Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Yes, thanks, I am using it and oberving its effect.
I add some fish pond water and occasionally fish poo to my duckweed tray.
It seems to have some slight positive result, but not quite the uncontriollable growth that I observe in some places. At the moment, my duckweed tray is not using circulating water from pond. Eventually, I will intend to make a duckweed tank a part of my system.

Sejin

After about one and half day of setting up my system, I now have the result of the first water test in the new system.

Nitrate level went up to 5ppm for the first time.
But Ammonia and nitrite levels also went up a bit too.
I wonder whether this is OK. Not excessively high yet, I think.

Before setting up grow bed, the pond water had been circulating through pond filter, and ammonia, nitrite and nitrate levels had always been zero.
I see some change for the first time.
But I must mention that I added quite a bit of Seasol, perhaps about 500ml (for 5000L fish pond). I am not sure what the effect of Seasol on water test is.
Pond water is somewhat dark even after one day since Seasol was added.

Actually, I have not totally stopped using my pond filter: about one third of pond water is still going to pond water.
In a couple of more days, I will make all water go to grow beds.
Because my pump was powerful, I was using filter as to reduce the water pressure on grow beds. When more and more grow beds are added, I should not worry about water pressure. I am at the same time wondering whether this single pump will be able to deliver water to so many places at fair bit of height.

Sejin

PS I remembered that I added five more biggish gold fishes (about 15cm long). More poo, I suppose. But I do not think this is what changed the water test result since there were 30 gold fishes and 30 silver perch fingerings there already.

You probably should feed any more until the nitrites and ammonia are zero.

That's quite a bit of seasol, and that's probably where your spikes came from. According to what I've read, seasol doesn't add to ammonia and nitrite levels, but Murray cycles his systems with them, so it must eith contain them, or contain something that brakes down into ammonia.

You should do a daily test to make sure your numbers are coming down, not going up.

The nitrites are a bit odd, because your grow beds shouldn't have kicked into action with nitrites yet, although I guess there is quite a bit of surface area with all the things in your pond for the bacteria to live on, so there is probably a good colony already established.

If you dont feed them any more, you can see if the system has cycled by taking daily readings. If it has, no food should see readings of zero ammonia and zero nitrite by tomorrow or the next day.

It wont hurt the fish to hungry, but if the levels increase, it may well hurt them.

This is worth a read.

http://www.americanaquariumproducts.com ... Cycle.html

and these from here...

Ratio
Ammonia
Nitrogen cycle
Nitrite

Take it with a grain of salt... some of it is OK... some of it is so-so... and some of it is just plain wrong...

And don't use any of the products "linked" within the document....

Looks like you needs to test your pH in the higher range, looks to be at the limit of the lower...?

Yep just had a look myself.... definitely do a "high range" test...

Following Lyndon's and Ruper's advice, I did the high range PH test.
And the result was a transparent water.
Since, I never did the high range test, I could not compare with the low range test.
So, I did a low range test too. But the result is again a transparent water.
This is out of range, seems like lower than PH 6.

So, I tried Nitrite and Nitrate tests. No ammonia test since there were only four test tubes.
The result for nitrite and nitrate tests were more or less same as the first test.
Then what happened since the first test today??
The only significant thing that I did was to channel all pond water to grow beds by cutting the water to filter. I do not see this being a or the cause for the change.
What is going on here??

In that case, it's not worth a read

did you redo the test?

if anything strange happens always test again.

I've never seen anything like it.

what colour are the solution before you add them to the water?

Perhaps going back to work just made you crazy

I would thoroughly clean the test tubes.... re-read the instructions, follow them to the letter... and retest both low & high range pH...

Did water test again. It seems that the clear water in my previous PH test was due to unclean test tubes.

I would say the result of the High PH test is 7.4 rather than 7.8.

PH 7.6
Ammonia 0.25
Nitrite 0.25
Nitrate 5

I will stop feeding fish for a while and see what happens to water.
An advantage of my system is that I have a powerful filter that I can use anytime in full power. One day of full use of filter will clear up ammonia.
But I wonder whether it will also take away Nitrate and nutrient.
There have been conflicting answers to this question and it will be for me to find out and report to everyone.

Sejin

How much food are you normally feeding each day? I realize you have to guess because of feeding them rice etc, but can you give some idea.

I always use the same test tubes for the tests. ie the pH one is always the pH one.