your 1kg/KL as a reference and work upto it. IMHO.

I would easily have put about 2 kilos in!

Will go and measure ph now.

Just come back from a 2 year old bday party. Too many beers, nice pool, feel groggy now....

Didn't look much when I sprinkled it over the gravel

sorry guys it was just a suggestion. to be fair i didn't weigh the shells when i put them in, but what i'm getting at is there is more surface area of 1kg of fine grit than there is in 1kg of whole or broken shells

understood

As reference, I have 28 pounds (12.7 kg) of crushed coral and shells in 100 gallons (380 liters). My water has been maintaining a pH between 7.0 and 7.2 for a couple weeks now. Out of the tap, pH is 6.4 or less. (My test strip doesn't go lower.) Based on my results, I'm shocked your pH moves at all with the small amounts you are working with.

Janet, i've always found that a couple of handfuls large sea shells is enough to keep the ph at 7.0. You've just proven that you can't put too much in


Its fun watching the shells i put into my tropical and native tanks get thinner and thinner

Steve i was wondering if you also like watching paint dry