Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Neighbours can get excitied at feed time, so can well meaning relatives. Fish will not only last 4 days but probably 4 weeks. I'd be asking the neighbour to check the fish have water and don't worry about feeding. I have heard some horror stories.

I'm with Faye on that one.
4 days with no feed is no time at all, and almost certainly safer than letting the nieghbours decide when to feed.

Thanks again people,
I feel much better now about leaving them.
Now I just need to worry about the chooks being eaten by the local foxes.
Oh the dilemas of being a backyard farmer

Fish will easy go a couple of weeks without food
making changes just before going away not a wise move

Cheers F&F,
I feel much better about leaving them now. I am not going to risk neighbor stuff ups and will wait till I get home to trial the bug zapper.
Cant wait for the road trip and lying on the beach and fishing and drinking beer and not working and sleeping in and drinking beer and sleeping in and lying on the beach and oh better go and pack the snorkeling gear and fishing and not working and not working and not working and drinking beer and getting home to my AP system and going holy crap its grown. Life is good, yes sir, life is good.

Have a great holiday bud

Well, got back from Bremmer Bay and all good. Fish and chooks still alive.
Have still got system on continuous flow so will probably leave it like that for the time being.
Will have to look at getting more GB as fish are starting to get big.
Ps Bremmer Bay is a great place for a holiday. Got a little feed of Abalone, yummy.
The diving (snokelling) is awesome, heaps of cool looking fish and sea grass and stuff. White sand like silk and water beautiful and clear. Lovely sleepy little town.

My system is now 4.5 months old. Everything is ok.
Took water readings tonight and
Ammonia 0
rites 0
rates 0
Ph 7.4
Water temp 32 deg. Hot day.

Got to looking at it and well my GB vol. is 990 lt and FT about 1700 lt.
And thinking that as I have never had an Ammonia reading that my ratios are out. As I am currently running continuous flow I can keep a better idea of system water levels.
I have just dumped my FT down to 940lt, much less than this and water level in FT will be quite close to the top of pump.
I know that I am still not at the standard 2 GB : 1 FT ratio,
but I am a lot closer now.
Will be interesting to see if ammonia comes up soon, I will test regularly to guage how long it will hopfully take.
I still have about 7 Koi, 8 commets and 34 Silver Perch.
Any thoughts would be much appreciated.
Have a great weekend, Skipd.

Dont worry about the 0 amonia established systems often run o mine runn o on all tests always the only battle i have is raising the ph
just 1/2 cup of lime once a month takes care of that

But I have NEVER recorded an Ammonia reading, is my system still cycling after 4.5 months. I read of people on here having ammonia levels with a few goldfish and their systems dont seem very old.

I'm pretty sure the fact that, a few months ago, you had a nitrite reading that is now zero means you are well and truly cycled.

Except in the first few weeks where I was adding humonia, I've never seen ammonia, but have seen a tiny amount of nitrite. The nitrites I have seen are gone within a few hours.

My cycling graph seem to indicate that a bit of ammonia makes twice as much nitrite, so perhaps sometimes you can get undetectable amounts of ammonia making detectable amounts of nitrite.

You seem to have a lot of water, perhaps it's just dilute.

I think if you were not cycled, you would have ALL the ammonia ever produced still glugging around in there.

Yes your right I have had Nitrite levels and had some not so long ago due to me overfeeding. I stopped feeding for a couple of days and level went back to zero.
I was under the impression that one needed ammonia levels to register before the system could cycle.
looks like I was wrong, again, and just wasted a whole heap of water.
Or, should I leave FT volume low so that I am closer to the " 2 : 1" ratio.
Bit cofused really

Seeing that I dumped most of my water last night then had to top up as GBs filled once hooked up again, HSM . Just got a good fall of rain into system today. Thinking that my salt levels have probably gone down a fair bit.
Question, does anyone have home job salt water testing system or can you buy them ?

Am I better to be as close to 2:1 ratio as possible. The fish seem happy enough with the reduced volume of water. As they get bigger I can always add more water if needed.
My ratio would be about 990 litre GB and about 940 litre FT. I do have plans to extend GB.