Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

My plants have picked up a little so I'm going to see if a feeder fish survives in the tank once I've checked it with the test kit (still waiting for it, apparently the guy i bought it from had to go to texas to buy it and carry it into mexico before posting it to me!)

Here's a picture from yesterday afternoon:



I took the plants out of the cups because that seemed pointless. The cucumber had quite a lot of roots, which was nice!

How's the planting density? Can I fit any more in there?

I think maybe i could have put the tomatoes in the middle and had 4 climbers at the back?

It's hard to tell from scale, but I wouldn't plant any more densely, the plants will get big, the cucumbers & tomatoes will get huge and take the light from the other plants. They won't compete for water or nutrients, but light will be the factor when they get larger. See how it goes.

I'd also recommend painting the growbed, or wrapping it with something. Below the water level will break out in algae, which will sap the nutrients from your plants.

They all look quite healthy though.

if you can see wet media, it's exposed for algae... flood level should leave top looking "dry"

Yeah, that is an issue. The grow bed media was ridiculously expensive, so I can't justify buying more. I think i might cut the standpipe 1CM or so and see how it goes.

I have some thick black plastic I'm going to cover the outside of it with. I also need to build a wooden frame to lift it off the container, which is probably going to buckle at some point!

I did a pH test (a pool test, the only one i could find here) and the acidity levels came out at the bottom of the range, 6.2. I think this is quite low, I wonder how it happened? The water from the tap here is at the top end of the pool test's range, 8.4.

Did I accidentally dump enough ammonia in with the seaweed to drop the pH so low?

It's really annoying that my API kit hasn't arrived yet. Not knowing about NH/NO2/NO3 is like being blind!

(also, I saw a red wiggler poking its head above the hydroton earlier, so at least some of them are still alive in there!)

Test kit arrived, but the idiot sent a salt water test kit! Sigh.

I think the new "hydroton replacement products" have a low ph. I chucked some eggshells into a net cup and submerged them into the media. Seemed to work.

Hey guys, the test kit finally came, and with it brings some confusing results

I did the test first with the low-ph range, as my previous test seemed to give a low result :



Seems like pH 7.2, Not sure what "browny pink" means on the Ammonia scale, the Nitrite seems a bit green to match anything on the chart, and my guess would be the Nitrate is 5.0.



I redid the pH test with the high rage test, and it seems to say "lower than 7.4" too, so I think 7.2-7.4 is right.

I also tested with another test kit which seems to agree with this, and indicates there is little to no chlorine in the water (i should test our municipal water here too).

It seems that the system is cycled, but there isn't enough ammonia to generate many nitrates?

Does anyone have any opinion on these?

I've put up a few of the pictures here : http://photos.memetic.org/index.php?album=Aquaponics

Do the plants look ok? The new growth on the cucumber looks a bit yellow: (there is a higher resolution image on the URL above, but it's 7.8MB, so I won't post it here!



Thanks!

Glad your kit finally got there

It looks like the ammonia test was messed up somehow. Check to be sure you added everything in the correct sequence and all. Have you added any fish since the ones you had died or are you adding ammonia or some other Nitrogen source?

It's pretty common to run showing no ammonia, nitrite or nitrate and yet still have good growth once a system is established. It just shows that everything is being converted and the Nitrates are being used up as fast as they are created. I looked at the pictures of your plants and it looks like they might be a little lighter colored on the lower/older leaves. Take a look because I can't be sure from the pictures - If this is the case you probably aren't getting enough nutrients to the plants yet. Lack of Nitrogen would cause this yellowing but if this is not present in sufficient quantities, you're probably missing some other nutrients as well. Once you get the fish going and get them eating you should see an improvement.

Cheers

Well, it seems that I'm an idiot. I only used one bottle from the Ammonia/Nitrate test, I assumed it was extra solution because they used a lot of drops!

After redoing the tests :



Seems that I have greater than 8.0 ppm Ammonia, probably because of either whatever was in the seaweed extract, or because of blind-dosing it since then.

Nitrate seems to be between 20ppm and 40ppm, so I guess the bacteria are working!

Will the high Ammonia be a problem for them? I'll do another test tomorrow and see if anything has changed.

And thanks for the help so far

Stop feeding. Salt up.

Your ammonia is certainly higher than desirable. That happens easily with smaller systems. If you do a water change, understand that it kind of stalls the cycling process some. That ammonia is going to convert to nitrites. You will want to salt up to mitigate the effects of nitrite poisoning. Unfortunately, your cucumbers might not pull through a good salting. Lettuce is a good thing to plant, I heard that it can actually use the ammonia directly.

Don't worry, the tank is currently a fish-free zone. They all died a week ago when I stupidly put the seaweed stuff in!

I guess I'll just keep testing for a few days and see where the levels go.

I'm definitely seeing visible daily growth on the basil, cucumber and watermelon. The tomatoes seem less happy, but then, most of the tomatoes in the dirt garden seem to be giving up too, so i'm clearly not a tomato grower!

Did you get all of the dead fish out? That is a lot of ammonia. The amount that a dead fish would cause.

Yeah, the dead fish were only in for a few hours. It took me ages to find them all in the ink-black water which resulted from the seaweed dumping incident too!

Did another set of tests today. The results are... perplexing.