Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I just got a reading of nitrites .25mg/L

temp 17c
pH 6.6 (shell grit 4 days ago saw 6.0,6.2,6.4,and today 6.6)
ammonia 0
nitrites .25
nitrates approx 30

Over the last 3 days or so I've reduced the feeding to about 30% of normal due to the lower temperatures, and worry about what was coming next with all the pH fluctuations (I thought I might have killed off my bacteria by going pH 6.0 or less (I can only read to 6.0))

So I'm definitely not overfeeding.

Water is clear and smells good enough to drink.

Is my pH raising too quickly? (I can control it easily)

Nah.. your pH rise is just fine...

The trace nitrites are probably just the system rebalancing itself...

I just left my system to fend for itself for 4 days and got back to everything looking better than ever.

I love it when that happens. Spider webs everywhere, and no more aphid problems.

Plants look great, almost all my seedlings have spouted, and the fish are hungry, but all looking well.

Were the spider webs developed in your racquet-looking-spiderweb-contraptiony thing?

I heard your transplanting these too

Awww! And I thought I was being original

Your's looks better than mine as well

It will be worm food when i get home tonight , will put some other vegie in its place.

Very generous of you Z, feeding multiple species from the one crop!!

Weed --> Worms --> Yabbies apparently lol.

I chucked in 4 worms for the silver perch (they werent interested) last weekend a hungry yabbie got 2 and walked away to his cave with them in its mouth lol.

My silvers are going nuts for worms at the moment.

Thought you might appreciate this

It's probably food. It looks a lot like it's related to the lettuce. All the thistles in my garden look pretty much like a lettuce gone to seed

http://www.google.com.au/search?sourcei ... t+thistles

nope

In fact they were everywhere except my spider home

even the one that was in the home the day I left had moved out

interesting test results today...

my nitrAtes were up in spite of not feeding for 4 days, and feeding around 1/3 of normal for a couple of days before that.

No idea why... perhaps some kind of ammonia inhibiting the bacteria from doing its thing phenomenon?

Who knows, but it was a bit strange to see extra nitrAtes after a week long break

nitrates go all over the place from what I have seen from seriously plotting the progress of my new system that is now fishless but did have fish for a while, and now has had pee, and charlie carp and pee and now some more charlie carp. breath
Plants are do ing great