Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I've placed a filter sock over the GB drain to catch grit, and also am cleaning pump filter guard each day to remove grit, its now looking much better.

I also tinkered with the GB upstand to give it a little more height, now the flood level is up about 2 inches below media cover level.

Siphon cycle is approximatey 10 minutes. So far so good!
bring on the nitrogen!

So I am about a week in and my readings in the evening consistently are:

temp - 31deg
pH - 8.5
NH3 - 10mg/l
No2 - 0
No3 - 0

This seems to be okay so far?
Can anyone give me a heads up if the pH/Nh3/temp will affect cycling too much?
Take longer with higher pH?

Wowsers, so it seems I lost about 2 weeks of posting updates.

Quick update.

We are cycling well, pH was still very high so I dosed it with HCL and also some chelated Iron to help the yellowing leaves of plants.
I have dropped the pH to 7.0 as of this morning, and I will not be touching this again hopefuly except for top up water, i may have to drop a little as it comes out of the tap at pH 8.5.

Latest Readings:

Wednesday Evening:
pH - 8.0
NH4 - 0.25 ppm (nearly gone)
No2 - 5+ ppm
No3 - 100+ ppm

Thursday Morning:
pH - 7.0
No2 - 5 ppm

Those Nitrites are not looking like going down though, is that because I need a bit more ammonia to kick it along? or once again, just patience?

Friday 9th Nov:
pH - 7.0
NH4 - 0.25 ppm
No2 - 0 ppm
No3 - 75 ppm

Plants are growing fairly well, cucumbers are going crazy, tomatoes alright, and eggplant not too bad.

The Tilapia are feeding like crazy and seem to be getting bigger within only a few weeks.
My son likes to feed them each evening.

I also found some curl grubs inside an old potplant in my garden, so I have added about 10 of them to my compost. Lets see how that goes.

That is some good growth there mate. It certainly seems that you are mostly cycled.

Is that a sunflower you have in your grow bed?

Yup, sunflower to attract a few bees for polination hopefully, then for seeds for eating

Well that's the first time i have seen one of those in AP

All of the sunflowers i have seen have been on top of a really tall plant.

Neat! How're you planning on regulating the temp in the system when it gets hot?

It will certainly be tricky to regulate the temp in Summer, when temps here are regularly over 45 deg (113F) during the day.
I may just harvest the fish before then and then become peeponics over summer months before putting fish back in.

They are are Tilapia fish I have in now, so are a bit tougher and used to a wider range of temps.

Saturday 24th November

pH - 6.5
NH4 - 0.5
No3 - 0.5
No4 - 75

So it seems my Ammonia and Nitrites have climbed up a little bit. Whoops. I assume it is me feeding the fish a bit too much.
I have had a busy couple of weeks and havent been monitoring their feeding as well as I should, i.e. cleaning out uneaten feed.

I will drop their feed ration right down down to minimum until it is sorted.
I am also adding in another 70l water topup tonight, so may help a bit.

I found my first few cucumbers fruits coming through and also first eggplants also popping up. Very exciting to see real action!

@Newbie ..... Do we have to get approval from the ministry to start an aquaponics in my backyard (dubai).?

This is fantastic. I saw the article about you in The National and decided to see if you were on this forum. *stalker*

I've been wanting to start an aquaponics system just before I moved here last year and then I felt this wasn't the right place/climate to do so. Finding a fellow expat who's managed it, I'm very motivated to give it a whirl. Your suppliers are very useful.