Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Salt the system to 1 ppt if you haven't, this helps mitigate the effect of the Nitrites. 40 isn't bad for the Nitrates. It looks like you have pretty good breakdown of the ammonia but your Nitrite processing bacteria haven't reached high enough numbers yet. Don't add more fish, wait for the cycling to complete, you might already be looking at a fishkill, although, bluegill are pretty durable. This is kind of difficult with fish in the tank, you probably should back off the feed or not feed just to get the Nitrites down.

You don't even need 90 to get good growth. You should probably salt up. Also, 5.0 is the max the test does on nitrites. To get a true number, you need to dilute your sample water by a controlled amount then retest. For instance if tou do one test tube of ap water, and one test tube of distilled or otherwise nitrite free water, and you get around 4.0 then your real level is 8.0. If you still get 5.0, then you need to dilute further. I literally had to dilute to 1/10 ap water to be able to get anything other than 5.0 for a while. Needless to say, I was nervous.

Man I quit feeding and today my nitrites went to 0. I'm so excited.
Ph 7.6
Ammonia .25
Nitrites 0
Nitrates 10
I think I'm going to start feeding every other day. Maybe that will help

I'm so excited. We are about to put up the greenhouse around the system. I will post pics

What kind of salt should be used? My nitrites have been off the chart for nearly 2 weeks with nitrates hovering around 40ppm. I have 1 aloe vera, 1 mint, and 1 basil currently.

Looks awsome great job!

pool salt

[quote="scotty435"]Salt the system to 1 ppt if you haven't, this helps mitigate the effect of the Nitrites.

Hi guys sorry for hijacking, couple quick questions
is 1 PPT = 1 part per trillion??
And if so how does that equate to kg of salt to 1000 litres/260 Us Gal ie std tote.
Do you calculate the salt per litre of water in whole system or just FT??

1 Trillion doesn't even fit on my basic Calculator lol.
Cheers

One part per thousand. 1kg per 1000L = 1ppt.

Thanks for that, when i googled it came back as Trillion lol.
I assume we base that on total volume of water in system.
Cheers

Yes, total water.

We just got the greenhouse together. look like its not going to be tall enough. we had to build a wooden structure for it to sit on to make it taller. i didnt have any room to get around in there nor was it tall enoug for the corn to grow. We are very excited about it. the way it turned out. we went up to lowes and got all that wood for 40.00 dollars. it the wood the has something wrong with it. we have built everything you see with junk wood from lowes. that is the way to go if you are not having to be so presice. thanks we have to still put the top on and sides and a couple of doors.

more pics of the greenhouse

we just got the generator up and going for the house. It will help out for the greenhouse if we have a power failure. I dont want to see a bunch of floating fish and wilted plants.

Hello mate, very cool looking green house, very cool.
I want one...