Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

OK, so i had to go back about four pages to actually see where i had left my system!

About the time of the WA meet i drained about 80% or 90% of my tank to the dirt veggie patch and the lemon tree (they both loved it) as i had UNCONTROLABLE algae. I mean you could see different "stratas" of it swirling around. ammonia, nitrite AND nitrate were all zero (i had cut RIGHT back on the feed to try and fix it. No good. a fish every other day was floating and PH was WAY high (i think i measured it at 8.8 once)

Now i did a drain becasue i had rooted around with phosphate buffers earlier on in the piece, and we all know that phosphate is to algae what spinach is to pop-eye

Plants were also not growing probably due to ph being so high.

Beauty water is crystal clear, fish are hungry, plants were running on full boost and the tommies i planted have fruit at only 30cms tall!

was fine until last week. We had some KILLER hot and bright days 41C and i can only assume that as my tank is in full sun it was this that brought it on again. Water is now green again (albeit no as bad as before) PH has swung right up again (due to algae) plants stopped growing again.

What do i do? i feel ashamed! Do people have any experiences with this sort of thing?

I've tried covering it with black plastic, but between the dog and the wind that doesn't work, i'm about to go to the B and et some shade cloth and make a square pine frame coverd with shade cloth for it.

Any thoughts on why else this could be happening? i've been feeding trout pellets. No "mucking around" with any buffers or anything. I'm sick of loosing fish! I done about 7 in the last week and a half.

Will post some pics later

I'd try with big shade for the tank Steve, with as much sideways overhang as you can manage. This is to allow for the sun movement.

The water temp would be high too? The morning and afternoon sun will be helping (not) here. The ponds and lagoons that I've seen with high algal levels also seem to have fairly high temps as well (maybe the water doesn't circulate as well).

I don't know if you'd have to do another water change, but get the temp and sun factors down. If you make a frame that has shadecloth hanging down at either end, if you can, make sure the dangles are shading in the morning and afternoon (does that make sense?)

Water temps have been fine, reached 29 on the 41C day but most of my temp gans/losses are due to water circing through the bed anyway.

Time is my enemy during the summer months (and money in the winter months ) I'll be maing up a square lay down frame to cover the tank (its buried) for now....................

Block the sun out totally using panda fabric, white side out. Increase aeration to maintain DO.

Hi steve i use sheets of gal iron over mine temp rareley goes over 20 both fish and plants growing well beds in full sun man you will have to see latest pickups

Hi,

I've found that (Jade) Perch will eat lots of green things.....duckweed, bok choi, silver beet.

I just chuck a couple of leaves of silver beet into the tank in the morning and recover the stalks at night.

Obviously, duckweed has the sort of protein content that makes it particularly useful for fish food. Our fish eat all they can get.

I'd be interested to know more about that plant, too.

GD, you lost me on that one. Which plant?

On a happier note here are some night time shots of my grow bed. They don't really do it justice. you can see a tommie hinding there.

At least somethings going right for you mate

looking good steve,

whats that grey stuff on the surface of the gravel?

Thats the gravel

Replaced most of my expoanded clay with "screening" just crushed grey gravel from B. Works a treat.

I also have NO water distribution grid, just one 19mm poly pipe feeding water into the bed. i sort of move it around avery other week when i remember. No cloggin probs and plants growing well.

Oh BF, i WILL get onto your daphnia thread just want to baby them along until i can actually take a pic of something.

For those that don't know, BF sent me some daphnia (at quite a postage cost, BF PM ME!) and i'm trying not to have those die on me

Just out of curiousity Steve, why did you replace the expanded clay with the crushed gravel??

steve i would be surprised if you could kill them. just be carefull with chemicals such as chlorine as they are sensitive. other then that their hardy little buggers.

have you seen any life yet or are they still hiding/ dead?

Its chronicaled here somewhere amongst the 24,000 posts

Basically i converted the bath tub to F&D with phone support form LKB (where is he, has any one checked on him?)

Checked the pak choi the next day to find them floating horizontal!

expanded clay good for cont.flow BAD for flood and drain. Even in the cont flow, when the plants got big they started "leaning"

So i went with somehting with a little more weight. As always i do things backwards and after ripping the grow bed down on a saturday evening the only place i could get gravel was B.

bet you paid an arm and a leg to. but what can you do 6pm on a saturday? why is it you always need supplies when the suppliers are closed?