Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

People call Vegas Sin City, not because of the gambling, escorts, and booze, but because of it's proximity to Hell... My grandmother used to live there. My most vivid memory was going for a walk with family, the tar was melting on the street. I had a flip flop, or plugger to most of the forum members, blowout. Boy did my foot get burned. I really don't wear flip flops much...

What, is there a worm hole between Southern Nevada and Southeast Michigan? See every time I hear some one say when Hell freezes over I say it generally does every winter. Hell isn't that Far from Ann Arbor, Michigan.

However, I can definitely agree that Sin City is HOT!

Last I checked the worm hole is I75 from MI to FL lol.

Well it is hot down here too but our humidity would turn the fires of Hell into a steam room instead of the "Dry Heat" they have out in sin city.

Myself, I would never crowd a 2 barrel system...

You're funny Jake!

I personally would take the dry heat to high humidity but once it hits triple digits there is not much difference it HOT either way! I have seen 117f air temp with ridiculously high humidity here in South Dakota. We even got out a cast iron skillet and fried an egg, albeit slowly but it was cooked through. But I have also seen -35f air temp, throw a wind chill on that and spit will freeze before it hits the ground.

Well we are home now and I checked the water yesterday and today. I gotta say I am kinda confused as to where it is in the cycle process. My nitrates fluctuate, my PH is back to 8.2 (possibly from topping up?) and my ammonia is bouncing from 0.0 to 0.25 ppm but the nitrite count is still 5 ppm or better. I am going to just leave it alone and wait for the nitrites to read 0 ppm as the plants seem to be doing really well. But I am starting to question the tests as I did get a false 0.0 ppm nitrites reading on the 18th at noon, followed by a 5+ ppm that evening. I will try to post a pic of tomorrows API tests and let you guys tell me if I'm reading them correctly. Till then I got a before and after pic of the plant growth.

This is from July 8th, one day after planting. The plants where free and not doing well at all when I put them in


This is from yesterday July 23rd, sixteen days after planting. The plants look great with lots of new growth!


Here are the last few readings...

July 17th - noon
Ph 8
Ammonia 0.25 ppm
Nitrite 5 ppm
Nitrate 40+ ppm
Water temp 78


July 18th - noon
Ph 8
Ammonia .25 ppm
Nitrite 0 ppm
Nitrate 40 ppm
Water temp 80


July 18th 6pm
Ph 8.2
Ammonia .25 ppm
Nitrite 5+ ppm
Nitrate 20 ppm
Water temp 87


July 19th - noon
Ph 8
Ammonia 0.0 - 0.25 ppm
Nitrite 5 ppm
Nitrate 20-40 ppm
Water temp 79


July 23rd - noon
Ph 8.0
Ammonia 0 ppm
Nitrite 5 ppm
Nitrate 10-20 ppm


July 24 - noon
Ph 8.2
Ammonia 0.25 ppm
Nitrite 5 ppm
Nitrate 40 ppm

*I quit taking the temp as I got the hot tub running and moved the thermometer back to the hot tub. That is something I will NOT be moving back and forth! I still need to swing by the shop and pick up a cheap floating one. I would venture to guess the temp has remained consistent though.

The cheap floating ones tend to get bioslime in them, making them hard to read. Pick up one for aquariums.

Here are the results from today's API test...





This is how I read them...

July 25th - noon
Ph 8.2
Ammonia 0 - 0.25 ppm
Nitrite 5 ppm
Nitrate 20 ppm

What do you guys think?

I got the fish in. 3 bluegill and 2 bass. The water readings are holding pretty well...

July 28th - noon
Ph 7.4-7.6
Ammonia 1 ppm
Nitrite 5 ppm
Nitrate 40-80 ppm


July 28th - 3pm
Ph 7.4-7.6
Ammonia 0.5 ppm
Nitrite 5 ppm
Nitrate 40 ppm
*Added fish



July 29th - noon
Ph 7.4-7.6
Ammonia 0 ppm
Nitrite 5 ppm

Nitrate 80 ppm

I will check it again at lunch today. I have ordered some maxicrop, its not here yet but noticed some issues with a few leaves on my pumpkins. Do you think this is from an iron deficiency?

Trim off those leaves. Leave the good ones. Your nitrite could be much higher than 5. You may need to dilute the ap water with filtered water, and test until you can get a reading lower than 5, and then multiply by the ammount of dilution. Also if you have not already, salt up to help prevent nitrite poisoning. Remember that you are not cycled until your nitrites zero out.

+1

Well I went home and checked the water...

July 30th - noon
Ph 7.4-7.6
Ammonia 0 ppm
Nitrite .50 ppm - 1 to1 with filtered water
Nitrite 2 ppm straight AP water
Nitrate 40-80 ppm

looks like the nitrites are dropping. I wish I would have diluted the water earlier and gotten a feel for how high the nitrite count really got

Any thoughts on what to feed them? I planned on just grabbing some pellets from wal-mart.

I feed my bluegill koi pellets, FWIW.

Bluegill are not that picky about feed. How big are the fish? Bass and Bluegill in together? I don't know if that is really a good combination in a shared tank. Bass are predators of bluegill but I have heard that in tank culture the bluegill can actually get dangerously aggressive (perhaps due to lack of protective habitat.)

Bass may be more picky about feed. I would personally try feeding them both Aquamax 4000, however that is not something you will find at wallmart.

If the fish are tiny still, go ahead and get a jar of the Tetra Flakes that have 46% protein which will be good for small fingerlings and you can probably find it or some other similar tropical flake food in any pet/fish section of most any such store. That should keep the tiny guys going while you research what type of food you can get in an appropriate quantity for your system. (Remember fish feed goes bad quick so you never want to buy more than you can use up in less than 4-6 months unless you have a lot of space in your freezer to keep it in.)

You are best off getting feed that is meant for growing out fish in recirculating culture. If you get feed that is meant as just a supplement for a natural diet for wild pond fish, you are likely to see plant deficiencies and poor nutrition for the fish. If you get a feed meant for ornamental fish, that is designed to maintain ornamental fish and aquarium/ponds in as static but healthy a state as possible. They are formulated to keep the fish healthy but not to grow them out and definitely not to provide the nutrients needed for plants since most ornamental pond/aquarium keepers want feed that will minimize the water changes they need to do and they don't necessarily want their fish outgrowing the environment. That said, there are only a few places you can get small quantities of recirculating culture feed and you do pay a premium to have it packaged in small quantities and shipped to you. For 50lb bags of Aquamax, I call local feed stores till I find one that can get it delivered (it is a purina product but don't expect tractor supply to special order any feed.) You usually have to put in your order a week or two in advance of when you need it since most feed stores only get their purina delivery once per week. You don't really want to find a feed store that happens to have it on the shelf unless you know there are several small fish farms around and that the stuff on the shelf is never more than a week or two old.

There are a couple other brands of commercial fish feed that might be worth researching like Ziegler or Silver Cup.