Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Do things EVER go as planned ????

Well I was going to recommend fishless cycling (adding ammonia and getting the bacteria colony established before adding fish) but too late now.
Did you get the water test kit before the fish at least?
Want to know the base line pH, ammonia, nitrite, nitrate before putting fish in and then track daily during your initial cycle up period which usually takes 6-8 weeks with fish. minimize feeding until you can test and then adjust feeding according to the water tests. You don't want the ammonia or nitrite to get so high that they will kill your fish. You might want to research salting since you will likely experience a nitrite spike which can be mitigated a little for the fish by salting to 1 ppt.

yep - as everyone else has said - you'll need to reinforce your growbeds - if they were laid alongside each other you'd only have to reinforce the end beds

neat set up though

my son and his wife live in victoria over there - and he says they get mild winters!!

a mild winter in queensland is when you dont need long pants all season!!!

Baseline PH 7.6ish
baseline ammonia 0
baseline nitrites 0
baseline nitrates 0
yes i told rents no fish till test kit hahaha and explained on feed based on ammonia/nitrite lvls
we tested before adding fish also has lots of oxygen and filled with natural pond water that already supports tons of life.

I wish they would lol these fish were either get em now or no dice if we wanted them for free soo i wanted to do fish less cycle that another member suggested on my thread but if you can get 50 free koi.. you dont turn that down.. so in the fish go
Day 2 with fish no loss all look happy and heathy ... funny how they swarm to the front of the tank when the think there getting fed haha gave em some smashed up pellets not to much and watched how much they ate as to figure out how much to feed them and no ammonia or nitrites yet

Vic is a 1 hour drive from where i live.. pretty awesome place to live to busy for me.. im a urban farm boy lol winters are fairly mild never dips below -10c maybe on some super cold nights very rare average daytime winter temp 5 - -2c As our license plates say Beautiful British Columbia.. it doesn't lie..

Go very light on with your feeding... Sometime those reading just come out of nowhere like a freight train.. There can be a bit of delay, as in you stop feeding, but ammonia levels keep going up for a few days..

thanks for the tip seems like a very valuable one.. im going to be testing 2 times a day morning and night will definitely keep feed to a minimal dad was was laughing that i check so often but.. as you said readings can spike fast so would rather be safe than sorry

Just a Question what are you going to do with the extra Koi Once they start to grow out past about 4-6" as koi are know to grow to over 24" in size and that many fish at that size is just not good for only 900lts of water..

Do you have someone to help take the extra fish or is your system going to grow to accommodate the numbers of fish you have..

Sorry I would of gone Gold fish not Koi..

Juergen

Heck could probably get some money for them as they get bigger if any of them are good looking rather than all culls.

Yes we have two large natural ponds on our property that koi would LOVE to live in if we find were going into crisis so the extra stock as they mature, will most likely go in there or we sell em off for a bit of money to re-coop some cash that we spent on setup, Dont think they are all culls they guy only picked 4 or five out of the pond that held about 100 gave us 50 and moved another 50 to a different pond, the ones he picked were white, guess their worth good money mature he gave us the rest appears to be some interesting colors we have in the tank cant wait to see what they look like as they mature also looking into breeding them in our larger pond se we can have some nice fish in it. used to have 500 trout years and years ago but over the last 15 years between herons, otters, muskrat's and mink... none of those left loll

UPDATE: Just starting into week 2 with fish finally getting some test results all tho test kit is very hard to read. The change for ammonia is from clear to opaque pink is like from 0 - 1 ppm going to buy ammonia test kit that has a lower, easier to read scale with a larger color differential to aid in accurate readings.. With the test kit i have, finally figured out to that i need to put up against something white and instead of looking at entire water Column to look at the top of the water where it makes a concave shape and reflects the color threw the water. doing this the best i could tell water tests are as follows

PH - 7.0 - 7.5 with master test kit
PH - 7.74 with ph pen that was just calibrated at hydro shop and has water temp correction (not sure wich tester i should go by seem like a large difference
Water Temp - 20.1 C
Ammonia - 1.0 - 1.5 ppm
Nitrite - .5 - 1 ppm
Nitrate - 0 - 5 ppm (trace - large scale range id put it somewhere at prolly 2ppm)

Will not feed anymore till ammonia and nitrites come back down to zero fish seem happy and healthy plants looking pretty sad have been starved for a month soo not sure which ones are going to come back to life.. going to be replanting most with fresh started seedling that are rapidly becoming plantable size as well as replace cucumbers that never looked good right from the start (we started a bunch even the ones we put outside died off have been yellow right from begging)all still alive just stunted or something.Things that seem to be doing ok Tomatoes although small still look green and are flowing already Peppers are looking so so some are starting to fruit as well and surprisingly the 20 strawberry seem to be doing the best. Recently added a teaspoon of Epsom salts and 2 teaspoons of cheated iron (7%, went to 3 different stores other stores had iron chelates but also had zinc and other minerals/metals in it. this was the only kind that was pure chelated iron from what i could tell) see if this brings back some of the green we have named a few of the larger fishso far we got
Bruno (the big fat porker)
Hector (smaller than bruno but more energetic)
Horace (The small super colorful one)
dont have names for the other 30 + fish to hard to tell them apart but we will come up with something. that's it for now will update with water test results over the next few days/weeks and will get some pics when plants are looking happier/ replaced and have some growth to be proud of.. On the upside/ all the plants we starting in the dirt in the greenhouse are freaking booming squash flowers everywhere everything seems to be loving the dirt, Hope our AP system takes off soon to match that growth.

I noticed while looking for Iron theirs a product called Green Sand which seems to be a slow release of Potassium/Iron any thoughts in introducing a bit to each grow bed to help with iron/potassium?

UPDATE: Wehoo things are comming together getting the hang of this a bit now and want to report some progress

Water Test
PH 8.0 - a little high but dont feel the need to fiddle with it as will come down after cycle hopefully
Ammonia - O Havent feed for five days to to Nitrite reading's
Nitite - .3 - .5 PPM today - over last week has been a steady .8 PPM
Nitrate - 3 - 5 PPM lower than has been over last week was 10 - 20
water temp - 20 -25C

Things i did to to ensure under 1 ppm nitrite turned 3 grow-bed's to constant flood via removing bell (pulled lettuces bed a week back and lettuce responded well and water went Crystal clear)
and topped up with ph neutral pond water to add to volume of water in tank. Also did not feed fish for a 5 days now... it was hard but i also noticed they would suck bits of bio-film off the tank walls so that made me feel a bit better. Since pulling 3 bells the water is soooo clean, i can see my crayfish running in and out of there tubes chasing each other. Nitrite are on the decline so i gave the fish a tiny sample of food cracked a freshwater muscle dropped it in the tank for the crayfish. Noticed Nitrates declining as well most likely due to all the plants in constant flood up taking much more. Think i might pull the tomato bed bell as well since other plants responding so well. Don't want to mess with the strawberry bed that one has done super well even all threw this soo its fine the way it is might have some fruit soon. Every day i pop the bells back on and siphon out all the water and then let them refill just feel a water exchange is needed once a day to flush some bacteria into the main tank to spread to the rest of system. Fish haven't showed one sign of displeasure seem happy and healthy. Bruno (biggest koi) is growing every day im surprised with the growth

I want to thank TCLynx for a lot of great info in lots of posts.. found the Constant flood thread really interesting and swayed me to see if my my system would function better for its first few months as CF then change to food drain as system matures. And thanks to everyone on Forum for so much great information couldn't have made it this far without the vast knowledge of a collective. So far cycling has been interesting and relatively un-stressful for fish looking forward to getting on with more planting with good growth.

Wanted to ask again about green sand anyone have any experience with this seems like would be interesting to introduce to a grow beds for some slow release potassium/iron.. any thoughts would be great

Wish me good luck...

One more thing.... sorted out PH Pen Vs. Master test kit results turns out master test kit PH bottle is bad or something .... bought a new PH Liquid Test And new easier to read/ lower scale Ammonia test. Compared PH Pen Results to Mater test kit to new PH test
PH Pen 7.9
Master test kit 7 - 7.5
New test - quickly capped test out at 7.5 +

Im starting to trust my freshly calibrated PH pen a little more now

UPDATE: Things are cugging along nicley now suns coming out plants are greening up... i think its safe to say were threw inital cycle/setup and moving on to the best part about AP the plants

Water test
PH 7.94 Still high but just finished cycling and fish are just getting back to reg feed
Ammonia - 0 havent seen amonia for awhile now
Nitrite - 0 In last 4 days has come down from .1 - .3 range with regular feeding of fish
nitrate - 0 - 5 PPM (trace)

Plants are greening up nicley fish are swimming happy im loving AP. Such a fun project!

Now have all 4 half barrel beds on constant flood and IBC top Flipped up is still F/d straberrys are loving it to mcuh to change it. Tomates are starting to shoot up as well as lettus. Peppers are still havin a hard time.. think im getting a bit of PH lockout but im sure they will start lookin better when the PH drops to acceptable plant lvls. All in all the has been a whirlwind of trial and error but now think we have things running smooth and both a bit more confident in what we are doing. will get some updated photos soon now that we have some growth to show. That all for today !