Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

You could but I think this early on its ok to wait and see. PH is something that is way too over thinked (Is that a word) in my opinion. A friend of mine had a system running at well over PH 8 for 2 years without an issue.

I dont think you need to make any adjustments to PH in a new system for at lease the first 6 months.... If then at all.

More often than not adjusting the PH will cause more damage as it swings from high to low and vise versa.

But I've read that low ammonia levels are more toxic at high pH, so if the pH could be lowered, you could raise the ammonia level up a bit and create more beneficial bacteria... right? With a pH of 8.4 and 65F, ammonia is toxic at 0.20 ppm. So my ammonia level of 0.25 ppm is already toxic, according to the chart. If I could bring the pH down, my fish tank would have more margin of error and I could comfortably add more fish and get the whole system cranking along.... as I understand it. What am I not understanding here, please?

One commenter suggested that I still be more patient. What am I watching for? What I being patient until?

By the way, I just set up a rudimentary water conditioning station as a trial. It has a trash barrel of house water (high pH) continuously pumping through a bucket of rocks and exiting out the bottom splashing through a sock of peat and back into the barrel. My plan is to try my hand at lowering the pH in the water, then add ammonia hydroxide for fishless cycling.

For a little laugh, racoons must have stolen the driftwood from the sump tank last night as half of it is gone. Good grief... what could they possibly want it for? Luckily I live only a few miles from the beach, so getting driftwood and seaweed is a joy.

Well aren't you the lucky one! It is illegal to remove seaweed from the beach around the Perth metropolitan area, not that the silly law stops everyone from committing the heinous crime: it would just be better to be able to do it without looking over my shoulder.
Of course we have no raccoons to deal with here but inquisitive emus and magpies often scatter my irrigation parts around in the hunt for something edible.
I am interested to hear how your trial goes, Scupper. My FT is a large, concrete one with a residually basic pH so the idea of slowly working it down towards neutral with peat, or something similar, has appeal to me.

There is already ammonia in the system which is providing nutrient to the bacteria; adding more is not going to add more bacteria as they will only consume as much as they need and increase their populations accordingly; excess ammonia will be wasted and dangerous to the fish already in the system, extreme excesses will actually kill all the bacteria and sterilise the system.

The production of ammonia raises pH slightly, but the conversion to nitrites and nitrates drops the pH significantly more than the rise, so at the end of the process, with all other factors remaining the same and ignoring the effects of alkaline media etc, the pH should be lower than when the process started.

TAN charts are a guide and give a general indication of what levels unionised ammonia will become toxic to fish, it is not a guarantee; different species of fish have different tolerance, goldfish are almost bullet-proof compared to trout and barramundi.

By adding products from the beach to the system, you could inadvertently be adding high levels of salt and other pollutants. Filtering water through peat, coir and the like will stain the water with tannins reducing the aesthetics of the system and again this may introduce unwanted pollutants if the source doesn't manufacture/process specifically for closed loop systems like AP.

At 65F (18C) it is going to take 6-8 weeks for the system to fully cycle. Be patient. The cycle can take take longer at higher pH, but it will get there in the end (so long as the pH doesn't go over pH9.2-9.4 which will completely stop the process) (depending on which literature you read).


Less is more -- the less you fiddle, the more stable and productive the system will be and the sooner your system will find its equilibrium. Read through the forum and learn from all the stories where people have rushed in too fast, made too many adjustments, fiddled too much and caused catastrophic HSMs. You have set up the system and it is starting to do its thing, so other than lightly feeding the fish and doing your regular testing (and record keeping), walk away and admire your work from a distance.

PLJ: I'll start another thread for my peat moss test and entitle it, "peat moss test".

Bunson... thanks so much for your detailed reply. My objective with this first system is to give me a palette for inspiring a deeper understanding of AP. In that context, I'd like to ask for further clarification, if you would please. My apologies if I choose the wrong word and sound argumentative or challenging. That's not at all my intent; I'm only trying to learn.

You said, "adding more is not going to add more bacteria as they will only consume as much as they need and increase their populations accordingly". That sentence seems to contradict itself.

Repeating your statement with my interpretation inserted:
1) adding more (ammonia) is NOT going to add more bacteria
2) they (bacteria) will increase their populations according (to the available ammonia)

The first statement (1) seems wrong to me, at least at the low levels in my system.
The second statement (2) seems right.

Since my system has never ever had an ammonia count over 0.25ppm, and my fish count is now reduced down to 10 feeder goldfish in 250 gallon total system (50 gallon FT, 100 gallon GB, 100 gallon sump), could it be that the system is stable and no more bacteria will populate because what's there are already consuming all the available ammonia? (The test plants in the system are still alive, but not growing at all.)

I won't try to interpret Bunson for him, but with any biological system, once you reach the upper limit of inputs required for maximum biological activity, adding additional inputs results in no additional output, and may even be detrimental.

That said, I have no idea where the upper limit is for these kind of bacteria, and I'm sure it varies wildly depending on individual environmental factors.

They may be a cautious lot on this forum, but I think that's born out of many, many, many mistakes

The system is just over 5 weeks old now and nothing has changed, so I added 10 more goldfish a couple days ago. None have died yet... yeah! The plants are starting to get their green color back so things are looking pretty good, at least for now.

The water conditioning test where I cycled household water (very high pH) round and round in a bucket of driftwood and peat moss did eventually drop to 7.0 pH. The water was quite stained, as someone here said it would be, but the pH did come down. Now, this was a lot of driftwood and peat for only about 20 gallons of water. The driftwood in my main system (200 gallons) has not dropped at all even driftwood floating over the entire surface of the sump for about 2 weeks now.

Today I set up an RO/DI system that I bought from Buckeye Field Supplies. Tap water is about 8.4 and very hard, and the RO system dropped it down to 6.0. I'm setting up a second test system now with the thought of using a combination of RO water and household water, and trying fishless cycling using Ammonia Chloride (I've not seen Charlie's Carp or Seasol around here) using this guideline:
http://theaquaponicsource.com/2012/05/1 ... revisited/

Update:
Added 10 more goldfish bringing the count back up to 20 and none have died. Then added one 3" Koi and he's still hanging on. The plants are starting to green up so it seems the system is stable and never went through an obvious nitrification with measurable changes. Bottom line, I have no idea why 10 goldfish died early on as nothing has changed in the water chemistry, at least nothing measurable.
The ammonia level has risen ever so slightly; the color change is hardly discernible but given how many times I've looked at that little vile of pale green, I can see it's now a slight shade darker.

I've been adding RO water to top off from evaporative losses. The pH has not dropped however.

Update please?

p.s I highly recommend Seachem 'Stability' for the cycle process, contains the bacteria that converts ammonia to nitrite and the other bacteria to convert nitrite to nitrate. completly safe for the fish so an accidental 'overdose' of the product into the aquarium wont harm.

How does a bottle of bacteria.... that sits on a shelf... with no oxygen, and no food... survive long enough... to be beneficial...

They're bullocks...

Nitrobacter and nitrosonomas are the bacteria that do their important work (converting ammonia into nitrites and nitrites into nitrates, respectively) in an aerobic rather than an anaerobic environment. Maybe they have the ability to lay dormant for months at a time with minimal oxygen until conditions are right for them to eat, breed and be merry.

Maybe... maybe it's just the magic water that's in the bottle...