Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

i just fill with normal tap water, never had a problem. thats with trout and koi and goldfish

Gene_243 and Gunnyart,
Hope to meet ya both in the near future just starting a 6 IBC tank set up for the very first time. Well starting with 1 IBC maybe 2 but have 4 others ready and waiting to go.
Would like to check out how you both are doing things. I was thinking about doing tomatoes and Cucumbers and then last gb would be a floating lettuce bed and put some Taiwanese shrimp in the last bed under the lettuce.

Anyone messed with these huge prawns before here? They get big like 2 to a pound.

Thank you all!!

Just avoid any large water changes with tap water. (don't leave the hose running and forget, get a hose timer or a float valve) But if the system is cycled up, small top ups with tap water are usually not an issue for the fish or bio-filter as long as your tap water isn't on the extreme side as far as water treatment chemicals go.

I have 6 small FT, and I experimented by putting Aqua One bio starter in two of mine before I put my fish in, I have not had ammonia or nitrite spikes at all. I put trout in about 2 weeks ago and nitrates have hit 20 this week. My other four FT are all going through their spikes now.

Do you have fish in the other 4 tanks??

And/or... are you ammonia dosing the other 4 tanks?

Yes I have trout in the other 4 tanks, in one of those tanks I have 0.5 ammonia and 8.0 nitrates, and 0 nitrates, last night I added some bacteria, so hopefully I will have some results in a few days.

The water is coming from a 4 acre pond we have at the back of our property for the first fill up. I was hoping to eliminate most of the start up period by using it as there's already blue gill, cats and bass in it. Only problem I could see would be water born disease from the lake. But I figured fill up a tote drop some tilapia in and and wait and see how they react before dropping 600 to 700 fish into them.

I would think they would be ok as the fish in the lake are healthy and the tilapia are only coming 50 miles or so away so there isn't a regional temp difference or anything air born that should really be any different

I would use the pond but I have no way of keeping anything that large warm in the winter.

For topping off the tank (I have 10 275gal ibc's) I'm starting with one and want to make sure I can keep it running before doing ANYTHING with the other 9. I was going to use a tote to catch the rain water off the roof and run the water from it through some ceramic filters that I have that pretty much remove anything that isn't water. They are basically just larger filters than what Berkeley uses in there's for drinking water.

I've had small fresh water aquariums most of my life (40 gal) I'm hoping the learning curve isn't going to be like a cliff between the two LOL.

Between using the fresh pond water and using the Aqua One bio starter what is the opinion of experienced poeple here at to what would be best or does it matter?

Thank you all!!!!

Brian

I do have a few questions but I'll go look and see where I should post them before doing so.

For the most part most people seem to find that using bottled bacteria is kinda like taking medication for a cold.
If you don't take the medication it takes a week to a week and a half to get over it. If you do take medication it takes about 7-10 days to get over the cold. I guess the only question is how taking the medication makes you feel.

So with bottled bacteria, if you use it, complete cycle up usually takes about half a dozen weeks. If you don't use it cycle up averages about 6 weeks. Does spending money on a bottle of stuff to pour into the tank make you feel better? Like you are doing something pro-active to help?
In general the bacteria are all over and unless you are keeping your system in an uber sterile environment, the bacteria will get there naturally. Many people do small things to help inoculate there systems at start up but it still takes time for the bacteria to really colonize and get settled in so no matter what you do, during the fist several months of a system you need to keep a closer eye on water tests and feed the fish appropriately for the bio-filtration.

The trick is just to remember your Fresh water aquarium leaning curve. I've known people who know tons about keeping fish but then they set up a new aquaponics system and totally forget rule number one and overstock and over feed a brand spanking new system and kill a bunch of fish with new tank syndrome. Start slow and let the bio-filter grow.

So what is faster 6 weeks or half a dozen weeks?

I see where you are coming from TCLynx, I will see how it stacks up against the FT I do naturally.

Good news. Whatever was killing my fish has stopped. I've not had a dead fish in 5 days. Still don't know what happened or what has changed. I haven't added any water in that time so it could be the runoff roof water was the culprit.

Thanks for the help all.

Y'all can move on to getting M135Xdriver sorted out.