Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

wow thank you - nice visual.

As for the ammonia source.... I still have some of the comets that I separated and I will have their water to add to the system when I change their water. I also have my city water supply that has an amazing amount of ammonia count (I presume from chlorimide (sp)).. so I will always have an ammonia source available. In the mean time, I have switched to bought water for my coffee and tea and to drink.
It might be a bit before I put fish into the system because I am saving funds to order the tilapia (the fish are not expensive but the shipping is) I want to make sure I am 100% good and constant with the water numbers because I don't want to lose the more expensive fish. Bad enough to lose comet feeder fish....

What I am "doing" now is planting and having a ball doing it. Things are going well so far with the plants.

Thanks again

Not sure if this is what I am wanting or not but here is the test for today (I missed a couple of days)

pH 7.2
Ammonia 0 - 0.25 It is so light green and some yellow I can't tell for sure but it is not ALL yellow
Nitrites 0
Nitrate 0 (here is the part I don't know if I want it to be 0 or not.... but it is)
Temperature 75 F

Got a lot of seedlings put in there over the past week.

I reckon you're in a position to dose with a little more ammonia (from whatever source). Well done so far. You could add some fish in lieu of an artificial ammonia source and either not feed them at all for the first day or two, or only feed a small amount once per day initially, and monitor what happens to your ammonia levels closely until your system if "fully cycled".

Interesting, I would have thought you would see some fairly high Nitrates at this stage, even if you were planted out with full grown plants.

I appologise if this has been mentioned before but make sure you give the Nitrate bottles a really good shake (for a good 30-40sec each) then once in the test tube do the same again (really good shake).

And good work by the way, I love watching threads as members go through the nitrogen cycle.

Thank you Charlie. I thought it would go up too.
I did read where it said to shake it well... I did.

Bunson...
I have about 75 gallons cycling at the moment... how much ammonia source would you suggest me adding to that amount of water? (Like a cup of water from the tap - which has a lot of ammonia) More or less? I have not added before and don't know how much makes a difference.

I am down to 3 commets at the moment so I don't think they will make a difference so I will leave them in their filtered environment and add from the tap at the moment.

On a really good note, my garden bed/ fish tank water is VERY clear... it is awesome and the plants are doing well too.

Here are some more of the plants

Test your tap water for ammonia. Let's say you have 75 gallons of FT water in which you want to have, say, 2ppm of ammonia, that is a total of 150parts. If your tap water is say 30ppm then you'll need to add about 150/30=5 gallons of water.

Or, just add a little bit, mix well, test, repeat, until your FT ammonia is the the desired level.

Math.... not my strong area but I do understand the formula you just sent.
I put in a gallon of 1.0ppm from the comets but I suspect that (according to your formula) that was not enough. I will do it tomorrow. The fish will like clean water anyway. I thought the filter (for the comet tank... separate from my "system" until I am ready) was supposed to take care of all that but it is doing a lousy job (and I used purchased filtered water that was neg on the ammonia so what is there now is fish produced) grrr.
Anyway.... I will change out about 5 gallons worth tomorrow... should be good for the fish then I will test my GB/FT water a little bit after that and see what it says. Is a 2 hour waiting time long enough to get an accurate reading? My system would have transferred the water a couple of times by then to mix it all up good (cycled through the GB).

You are very helpful Bunson and I thank you very much.

Think of this more like cooking then; if you normally 2 lbs of sugar to 75 lbs of flour, but the sugar you bought this happens to be 20 times stronger (concentrated), how much do you add? Or any similar analogy which works for you. You don't necessarily need to have 2ppm for cycling, you just need to feed your bacteria SOME ammonia.

5.10.12 water
temp 75 F
pH 7.6
Ammonia 0.25
Nitrites 0
Nitrates 5.0

If your ammonia went from 0-0.25 (09 May) to definitely 0.25 when you added the top up water this is OK, you're feeding the nitrifying bacteria the minimal amount, but you could do better...

How old is your test kit? Old chemicals often give incorrect readings; I had a big jump in readings going from using chemicals 2 years old to fresh chemicals. If your reading is outside of the tolerance of the measurement or the measurer, then you should add some more ammonia, either by adding more of your water (if your top up water is indeed 1.0ppm, then you'll need to find an additional source of ammonia to get your FT levels up higher than 1.0ppm), from another source (fish emulsion, pee etc) or add a few fish to the system.

As you haven't really got the nitrate levels I'd be expecting to see at this stage, I'd still be looking to get your ammonia up anyway to a (reliably measured) 1.5 - 2.0ppm, then watch for the nitrite increase shortly after adding the ammonia, then finally the nitrates increasing to (from my vantage, this is just a guess-timate) about 20 or so? (Followed by a boom in your plant growth!)

I did add more ammonia water from the fish today.
I put in 5 gallons of water with a 2.0 ammonia reading today and gave the fish some new "0" ammonia water (I am sure they are happy).
The other day I only added a gallon of 1.0 ammonia water so that is why it did not boost up I think.
The test kit is new (not more than 4 weeks since I bought it.. not sure how long it was on the shelf though)

You are very helpful and I want to tell you that I appreciate it. Thank you.

5.11.12 Fri
temp 75 F
pH 7.4-7.8 (high range test)
ammonia 0.25
nitrites 0 (but looks like it might change to the next up soon... little darker blue than shown on chart but not quite purple.)
nitrates 5.0 - 10 (looking closer to 10 so should change over soon as well)

Hope everybody has a good weekend.

What are these bugs? Please.
They were on my tomato plants and on the fly strip.
Are they good or bad or indifferent to the plants?
I killed these 3 that were on the roma tomato plant.
I know the pic is blurry but my phone will not get a close up
without it being blurry.