Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Brickies or hydrated lime will bring up your ph but be careful with it while you have fish. A handful in a 2000L system moved my ph about 0.2/0.3

Or start collecting bits of limestone from the ground around your area and add that to the tank.
The acid reacts with the limestone, neutralising it ,raising pH ,and releasing calcium in your water, raising kH

The shell grit would have a much larger surface area I think. And oyster shells a pretty tough on the shiny side.

You can get shell grit from places that sell grain. People give it to chickens.

Yep. My lovely partner picked me up 5kgs today from the local Stock Feed place.

Give it a good rinse first.
I used it as a substrate in my fish tanks once and it killed everything.

Oops. Got home and just put the shell grit in an old pair of stockings and dumped it in one of my sump tanks - about 4kgs worth.

Tested the pH - looks to be 6.4 now, ammonia - around 1 and nitrite - still 0.

Water temp got to 22 today.

Will be pulling all the large Trout out this weekend and will hopefully get another couple of weeks of growth for them. Hopefully the weather man has got the forcast right for the next week.

Just had a Quick update..

If you use Oyster shell you need break up the oyster shell to make it work more effectively..

I have about 100kgs of Oyster shell that I have to finish cleaning and then breaking up for my large pond system that I'm making..
You can not just place the shell's in the system without breaking them up..

Chicken shell grit is much better to use.. stock feed places sell it by the bag and is cheap..
Rinse it First, it has a lot of Crap in it..

It is a great Buffer, it Works best if you can get the water to flow thru it..

Juergen

After your system is around 12 months old the ph will naturally drop. Shell grit can be good as a buffer but will not necessarily bring your ph back up. I used bricky's hydrated lime to bring mind back up and added shell grit to the grow bed's to buffer. Be very careful with the lime, try bring it up slowly.

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I have an pure uncoloured bessa block sitting on its end in the sump of the ibc system. Wont know if its working till I get some fish in there next week, but the yabbies love perching in the holes.

pH is coming up slowly (hopefully slowly enough). It is now 6.4 or just below.

Ammonia is down to 0.25 and as expected nitrite is up (about 0.5). Dumped the remaining 2kgs of salt I had in my sump. Will have top pop out and get some more tomorrow.

Have Madofish coming over on the weekend to pull all the large Trout out and to show me a 'special' way to gut them. Will try and make a video of it and post a link to it on here.

Hopefully with the current weather forecast I can get another 2 weeks of growth with the small Trout I still have - probably wishful thinking I know.

G'day arbe
How did your day go today? sorry I couldn't get there

Hi RB.

Removed just over 40 trout with the aid of Madifish (Rob). He is extremely efficient at gutting them. I did get some video footage of how to do it but it needs a bit of editing before posting.

None of the Trout were record breakers but there will be a few good meals to be had.

Rob also brought over a brine solution. We soaked the first 8 pulled from the tank for a couple of hours and smoked them. I prefer smoked trout over oven baked or pan fried.

You know the rules Ray, photos or it didn't happen

Just for you Faye.

Part of today's harvest:



Madofish has the rest.

Good on ya Arbe Go to be happy with that I'd reckon.