Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hello,

My name is Ash. I've been keen on the idea of AP for a while now and finally taken the plunge, albeit in a relatively safe way, with a BYAP system.

I have the standard BYAP two grow beds and 1000L system, to which I added plants 3.5 weeks ago and fish (32 SP fingerlings) 2.5 weeks ago. I've had about 0.5ppm of ammonia ever since I added the fish, a few days ago I started reading nitrites and today they are at around 2ppm (it's a bit hard to tell, it could be as high as 5ppm). I have shell grit in the system and the ph has stayed at 8.2 the entire time. There is about 1.5 ppt salt in the water and the water temps range from about 17 - 26 C during the day/night. I've not seen any dead fish so far.

Does that all sound ok, or do I need to take some action regarding the nitrites?

Thanks, appreciate any advice you might have.

Ash

Welcome ash. Sounds like your system is cycling well. Your nitrites are quite toxic at that high PH so it may pay to treat that. Firstly, remove the shell grit as your PH is already high. Treat any top up water with HCL (muriatic) acid and slowly bring your PH down.

Good luck.

Sounds good Ash, I have the same system as you and it has been going strong for almost 4 yrs, the BYAP systems are a good bit of kit.

Welcome to our world..........

Hi Ash,

Please don't feed your fish any more for a while with a high pH like that... other than that, patience....

I wouldn't think the shell grit is doing anything at that pH.

Once the notification process kicks off and the pH starts to come down all the shell grit will do is stop it from going below 7.6ish.

Ash, as EB says patience is needed right now.

Thanks for the welcome Bigwill, and Charlie, EB and ArBe for the advice. I'll do my best to be patient, and make some gentle adjustments as has been suggested.

Cheers,
Ash

Autocorrect is a bitch ain't it?

+1 on not worrying about shell grit. It will only raise it so far and you are well higher than that point.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk 2

Three and half weeks of nitrite readings off the scale came to an end yesterday, thankfully. Still recording very little nitrates, so I'm guessing the plants are taking it up straight away.

Sadly, on the day the nitrites dropped, I got my first fish fatality, one of the smallest of the SP fingerlings.

The PH still sits above 8, it stubbornly resisted my gentle attempts to nudge it lower.