Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

heres a run down. i purchased a second hand set up which has approx 300L usable grow bed and a 1000L fish tank.

i put water in the system and ran it for 1 weeks empty

On the 8th day i planted
8x chilli plants - 6cm tall
1x tomato plant 30cm tall
1x capsicum plant 30cm tall
8x corn plants (approx 30cm tall but as corn plants are not much to them.
2x mango trees 10cm tall ( i have a 8m tall mango tree out front and get 100's of them so i experiment with the rotten fruit and the ones birds get to before i do and see what i can grow with them)
2x floating baskets - 1x strawberry, 1x silver beet

on the 9th day i added fish - 13x silver perch 10 to 15cm long (to which none have been lost and very happy with golden ponds)

i have the time running 15min every 90min

now i was wondering the water test has not changed since i put the plants in which is a little over a week now. ph - 7.6, ammonia - .25 - nitrates - 0, mitrites - 0 (with new test kit 2 weeks old from BYAP)
should i be worried or just keep going and checking incase it does change?

i have also got an adiction of keep looking in the autosiphon to watch the water swirl around

If you have an autosiphon why are you also running a timer on your pump?

Did your system come with media? If so, was it still moist when you got it? If it was, you may not need to cycle your system, but I would keep an eye on it for a while longer just in case.

i set the system up how the bloke has it before me appart from changing the time from 60min to 90min. its a flood and drain system and comes with hydron and had been off 1 week before i got it home and it was still moist inside.

i dont understand what you mean by not needing to cycle the system? wouldnt that mean i will just have a fish pond and a garden bed and not an aquaponics system?

A new system needs to be 'cycled' so the bacteria which turn ammonia -> nitrite -> nitrate build up to levels to deal with the load of fish in the system. Your system should be cycled already as it was previously running.

+1 Arbe.
"Cycling" does not mean pumping the water around the system, but rather the process of the bacteria becoming established in a new system.
Again as Arbe says, if the media was moist, your system should have bacteria in there already and is therefore "Cycled".

If you have a siphon, why don't you just leave the pump on 24/7?
Better solids removal, better oxygenation, better (possibly) temp stability etc. etc.

I used media from an old system that sat around for a few months damp and when I used it in a new system it quickly became active again. Still was full of worms that had been doing there thing all that time.

ohhhh i understand now. Thanks everyone. The system was full of slugs and soil (more like mulch) so i cleaned it out so i think i need some bacteria because of how and how much i washed it. i will look into the 24/7 running as well the benifits sound like its the way to go

You have a lot of fruiting (read heavy feeding), plants in there so good luck. I dont think 13 small perch will supply enough to keep all of those plants looking good.

i added the bacteria and then waited and now thankfully im noticing some good changes with the system.

i left it as the flood and drain on timer. the fish look happy, the plants have new sprouts and the water test is

ph 7.0
ammonia .25 ( came up to 2.0 but dropped back)
nitrites 2.0
nitrates 10

no plants or fish have died just yet so fingers crossed we keep progressing in the right direction.

Salt your system to 1ppt... that's 1kg of sea salt per 1000L...

This will mitigate the toxic effects of nitrite on your fish...

i had saw about the salt i even went out and got some but that was as far as it went because i was unsure on the effects on the plants and also on the yabbies i wanted to put in at a later date but i will wander out the back and do it right now.

your plants won't have any problems at 1ppt.. some will start to suffer at about 3 and above, like cuke's and strawbs

the system has been up and running a little over a month now. had a small problem with ph kept dropping but that was an easy fix that was. added the salt and lost the strawberry plant

planted some additional watermellon, beans, squash and zuccini and added 5 yabbies

fish are getting bigger and plants are really taking off. the tomoato plant especially is just thriving and corn not doing to bad either.

plans are in the works to get more grow beds and get some smaller fish lined up so im ready for the rotation

I have a 10 gallon (37.8 liter) fish tank.

How many teaspoon or table spoons of salt would that take?

How or why does salt mitigate the nitrite build up?