Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

The peas are growing well, and one has started to flower

Just waiting for the call saying it is time to drive to Newcastle to collect 80 trout, and also for my test result 5 mins...

tick tick tick

9am FT pH 7.32 ST 7.35
Ammonia 0
Nitrites...0.25

I bought a bag of pool salt just in case the Nitrites didnt come down... maybe now I wont be needing it.

Thanks to Rupert of Oz, I now have 80 trout swimming in the 4500l FT


On release, most went to and hung around the bottom, with just a couple near the surface, with a few swimming around mid levels at high speed. Now safely under shade cloth for the rest of the night

Good to hear they're all tucked in safely for the night Gordon....

Amazing project,

Trout going well, mostly just slowly swimming against the current within the top 30cm of water, but one or 2 are doing it down near the bottom, and a few make dashes through the water returning from the GBs every now and then. They generally don't seem too worried by me poking my head into the hole in the top to see how they are going- some will stay just below the surface only 25cm from my face.

FT pH 7.21
Ammonia ~0
Nitrites ~0

A few hours after introducting the trout to their new home I added some pool salt- I couldn't be bothered calculating, so had a resonable guess about how much water was in the system, and took into account the ~200ppm salt from the Canna clay, and added 4.8kg of salt, mostly to the sump and the rest to the FT. Now it is in equilibrium, the salinity is 980ppm, which is pleasingly close to the 1000ppm that I was aiming for

They ate about 15g of pellets for breakfast.

Same again tonight.... and that's close to 5% feed rate... (40gm)....

We have lift off! in Nitrate levels ... from the usual low 5-10ppm levels of recent weeks, this morning I have a bright red solution, somewhere around 160ppm or more is the best match. Methinks it is time to put in some more seedlings, in the spare GB space, and I'll set up the strawberry tower tomorrow.

The trout didn't eat much last night, and barely touched their food this morning, but all look to be happily swimming around about halfway down the tank. Only a few of them came up for breakfast.

FT pH 7.21
Ammonia ~0
Nitrite ~0
Nitrate ~160 +?
Temp 13.1C this morning, and over the past week to yesterday:

[attachment=0]

Barometric pressure is dropping Gordon... Tasman low going to form off the coast over night/tomorrow morning...

They'll probably be back on the bite as soon as it starts raining...

A fairly wet and overcast week with lots of rain has seen the water temperature slowly decline.

pH has been stable at 7.2 with a slight drop this morning, Ammonia and Nitrite are still at zero as of yesterday, as they have been since the fish were introduced, and Nitrate was ~160ppm the past few times I have checked. I'll probably only check AN&N every 2nd or 3rd day from now on.

Plant growth was good before, but has really taken off since the fish went in, photos taken a day apart show quite a difference.
The fish aren't eating all that much, only consuming most of ~20g each day.

I just wanted to say that you posting your thorough testing results helps people like myself..so thank you so much!!

Do you feel that the Ca you added to your ST was the key to stabilizing your ph, or possibly that the shell grit has finally started earning its keep?

BTW, for those of us who aren't familiar, what is Ca(OH)2?

Thanks Luckydux

Ca(OH)2 is Calcium Hydroxide = Hydrated Lime.

There were quite a few bits of the above on the bottom of the sump that didn't dissolve straight away, but I think they are all just about gone now, although it isn't as easy to see with the brown algae in there now, and I think that that slowly dissolving has mostly neutralised the nitrification reaction products. No doubt the shell grit has done a bit, but I suspect not a whole lot based on the earlier addition of it, with no noticable effect.

pH was down about 0.05 this morning, after being rock steady at very close to 7.2 the past 5 days, which may be an indication that the Ca(OH)2 has just about all dissolved now. I'll see how it looks in the morning and may add a little KOH (Potassium Hydroxide) in the morning if it is below pH 7.0.

There is quite a range of colour in the trout



Inside the gills

I've posted a short MP4 movie of a few of the trout this morning here:

http://www.gunagulla.com/organic/images ... 130616.mp4

Good to see those little fellas swimming happily around Gordon...

I've lost my first trout I had the lid off the tank on Sunday to add a hinged opening section, and I did hear one jump out then, and quickly put it back into the water and it was fine, but this morning I found one dead on the ground. I'm pretty sure it wasn't there yesterday, so the only way it could have ended up where I found it was by jumping through a 2cm gap between the lid and top of the FT. It must have had damn good aim...

The water was down to 8C this morning, and I'd guess it is still under 9C on this cold (10C ATM) mostly overcast day, and they haven't been eating much in recent days. This morning I only chucked in 2g of food, to save having so much ending up in the sump, but they didnt even eat all that and I scooped out probably half of it an hour or so later.

pH is on the rise a bit too, 7.29 yesterday and 7.34 today, perhaps the bacteria are slowing down their activity due to the temperature, or perhaps it is due to the higher solubility of Ca(OH)2 in colder water, as there is still a small amount on the sump floor.

Ammonia 0
Nitrites 0
Nitrates ~160+

This morning I planted out the rest of Bed 4 with celery,beetrrot,spring onions ad brocoletti to use up some Nitrates.

I've noticed a small number of them have a thin white section on the top of their dorsal fin, but they seem to be behaving normally. You can see one in the 'slowly swimming into the current' pic above- the dark one near the surface, just left and above centre.