Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi y'all again,
Thanks Joel for helping me get back on to the forum.
Well it's been a while, my computer died so couldn't communicate for quite awhile.
I have had a few ap misadventures but everything seems to be back normal.
After deciding to get more sp I had some dramas. I bought 40 fingerlings, they all died slowly, one by one. After getting them I had been trying to raise my ph levels. I tried crushing up limestone, but it didn't make any dif. I got some bricks lime and added way to much, ph went off the scale. I changed half the water to bring it back to a reasonable level. Anyway the sp kept dying. I came to the conc. That the two mature sp in the tank were harassing the others.
After loosing the whole lot and feeling pretty crap about the whole thing I fished out the two mature sp. One died from stress and the other I swapped for a couple of goldfish at my local fish shop. I couldn't bring myself to eat it.
I am now over sp and have decided to just have koi and goldfish.
They are hardy and I love my koi which I have had since I started the system just over a year ago.
So that was my little misadventure. My reason for thinking that the little sp died from stress was that the larger one which I harrased the crap out of and died showed the same red markings on body as the little ones. Mind you the massive dose of lime must not have done them any good either.
Anyway we live and learn.
Now question time. My plant growth has never really been that great. I have two gb one much larger than the other. I figure that as I have never really had a great number of fish in the system that was the reason. I have now turned off the large gb with all the water going through the little gb. When my fish get bigger and I will bring the second gb on line. I figure it's better to have one really productive gb than two not so productive. I did this switch off about a week ago and the little gb is looking great. To start with I just had a tiny trickle of water going in the big gb, I had closed off the bottom drain hole of the standpipe so the gb was still flooding. But I didn't like the idea of the water in the big gb being kind of stagnant.
What do peeps thinks of this rationale.
In regards to having edible fish I think I will build a separate system so I can stock trout and barra rotation starting each rotation with a crop of same size fish to avoid the bullying thing.
I hope you are all well. I have been prowling a bit on the forum but not been able to contact. Looks like lots of people is doing great things.
kind regards from skipd.

Hi y'all again,
Thanks Joel for helping me get back on to the forum.
Well it's been a while, my computer died so couldn't communicate for quite awhile.
I have had a few ap misadventures but everything seems to be back normal.
After deciding to get more sp I had some dramas. I bought 40 fingerlings, they all died slowly, one by one. After getting them I had been trying to raise my ph levels. I tried crushing up limestone, but it didn't make any dif. I got some bricks lime and added way to much, ph went off the scale. I changed half the water to bring it back to a reasonable level. Anyway the sp kept dying. I came to the conc. That the two mature sp in the tank were harassing the others.
After loosing the whole lot and feeling pretty crap about the whole thing I fished out the two mature sp. One died from stress and the other I swapped for a couple of goldfish at my local fish shop. I couldn't bring myself to eat it.
I am now over sp and have decided to just have koi and goldfish.
They are hardy and I love my koi which I have had since I started the system just over a year ago.
So that was my little misadventure. My reason for thinking that the little sp died from stress was that the larger one which I harrased the crap out of and died showed the same red markings on body as the little ones. Mind you the massive dose of lime must not have done them any good either.
Anyway we live and learn.
Now question time. My plant growth has never really been that great. I have two gb one much larger than the other. I figure that as I have never really had a great number of fish in the system that was the reason. I have now turned off the large gb with all the water going through the little gb. When my fish get bigger and I will bring the second gb on line. I figure it's better to have one really productive gb than two not so productive. I did this switch off about a week ago and the little gb is looking great. To start with I just had a tiny trickle of water going in the big gb, I had closed off the bottom drain hole of the standpipe so the gb was still flooding. But I didn't like the idea of the water in the big gb being kind of stagnant.
What do peeps thinks of this rationale.
In regards to having edible fish I think I will build a separate system so I can stock trout and barra rotation starting each rotation with a crop of same size fish to avoid the bullying thing.
I hope you are all well. I have been prowling a bit on the forum but not been able to contact. Looks like lots of people is doing great things.
kind regards from skipd.

Well just thinking out loud, growbed serves two purposes, 1) the growing media provides surface area for the bacteria to grow to filter the water and 2) the growing media allows plants to grow.

So on the basis of you suggesting that shutting down one growbed actually provides better growth, does not make very much sense, as the additional growbed provides more filtration.
What is your system nitrate level? If it is marginable, you don't actually need to shut down the second growbed, just don't plant anything in it. The additional growbed will help provide more filtration. You can even fully shade or blackout the growbed so it actually become just a biofilter.

If I have a low fish stock then I should not need to much filtration. That was my rationale.
Nitrate levels have been 0 as have nitrites pretty much the whole time since cycling the system.
I havnt checked water params since switching big gb off as I wanted it to run for a while first. I will check this afternoon over a Friday arvo beer.
Oh and hi Ivan. HOw goes it, I hope you and your ap and family are well.
Have a great day peeps. TFIF.

Fair enough, but personally I prefer to have more filtration handy.

Thanks for asking. All is fine on my end. Should have a good trout harvest if the heat this weekend don't kill them first.

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Instead of shutting down a grow bed you could just space the plants out more if there are not enough nutrients to keep really fully packed beds of plants happy.

or add some urea until the fishies grow up

http://backyardaquaponics.com/forum/vie ... =18&t=2534

Hi TC, that's what I had been doing but wasn't really happy with the growth. Since switching the big gb off the little gb is looking great after a week.
I tested water params this afternoon and all is good though ph was about 8. I know it's high but it will come down and I think the fish like it and my little gb is very green.
Bullwinkle, I would prefer not to add urea as I am not that good at guaging these things.
I hope the status quo lasts and I guess I will have to do some more regular testing.
My koi and goldfish certainly appear a whole lot happier since taking out the silver perch.

A few pics of system,
Gb on left is out of operation at the moment.
It's been a month or so with just the little gb and all seems fine.
Transplanted some tomatoes tat had come up in old chook area and they are going great.
Um, does anyone know how to upload photos from iPad, I have pics on iPad and am writing this from iPad?

Hi APers,
Well it has been about 3 weeks ago that I bought the other large Gb back on line. The water in Ft was starting to get murky. Well it is still murky and am wondering if this is normal. I guess my koi are getting bigger now and maybe they are making it murky. Plant growth seems to be quite nice and green and healthy.
I have sown lots of seeds into big Gb and they are sprouting up nicely.
Just wondering if I should swith to constant flood for a while to try and clear up water or just leave as is.
I hope you are all happy and healthy,
Kind regards, Skipd.

Hey Skipd, try running continuously, it is the quickest way to clear murky water Imho!

Hi Faye,
Thanks for that. I am running pump continuously now.
Just for the record, just checked and all water params are good. Ph 7, rites 0, and ammonia 0.
I trust all is well with you and the shop.

Well I ran pump continuously for about a week and it cleared water up a bit.
I went back to f&d and it went murky again but this time it's gone a bit green.
I have switched back to continuous flow but have also set timer to stop for 15min every 45 min or hour. I figured ith the constant floor a lot of the water was just traveling across top of gb and back in to ft. Will see how it goes.

if you drop a tube over the standpipe (like a bell siphon without the top), you can force the water to enter the top of the standpipe via the bottom of the bed. That should keep the water moving through more of your grow bed. Obviously you would need some holes or cutouts around the bottom of the tube to let the water flow.

Or for an even better result, you can add a proper bell siphon over the standpipe, and set the breather pipe to break the siphon only an inch lower than when it started. ie: make a normal bell with a breather pipe, then cut off most of the breather pipe.

I run my siphon like that.

It means you get the rush of water being pulled from the bottom, but basically it's constant flood, except for the top inch or two.

I do it because I have only a small system (1 blue barrel), and I'm running 80 holes of NFT tubes as well, so I wanted the extra water of constant flood to try to stabilise the temperature a bit. NFT pulls a lot of heat from the air and puts it into the water.

Hmm, sounds like tinkering to me, I LOVE IT .
My father was looking at system yesterday and reckoned that my water may be green as I don't have enough plants in. My small gb is full but large gb only has seeds germinating. I would like to get some seedlings in anyway.
I guess I should be checking water params, if rates are up then I probably just answered my own question.
Oh and by the way. Merry Christmas to all who celebrate it.