Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Heat wave continues on for this week as well.

- Yesterday we had a 32C peak form 1pm till 5 pm. Water temp topped on 22C.

- During the night temp was under 20C between 1am - 8am. The lowest was 15C. Water temp cooled down with a little help. Today morning it was 19C.

We are on the limit. I try to keep the heat out as much as I can so I put on the shade cloth to stop some radiation heat. The last two days I introduced about 900l of well water to the system ( ~400l as a water replacement and ~500l as water change). I only want to add more well water in case of emergency.

The system data is perfect.
ph: 7,5 (risen a bit by well water)
am: 0,5
no2: 0
no3: 50

Fingers crossed, hoping for the best.

FIngers crossed for your little fellas

Weather is cooling a bit finally. We are expecting only 25-27C today. I used the shade cloth for the last 2 days but that doesnt seem to change much, regading the watertemps.

This means that the radiant heat with or without the shade cloth makes not much difference.
Meanwhile, you can clearly see that the plants need more light if the shade cloth is on.

The system topped with 22C yesterday.

Looks like we made it!

The fish are happy and eating well.


Sorry for the bad quality of the video.

Molj asked about the SLO design and efficeincy way back, which I couldn't answer then. But now since I have fish in the main tank its time.

I tried to celan up the tank befor fish arival with by stearing up the water and helping solids to get closer to the slo. I was happy with the results, but no sweeper can do a better job than the fish.

The bottom of fishtank is now perfectly clean. All the fish waste is suked out by the SLO. As the fish move they indirectly do a perfect celaning job. No need to for any whirpools

Even the side of the tank - which had some brown algae - got cleaner. I think itmight completely clean out in some time.

A few things from the last week.


I caught a mid size fish on the weekend for the record it was 40g, the small ones should be around 20g while the fat guys are close to 60g. I also measured how much they eat on daily. Its 100-120g. These and the temperature reflects perfectly to the feeding rate data they should be eating.


I added an other portion of eggshells to the system, and I realized this time its I had less than it normally remains. This made me think. I had a strange PH swing before and after the fish have arrived. It ended with serious consequences, but I want to add it so you can learn from it.

sept. 9 -> ph 5,5 !! - I was lucky the acidic peak is because I added a handful of wood ash to the system as it is rick in potash. It could have been even wrose but I have no measures after the catfish was out (~2 weeks). = ph 5,5
sept. 10 -> ph 6,5 - Before fish arrival I topped up the system with well water (ph 8,0-8,5). = ph ^
sept. 11 -> fish day
sept. 12 -> ph 7,0 - switched to Constantly Flooded to add more well water to cool down = ph ^
sept. 16 -> ph 8,0 !! - ~1/5 Water change with well water for cooling = ph ^
sept. 18 -> ph 7,5 - ph is falling back towards 6,5, meanwhile I switched back the GBs to siphoon one by one.
sept. 19. -> ph 7,0 - system is falling back towards ph 6,5
sept. 20 -> ph 7,0 - 150l water top up from well water

Mistakes:
- I didn't calcule with the acidic ph of the potash and looking back it's incredible how much it moved the system.
- I simply ignored the ph 5,5 data, as the next day it was close to normal but that was just pure luck because of the topup.
- Water changes pulled the system to the alcaline side, and some signs of iron deficiency is wisible on plants. I felt I shouldn't do more water changes but i ignored examining ph readings again as I was busy with the temp.

Lesson to learn
No rush, stay cool-headed, think in complex before you do anything.

Do you measure the KH?

No, never did.

have you ever thought about holding some water for top ups somwere that you can addjust the ph ?

i did that for cholrine the first year i had my system up,had a drup i filled with tap water that i left in the sun for a few days then added as needed, now days i just add it straight in making sure theres lots of splashing , i figure there is so much organic life in my sump the amount of chlorine in the water would be used up pretty quickly

Cheers
pete

Pete@ Yes, I collect rain water, but since there was no rain in the last 6 weeks, the barrels are empty.

Some times I fill tham with well water and leave it like that for a few days, but normaly I top up the system straight. I never adjusted the topup water, its well water ( absolutely dinking water quality), has no clorid, it has some iron and tiny sulfury smell,but that goes away when spraying it to the system.

I know a local fisherman a few blocks away. He keeps his catch in an IBC with the well water. A simple submersible pump splashes the water for airration and he changes the half of the water every 3-4 days. The fish are fine, even sometimes his tank is realy crouded (1kg fish for every 10 liters). I had a great chat with him early this spring, when he had his IBC outside in 10cm of fresh snow. I walked in for some advices.

He said: Untill the water is moving it wont freez. No matter how cold is the weather he has fish in those tanks hand he had never had any problem.

AFAIK to obtain a stable pH you need buffering capacity, in other terms a fair KH (5 german degrees is a practical minimum)

You may try to take a sample of your tank water to a local aquariophile friend, or to an aquario shop, and have it "tested" for KH.

I just wanted to point out how i made mistakes, and how the system correcting tham.

Beware: the "nature" system sometimes corrects a chaotic biotope by wiping out some/all creatures. Reset, warmboot...

Colder weather kicked in. Not on a full scale, but at least we have cold night in the least few days.

Walking in the greenhouse every morning brings a smile on me, its working!

HSM, code blue, emergency yesterday

Here is the chain of mistakes and unexpected that almost lead to disaster.

There was a scheduled power outage yesterday form 7:30 to 12:30.

I was confident as I have an inverter and an accumulator that is able to run easily the airrator for that 5 hours.

But as we know if stg can broke it will!

- I wake up early to put in the inverter, and it turned out that the battery is low on power.
- No problem, I picked up a spare accumulator form my father.
- The spare accumulator was kind of to big for the inverter, so it burnt id down.

The result: 10 minutes to the start of the power out I was there with no backup.

Trouble never walks alone!

So after beeing solutionless for the subsequent power outage, I walked into the greenhouse - I was out for the weekend, so I havent been in the last 2 days - and I found that the water level is bellow minimum the pump is running dry. Quick check on the FT, it smellt like a swamp, and was cloudy that I could hardly see the fish.

It was 7:45 the power was still on, so I quickly started the well to fill up, and restart meanwhile made an ammonia test. The test was dark green, ammonia is close to the danger zone.

The power went out after about 10 minutes, it was just enough to add some 4-500 liters to the system, and change maybe 1/3 of the FT water.

Nothing else to do I grabbed my watering can and started to lift the water from the sump to the FT by hand.



I thought it was gona be harder, in fact I was binging more water than the SLO and the irrigation line could handle so, I was excersizing for a quater of an hour than took a pause for an other quater.



I measured the water, every hour and did some "green mainenance" as a rest - organizing the jungle of tomatoes, picking basel, marjoram, sorell, cabages and planting several new palnts.

The first two measures, where only ph and amm. Than at 8:34 I measuread No2 and No3 as well. By this time ammonia was going down and the nitrit was frightening it reached almost 2mg/l at peak.

The colors mad me work harder, and within an hour the soulc see that we are getting awayfrom the dange zone.

Finally the power came back 5 minutes to 1 pm. All fish survived, the system was back picking up really quick, so quick that late afternoon I decided to feed the fish

Bottom line: I have found out that the system canbe run by hand, without energy, and by the way its a great sport!

Wow, that's crazy. I can see you working like a madman trying to keep the system running. Good job.
Maybe a bicycle powered pump setup for a backup?