Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hello fellow Aquaponic Enthusiasts, though this is my first post and thread about aquaponics (or gardening or fishkeeping) ever, I've read lots of threads and actually have spent quite a few hours researching this interesting technology in the past 4 months.

I want to give my sincere thanks to Joel, all the guys behind BYAP and notorious posters in this forum such as (but not limited to) RupertofOZ, Ryan, Charlie, Domani, Stuart, TCLynx.

Now I want to introduce you to my single barrel system, which has been running for about 12 weeks, and eventually to my other AP projects all of them varying from small backyard system to toy-small 20lts systems. I am located in Mexico City, here we have temperate climate, good sunlight, a couple of freezes a year, rain falls usually from mid-summer to mid-autumn in terms of climate nothing extreme definitively, yet weather be crazy and we have unexpected rains and unexpected freezes and heat waves.

My single barrel system is pretty much just that a 200 lts barrel, it has a Beckett pump rated at around 1200 lts/h, has a growbed 27cm deep which has about 60 lts of red lava rock as substrate and bio-filter, with time I added 3 worms which I hope are still alive in there...



I have the system running "constant flood" right now, but the first three weeks I had it running just "constant flow" with no standpipe, and actually I am considering turning back to "no stand pipe", wonder what you guys think about that.

I have currently two 2" pearlscale goldfish and one 3" pleco. But I have had fish losses....The system receives direct sunlight easily 6 hours a day.

Ok for an introduction I think that is enough. I will be posting some questions, doubts, and a more complete history of the system cycle tonight or tomorrow. I have been consistently struggling with high pH (psychological struggle, cause actually I have done nothing about it)

Welcome ChinampaMan,

Plants are looking good. I'd just leave it running the way it is but either way would probably work with plants this size.

Cheers

High PH aside it does look good..

Thanks scotty, thanks dasboot.

Sooo... the photo you saw was actually from around three weeks ago, these days haven't been all that good for the barrel. I will try to make a timeline as brief as possible for you of what has happened since the system was built and turned on around 12 weeks ago.

Day 1

System was initially installed with spaghetti tubing. Yeah... I know now, they are just not worth it... but they helped me put the water where I needed it hence the lack of standpipe in the initial stages. Initially I bought just three pearlscale goldfish, about 1.5" in length.

Drain

Another mistake there with the galvanized mesh and drain, but I had it in my house and they just made a perfect fit so they where there for almost two months. Could fish sickness be related to these metals in the system so fast?

Second Week

Crowding the hell out of that growbed. I knew I was transplanting too many seedlings there but I wanted to have nitrate and maybe even nitrite and ammonia absorption from plants as fast as possible. I have since transplanted in soil all 3 broccoli plants. Ammonia readings dropped to zero, first step of cycle was done, nitrites rose (or is it raised?, I am confused)

Third Week

I removed the spaghetti and installed a stand pipe by just throwing a piece of pipe the height I wanted, water flows from the bottom and the top of it cause it really is just standing there in the growbed. You can see how the water in the right side is too fast and it has the surface of almost half the GB wet at all times, again I know this is not very good. The piping was improved a lot, and with it flow rates and whatnot.
But one enthusiast uncle had the brilliant idea to give me about 12 fry goldfish, two small koi and a pleco. I had no other aquarium or fish tank. And then as most of you should imagine the bumpy ride began.
Symptoms after 5 days in tank: All of them; gasping for air, black spots, black burns in fins, fish just not eating, fish has ICH, fish scratching bodies, fish being eaten by other fish AKA death.
I installed an air pump and a heater as nights were getting colder I didn't want to add any stress to the already nitrite poisoned fish. (I know, I sound like a cold blooded serial fish killer why not have partial water changes? cause I wanted my cycle completed and cause most of the time the fish were in nurseries I improvised and treated with antibiotics so the FT wasn't overcrowded anymore, also I wasn't very sure what was the main problem to tacke, was it nitrites, was it ammonia or were the fish already sick, they did bring Ich with them, and the kois had some fungal infection I absolutely did my best in killing them by doing my best in trying to take care of them; I should say before this, fish just bored me and never had I even thought about taking care of one)

Around Fifth Week

All kinds of crazy nutrient deficiency symptoms due to high pH, yet cycle was established and the plants kind of liked it. Readings have since been consistently 0 nitrites, and ammonia never going over 0.6 ppm. By this time I had made nurseries, taken out some fish, then some others that also got sick, then took them back when they were looking better (the ones that survived) at the end of this Just 4 goldfish (the three pearlscale that were there from the beginning among them) and the pleco survived. Things got a lot better, but apocalypse took its toll in the young fish survivors, other two goldfish never were the same as before, and ended up dying.

Week 8

First Swiss-chard harvests. Things were all good and fine... then came the first photo I posted which was week 9, when everything was kind of glorious, pH even started to drop a bit. But then I started changing stuff and other stuff happened by itself and now I don't know what exactly is wrong. Before it was kind of easy to determine what was going on, even with the fishslaughter & torture.

I will try to post more info on what has been happening in the last three weeks tomorrow as I don't have photos and need to dig a bit into my brain to list everything that has changed since week 9. But put shortly, fish acting weird, not eating, last death happened just last week. My guess: it had eaten something cause it was swimming sideways moments before his death.
And with plants an even more complete nutrient deficiency catalog, and even pH seems to have raised again (I did put some more lava rock, this one black, but took it off when I saw the pH rise, that was over 10 days ago, pH hasn't dropped)

Sneak View of my second system, have been building it in spare time over the last month or so. I plan on having a couple of 120lts barrels for extra filtration when and if needed. Will go into details and specs later when I have more time.

FT will eventually hold 850 to 900 lts. Also I actually have some of the same prehistoric questions everybody asks just kind of focused on my Jamaica IBC system which as you can see will start up with 6 smallish growbeds (70lts each) and should be expanded, if my calculations are correct, up to 18 growbeds the same size, or maybe towers or NFT-ish towers.

Ok, I have a list of the possible things that might be destabilizing the barrel:
- Water overheating during direct sunlight, the thermostat is set to 21°c and in the day I have seen temp go as far up as 26°C
- Tap water I use for topping the system is quite hard (you can even see white little particles with the naked eye, I use a simple aquarium conditioner to remove chlorine) last months there has been quite a lot of rain and now that rains are not so heavy I have been topping it. Rain water is quite acidic here in the city.
- As I said I put a different lava rock, I found it had quite a lot of carbonates with the vinegar test, took it off of the GB, was there for around one week.
- Though ammonia and nitrites are stable I don't have a nitrate measuring test, and I suspect water quality isn't all that good cause there is some kind of foamy bubbles forming (just a little) I have read It might have to do with high protein contents. Maybe the worms didn't like it all that much and died?.
- Fish have some kind of infection, they are behaving weird, not eating, one of them is even changing color or rather losing color turning pink. Before this they were chasing each other. Maybe plant malnutrition is caused by temperature and pH and fish are just sick and stressed (two different problems).
- I took out some big rocks I had in FT cause I suspected they were releasing carbonates, replaced them with obsidian and a white glass bowl.
- Some insect or other stuff dying in there?





So what do you think? What could possibly be going on?

Yea, sometimes those small systems are difficult to manage but other than some small effects on the leaves the plants seem to be growing quite well.

Your new system looks the goods too, I have never seen an IBC like that, very cool!

Thanks Charlie I just used the paint I had already.

Yep truth is I am not all that worried about the plants!

I DO want to see my fish healthy! I am definitively gonna do something about it, and right now my best guess is the temperature rising during day and/or contamination or infections.

For the temp problem I am thinking putting a layer of insulation. Wood or something else I might have here at home. I am thinking just putting it in the bottom part of the barrel.

As for the contamination/sickness problem I now have a quarantine small 30lts tank which I cycled with the last fish that died. And I may use some kind of mosquitoe mesh to protect alien invasion.

Any other ideas? What would you guys do?

I am honored for being able to show all you guys what you(the people in this forum and in charge of this forum) inspired me to build, but I would really appreciate someone who has the kind of expertise and knowledge as you do to give a bit of a deeper advice or observation.
Do I overthink stuff happening, am I making a storm out of a barrel with water?

Have you tried salting your system yet, maybe go for 3ppt.

Just another picture, this one was taken today.

I haven't in these past weeks, did that when things were going crazy around two months ago.
Will do! Thanks!
Would you say salting small outdoor systems should be done regularly to help the fish gill and osmotic functions?

Also I am sorry for the basil picture in one of my previous posts that made a horizontal bump in the thread, is there a way to edit older posts? I hate what I did there.

And here are my toy design. My goal is to attract people who already have aquariums to the aquaponic integration. This toy design is called chinampa. It is just a prototype in beta testing, I will not commercialize it soon or maybe ever.

I want to make it work really well not like I imagine the "self cleaning crap" from the opportunistic guys from "back to the roots" works. If a 30 lts system can give me a big tomato plant and good harvests, I will call it a success. If you can only grow herbs or plants aquariums all over the world already have I'll leave the toys to the "experts".





This is the first chinampa prototype and also my quarantine tank... still has what is left of the dead fish.

Right now it just has one small air pump and one very small water pump to make better water circulation. I want to integrate them better with the design in the future and also add a place for a heater. Also I will scale up and down the design to test its size limits.

As of the materials used, right now its glass aquarium and fiber glass "grow bed", but the "GB or pot" material could be anything from wood(like the original chinampas built 600 years ago here where I live), passing through acrylic all the way to stainless steel and the aquarium will be better off with acrylic.

Also one of the features I like most is that you can install it with or without substrate; as a constant flow-ish or as a DWC.

Hope to get opinions and questions or critics going...