Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

It's been 48 hours, and I've only been feeding at about 20%. Still have high Nitrites, and zero ammonia. I'll keep doing what I'm doing, but thought the nitrites should be dropping by now.
I've added about about 13 cu ft to my mbbr filter, and am only feeding 1-1.25 lbs per day. I have enough media to up my feed to almost 20 lbs per day, but my highest daily rate right now is still under 5 lbs in the whole system. appx 6500 gallons RAS.

I was wondering of the lack of ammonia is slowing down their growth? Ph is fairly high at about 7.9. ater temp is a bit cooler with all the rain/clouds we've had. Down to about 82F.

I think it's a fairly slow process with new K1 media and may take a couple of weeks. The bacteria replicate fairly slowly, the media starts out a bit too buoyant and is apparently a bit hard initially for the bacteria to attach to.

At your temp and pH Id say about 3-4 weeks to establish a good expansion of the colony.

New biomedia takes a few weeks, as scotty said, to develop a biofilm. After my rather abrupt comments on your main build thread I was going to start a new thread but I would probably be accused of guessing.

Just as a matter of interest why do people appear to leave their biofilters exposed to light (unless this is just for the pics)?

Sheesh Sleepe who kicked your ...., Hey Chris, do me a favor and run a sander over some of that media otherwise I'll be off

I don't know Sleepe but landscape fabric over a barrel with a bungee cord under a canopy doesn't photograph well .

"Sheesh Sleepe who kicked your ...."

Well now that Charlie has a new daughter it seems a little unfair to discuss tax returns atm and Stuart has a new business venture and I am being nice to him you just seemed like a logical choice (that's a guess of course).

In OZ that's an occy strap; unless you are into jumping off high places and trusting your life to what amounts to a big laccy band.

Thanks guys. I spoke with Ryan, and he said a up to 6 weeks for new, and a few for new media. Also suggested turning air in mbbr off for a few days, which I have done.

Will monitor and hope my fish don't starve. The biggest, most aggressive hog all the feed, especially when I'm feeding at 1/5 of normal rates. When I did this before, I had a few of the little, smaller guys die on me. I know it's "the strong survive", but don't want to lose any fish.

Sleepe, I have it covered, pretty sure you can see the cover in a few pics. I just remove the cover to photograph.

Oh boy:

Be here in a week... Can I cycle using K2 without fish?

Mine took 4 weeks at 20 degs C even with a potassium permanganate rinse first, and I still can't get nitrites down to zero after 10 weeks.

Yes, cycled mine with pee

A bit of good news. After turning air almost off last night, this am, I have about a .25 drop in PH coming from mbbr. Nitrites were a little lower. When the old home made bioball were at their peak, I had almost .5 difference, but at least it is dropping. Yesterday, there was no difference.

I am still wondering if I should dose some ammonia in mbbr or netting filter, since I have zero in system?
Would that help speed things along? With the high PH, I would have to be very careful with all the fish.

@boss,
Yeah just use ammonia from drugstore-make sure it doesn't have surfactants in it(shake it and if you see soap like bubbles then don't buy it. I can post a formula you can you on how much you should add but basically need to add enough to keep it around 2-3 ppm. Once the nitrites show up then half the ammonia you are adding.

@chris,
It took me almost a month for bacteria to grow on my brand new media. Too slippery a surface I guess for the bacteria to hang on...at least once it's establish it cycles much quicker.

I purchased my K1 Bio Media second-hand and used Hydrogen Peroxide to sterilise it in a plastic rubbish bin with an air stone running for 24 hours or so.

Dr. Damage told me that Hydrogen Peroxide is a very effective sterilising agent and as it dissipates the only thing it leaves behind is soluble oxygen in the water.

The bacteria colonised very quickly in my case because it was second-hand media but I also think even with new K1, Hydrogen Peroxide would take some of the glaze off the surface of the media and speed up the colonising time

Thanks JoeBlow. It seems to be working..slowly. I don't know how much it would be for 200 gallons of hydrogen peroxide, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want to afford it.

Coach you don't need to use a lot of Hydrogen Peroxide, a large bottle would be enough, when I did mine, I made up 2 lots in 2 separate containers and used 1/2 a small bottle in each.

Here they say 1 part Hydrogen Peroxide to 150 parts water and if your K1 media takes up most of the area in whatever container you're soaking it in there will be very little water needed to cover the K1 media and you won't need a lot of Hydrogen Peroxide.
http://fish-etc.com/knowledge/tank-maintenance-tips