Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Try the local farmers market. They usually have veggie starts.

Our little town area does not have a good farmers market and the one in Fort Smith is only open one day a month. I am fairly sure they have all closed up for the season. There is no sign of activity in any of them.

Get a couple hundred more of those blue barrel beauties and start your own!

Had another HSM today. This morning I found the tank empty again. The water was down to the low water cut off and the water was about 8" deep. Another pipe seperated. I may have to give up and glue and or screw it. I just do not want to cause I change my design too much to use glue. The fish tank floated up again. I was already afraid that the bottom would split from the previous HSM's. The tank had about 8 to 10 inches of bend in the bottom from the mud filling in unevenly when it floated.

I decided to go ahead with my plan to put the Channel Cats in the big pond to reduce the load on the FT. My plants are not recovering from the last frost and my seedlings are just not getting started enough to do any good yet. So..........I decided to remove the fish and empty the tank and relevel the bottom. I will have to work fast so I do not loose my bio stuff. I saved all the water I could. I think I have 150 gallons or so.

I figured out how to catch the fish with my new catfish net. An all rubberized thing the fins would not get caught in. I put 130 Cats in the Pond. Only about 10 were short enough to lay straight in the bottom of a 5 gallon bucket. Some had to be folded by at least half of their length. I moved 80 Blue Gills and 7 small Cats to an aquarium. Only a few Blue Gills were of any size at all. I think I had 6 that might make 6". They should do better with out the Cats in the tank hogging all the food.

I did a water sample and found some good results,,,But.

I checked my Ph and it had started to come down. It had been up to 8.6 for a while.
Ph 7.6
Ammo 0.25 still
Rites 0
Rates 0 - 5 That is down a bit also.
I have not been feeding at all since the first freeze so the Ammo should not rise too fast.

I have just received my order for the plastic for the green house. Not enough time to put it up before it freezes again. Tonight of all things. When it rains it pours..........I have the wood framing on the west end finished but not on the east end. Also need the base boards screwed to the sides before the top can go on. Just do not have time to do it all by my self.

Just do what you can do. Bet you'll be surprised at how warm it gets inside the greenhouse after the plastic is on. Then the plants will keep growing inside your tropical paradise while there is snow on the ground.

Yesterday I emptied the tank and pulled the tank up and leveled the dirt. I found one more Blue Gill in there. I was lucky that the ground water level is down for the moment. I only had to deal with about 1" of water in the hole this time. I smoothed it out and put the tank back in and started to fill it with water. After I had about 6 or 8" of water I tested the PH and found it to be much lower than I thought it was before. The readings with the high range test is the bottom one so it is 7.4. The water from the FT was about 8.2 so big difference. I stopped filling the FT at about 8" and put about 75 gallons of the old tank water in and raised the Ph to about 7.8. I removed some water from the aquarium and added some new water and lowered that Ph to about 7.6. I put the water I removed in the FT to get them closer together. Then I transfered the fish and the remaining water to the FT. I added some more well water to get the FT deep enough to run the pump to circulate the tank. I left it circulating the tank all night and not filling the GB. I will go test the water in a bit and see if any fish died from the shock. Must finish my coffee first. Then feed the critters before I play in the garden.

I am being lazy this morning cause it is 49F here today. COLD to me. I don't like winter and having to wear all the clothes to try to keep warm. Seems like I feel cold most of the winters.

Of all the miserable things. The Ph is back to 8.1 so I believe that the gravel I put in must have some property that raises Ph. I only filled the GB partially yesterday because of low water but it must have been enough to let out something that raised the Ph. AAAAaaaaaarrrrrrrgggggggg. Since the Ph is high again I turned the water back on the autofill so it will slowly fill back up and will start the GB back on cycle again today.

I forgot to mention that there were no floaters today in either the FT or the Pond.

Question: If I had limestone gravel in the system before and changed it out without changing all the water would the lime have stayed in the system this long? Would it have contaminated the new gravel so that when I changed most of the water it came out of the GBs again and cause the Ph to rise again? Will it ever go away? or will I have to give it an acid bath to kill the lime? And start over again?

Question: If I start putting in a little acid every day would that remove the lime slowly?

I just don't understand all that I know about Ph and water.

Its a bugger what your PH makes. I kindof roughly following your toppic, so I might ask questions that had been aswered long ago.

Its easy to test the gravel. Just get a peace, splash it with cloridic acid or vinegar. If its bubbles its alkaline, and is guilty for your high PH.

- The limestone doesn't washing out easy, lots have PH buffers from negligible mass of egg shells...
- Acidic bath can lead to more new problems.

Have you changed media? Have you washed out everithing, before on the change?

Hey don

on the piping.... PVC has a tendency to shrink as it ages.. so I use stainless steel screws to screw all the non-pressure joints together....

I had one pipe under a GN seperate.... so now all are screwed together

JT

HI Jt Lost water several times but I hate to screw it together and especially do not want to glue. Seems I change it some every week.

Zsazsa I did have lime stone gravel in the system first. I tested the original gravel with vinegar and it fizzed so I knew it was lime. I tested the new stuff before I bought it. No bubbles for a couple of days so I was sure it was safe. It turned out to be sandstone. 3/4" and smaller crushed stones. I did change out all the gravel. I did not change the water and really clean the tank and piping. So, I wonder if the lime had leached out to the water and after I changed the gravel it contaminated the gravel again. I have now changed the water about 200% or more and still I have the high PH. Today it measures 8.3 again. I have some muriatic acid that I am going to start putting some in every day to see if it can help it go down. That stuff will kill the lime I think. Just have to be careful not to put in much cause it does change the Ph drastically. 1/8 Teaspoon can change 1000 gallons of water 0.5 Ph.

I used hidrocloric (muriatic) acid for lowering the ph and there was an other problem, with the remaining chlor. I only used a small amount but still at the end the chlor effected the plants. Read back my topic for details. http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=9276&start=89

Be carefull!

I tried a couple of times to lower the Ph but to no avail. It just came right back so I quit trying. Just going to let it be.

I have started trying to put on the plastic on the hoop house also. The wind here does not want it to stay on there. I finally put a clamp strip on top of the batten tape and staples. Worked for last nites storm.

The pond is filling nicely. Came up about 18" more from the rain last night. It is less than two feet from being full to the overflow. The water level is about double the depth since the Cats got in there. I suppose it will probably never clear up with them stirring the water.

Cranking along the progress there Don...

Nature will take care of that, its just a matter of time.