Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Thank you very much, didnt know that.

Going back to the title of this thread, as far as preppers/prepping AP probably isn't the way to go unless you have a lot of money for a cache of replacement parts. Pumps, solar panels, charge controllers, PVC stored out of the sun, primer/glue (however long it will last on the shelf), etc.

Of course you could go low tech and have backup hand pumps and enough people to go pump the water manually for 15 minutes every hour :-)

My average water temp has been 48 F recently and I'm getting plenty of lettuce, other greens, and radishes along with seedlings that are growing slowly but steadily. Besides the cold, there probably isn't much nitrate around, since the fish aren't eating much.

I also have temps in the lower 40s at night with plants cruising along at the pace that they will
I'm eating as much mustards, parsley, cilantro as I want daily

Thanks for all the responses. It's good to know that the temp issue pertains mostly to cycling. Now that heat is not a concern the only prepper concern would would be a pump. That can be managed. Lots of guys use 12 volt pumps. My current pump is only 75 watt pump. Or could go to air foil pump setup.

Have you looked into a rocket stove? You ought to be able to warm your water pretty efficiently with one of those. I know y'all have trees in Alabama. The great thing about rocket stoves is that they can use tree trimmings and long limbs rather than needing to cut down trees to feed them.

You've still got to feed them into the rocket stove all night though...

Cooking oil burner would be the best way to go when it comes to heating, me thinks anyway.

Do you have a link to some documentation on this? Not saying it's untrue, but with most fishless cycling routines people continue to maintain 4-5ppm ammonia throughout the entire cycling process regardless of nitrite levels. This method seems to suit them so it has a good working reputation.

Another thing that no one has mentioned is the plants ability to uptake NH4 directly, so plants aren't just sitting around going Nitrogen deficient because there isn't any No3 in the system yet.

As far as I am aware, and I could be corrected on this, there are a few plants that can use NH4 directly, most can't.

I've got links somewhere... I'll try and find them...

But search for papers by Hovanec et al... with relation to Nitrospira...


It's just not possible.... and illogical.. to say that you can hold the ammonia level at 4-5... through out the "cycling process"....

The cycling process isn't complete... until all the ammonia has been converted to nitrites... and the nitrites converted to nitrates....

And, as above the nitrite to nitrate conversion doesn't begin until the ammonia is near zero... indeed the nitrite rise/spike... is inversely dependant on falling ammonia...as it's converted...

There's a lot of confusing nonsense, particularly on many of the aquaria sites... regarding cycling in general.. and fishless cycling in particular...

When you have a look at most of the graphed charts of the cycling process... they exhibit essentially the same curve patterns in relation to the three components....



You're correct... that young seedling... before leaf development... primarily uptake ammonium NH3+...

But once leaf development and photosynthesis begins... growth is primarily by nitrate uptake/transport...

There are some plants... duckweed is the most commonly known.. that grow based on ammonium through out their growth life span...

I thought that was because the graph data is produced by adding a fixed amount of ammonia in one event, rather than adding the ammonia continually as in a fishless cycling scenario. The graph for adding ammonia continually over a period would probably look similar but the curves would be harder to add up to the original amount (the area under the curves) - one shot of ammonia makes a clearer story?

Not sure what you mean Dave....

If you're cycling with fish... the fish are continually adding ammonia... but not usually to the levels that people add to when fishless cycling....

But even when fishless cycling.. done properly... there's no reason, or benefit.. to pushing the ammonia beyond 4ppm...

And once at that level... no sense in adding anymore.. until the initial ammonia has been processed...

Continually adding ammonia.. just inhibits the nitrification of the nitrites... prolonging the nitrite spike....

You see people reporting that their nitrites haven't moved.. for anything up to a month... either becaue they've overdosed the ammonia... added more... or are under oxygenated... or all of the above...

The bottom line is... regardless... look at any graph... and the nitrites will rise almost inversely... to the fall in the ammonia.... and the nitrates wont really begin to rise until ammonia is zero.. and nitrites peaking.. and beginning to fall... when the nitrates then rise exponentially...

This isn't the best graph or link (couldn't find a great one) but these lines would not overlap if nitrobacter didn't do anything until all the ammonia was converted to nitrite. The orange line goes up before the red line goes to zero. If ammonia suppressed the nitrite to nitrate step a lot then the orange line would wait until the red line was zero.

Maybe the idea is that "large" ammonia levels inhibit the nitrite->nitrate conversion, but "regular" ones are fine?

Nitrite to nitrate is the green line not the orange line. That is why it stays so low until the red line is basically zero.