Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Lack of plants will be a big factor, you will have alot of nutrient in the tank not being used...have you done a water test lately?

Did you pour that concrete yourself? Nice slab to work with.

Yes I got my grandson to help with the screed but did that our selves. It is flat enough to hold up the beds and not hold water I hope. I planned it to be two inches higher on the end away from the FT. I think it is.

As for the water test I just did one and the results are
7.8 Ph
0 ammonia
0 rites
0 rates
1.002 maybe for salt
temp near 70oF

The little fish are not doing their job. or the water is cycled and not enough plant activity. The salt really messed things up bad. I ordered a refractometer and it has not arrived yet. I am using an Instant Ocean model now. Between 0- 004. Guess i will go get more plants.

Well, you can't go wrong with extra plants....they are alot cheaper then getting fish all the time

I got a marine depot delivery today. I got the Refractometer. I did the calibration with distilled water and did a test on the Fish Tank water. Found water to be at 1.003 so every thing is copacetic.

Earlier today I bought 9 more STRAWBERRIES. When I started getting them out of the pots I found two ripe ones. One not so sweet but the other GOOD and sweet. They should help the water some.

Tomorrow is fish day again so I am going to get some more Cats and Blue Gills. Not so many this time. 50 of each should do.

Could you provide details on how you laid the slab? I'm wanting to do something similar for my up coming system, but know nothing about pouring concrete.

Yea concrete is easy if you can get some help and not do to much at a time. What I did was decided how big the slab was to be. I went to the local concrete ready mix plant and talked to the operator. I explained what I wanted to accomplish and what size it would need to be and asked him how much concrete it would take and the price. Then we discused the strength and how deep it would need to be with out rebar in it. He said use fiber if you don't use rebar. He also told me to make it a 2x4 deep for the weight load. I went to the lumber yard and got some cheap 2x4's to make the forms with. and a little extra to make the stakes with. Stakes need to be about 3 times the depth of the 2x4 to hold the weight. If you start at the lowest corner and use a level to level the forms. In my case I have a lazer level which I used to make a 2" slope on the whole slab. that way I don't have to calculate drainage if I make my Grow Bed rack level. the drain gutters will have plenty of drain angle. When the concrete is poured from the truck you have to get it a bit more than level in the forms and bang the rocks down a bit and get a thin layer of soup on top to make the surface smooth. That is called screeding. You can do it with a 2x4 you use to smooth the surface with. Get it close and then use a see saw back and forth action to smooth the surface. If you want it polished you can rent a polisher or do it by hand if it is a small slab.
Practice on something you don't care about first to get a feel for it. It is hard to get very nice. Ask the ready mix man how long it will stay workable. When it starts to setup it is quick. Use lots of water in a sprayer to help finish if working with a finisher. If it is important to look good hire a finisher to finish it. Once it looks good enough quit messing with it. Leave it alone for three days if you can. Remove the forms. Use a hammer or something to knock off the sharp edge and if you break off too much you can use patching cement to fix any thing you don't like. Just add water to a little more then well fill the hole your going to fix and trowel it in and smooth it out. Scrape off the excess and let it dry. If it is real how out when you do this you can keep it cool by spraying water over it to keep it wet on top for a day or two. Some people cover a slab with burlap bags and keep them wet for a few days.
There is two things to think about with concrete. First It is heavy and fairly permanent and hard to break up if you don't like what you did. Second is there are two kinds of slabs one that is already cracked and one that is about to crack so don't worry about a crack too much.

Last of all GET SOME FRIENDS TO HELP. More is better. Oh my look how I rambled on. Hope this helps.

Yep, it'll crack eventually. Most hairline cracks can be kept from opening up too much by putting down concrete wire or mesh before you pour. The wire is pulled up into the concrete so it's somewhere in the middle of the slab, keeping it from separating when it does crack.
Not really necessary to use rebar unless you have tons of weight on it, or you are going to drive on it. Even then, most folks use the rebar around the edges where the weight of the equipment will push it down as they drive onto the slab.
The fiber that Don used is good stuff. It's like fiberglass fibers woven into the concrete, pretty strong.
Real easy cleanup from spills and debris. Just hose it off. Don is forward thinking in his ability to get the slab before getting a greenhouse or cover for his system.
Don, the salt was just a setback. You'll get it sorted and be further along than you imagined very soon. Good luck.
Eventually I wouldn't mind having a concrete floor for my future system. Isn't this what it's all about, sharing ideas and improving?

Yes yes sharing is what it is all about.
I forgot to mention that after you get your forms level and staked adjust the height of the top of the forms to be at the level you want and use a nail to hold the form at the height you want. Don't drive the nail all the way in so it is easy to remove when you are ready to remove the forms. Next the hard part is to fill or cut down the dirt so it gives you a nice even thickness of slab. Don't try to cheat the Ready Mix man and leave the middle low. In some cases they will charge you extra because you did not even out the hole. If you form is above the ground fill in so the concrete wont ooze out and make a mess.

After you get good at concrete work you can do features in the pour like putting drains in and making the top have a decline to the drain but that is not for the beginner.

Good luck in your concrete ideas.

CorporalChaos

Since you are in Alaska you may want to do something different. You should have a county extension agent there to help with stuff. They can get help with information on everything. He should have an office in the county building or they can tell you where he is. We use ours to get soil samples and recommendations for garden fertilizers and such. He is always going to some ones ranch to help with cattle and ranch land problems. He is also a good tree and plant info help. They also do canning and freezing help for the ladies.

If you are not sure that concrete is the thing you want. You might use the same forms for size and use a layer of sand in the bottom and put pavers or the solid cement blocks on top of it. Look at some of the threads to see what it could look like. Faye's thread is one where they used red square blocks. My ground gets too soft to do the sand and blocks without doing a deep edge concrete edging to hold back the water. My water table here is sometimes only a foot some times.

CorporalChaos
I just thought I might tell you of some other things that can be done to make the concrete pour easier. You can make a triangle shape board about 3/4" on the sides. Then nail the triangle to the top edge of the form board. When the concrete is poured it conforms to the shape you have just made. When you pull the forms off a beveled edge is already there.
When you need to have a pipe or something go thru the slab you can put in a piece of PVC pipe around the pipe to give you some clearance. Water lines need to have about an inch clearance in case the pipe needs to be changed or moved without breaking up the slab. I have seen where a man put in a 4" PVC under the slab horizontal out the edge with a 90 up and thru the slab. When the slab was done and the building was complete they put in a 1" water line in the pipe and spaced it with pipe insulation. It worked really neet. Less than a year later the pipe had to come out and be replaced. IT came out easy and the new one went in just as easy as anything. No slab repair needed.
If you need a box hole in the concrete when you build the form make sure that one side, an inside piece can be made with two pieces and put in a second piece to keep it straight. When the concrete sets it sorta shrinks and the box can be a bitch to remove. break out the split side first and then it is simple to remove.

Methinks Donone has slung some concrete in his day.

Actually would you believe that no I have not done much in concrete. The first concrete work I have done was here in Arkansas. I moved here in 2003 and built a chicken house and wanted the main part on a concrete base but was too expensive so I decided to do it my self. People here very seldom use water and mix concrete to do post holes and small concrete work. They just make a form and fill it with the bags of quickcrete, level it out with a board lightly sprinkle it on top and the next day it is hard. The ground is damp here all the time. For my 3 chicken house pads I laid my form boards flat so the slab would be only 1 1/2 inches deep. filled with quickcrete and lightly sprayed it with water and waited till the next day. Sure enough it worked. After that I installed about 2 dozen satellite antenna posts and only mixed with water on one post because the person did not believe that it would get hard. I had used 2 1/2 bags to fill the hole. when I talked to the person again they related that the other 1/2 of the bad had set on the ground next to the house on the ground and had also hardened. In New Mexico where I grew up bags of concrete can be stacked on the ground and will never harden. There the annual rainfall is around 7 inches a year.

Yesterday was fish day again. I got 50 more Channel Cats, 50 more Copper Nose Blue Gills, and another pound of Minnows. I floated them and checked the salt content of the water they came in and adjusted some toward my tank conditions by adding water from my tank about 3 times in about 30 minutes and put them in and they all but one swam off ok I think. One might have been mashed in the corner of the bag. It was doa at home. I will wait till this afternoon to do another test to give them 24 hours to effect the tank and start watching the water again. There is green alge and bio slime all over every thing that is wet all the time so should see action of the water tests.

Have a nice day everyone.................

BTW I took the forms off my new slab yesterday and smoothed off the sharp corner with a big hammer. Just sliding it back and forth on the edge to wear it off some. Easy while the concrete is not really set up yet. The longer it sets the harder it gets.

Wow, thanks for the great info on working with concrete. I'm actually back in Arizona now, so let me also thank you for reminding me to update my profile.