Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I've had a plastic storage tote full of water and daphnia and mosquito larvae sitting around for the last 2 months. Initially it had some grass clippings and other bits of leafy matter tossed in to provide some decomposition for the daphnia to feed on.

I wanted to get rid of it because it had more mosquito larvae than daphnia and I also need to get my double aquarium mini system going. I decided to just dump the water from the storage tote into one of the 40 gallon aquariums... It was definitely "swamp water" at this point, at least visually. It didn't smell at all which I figured was a good sign. But it had a thick green color and a large amount of suspended solids, likely cellulose from the grass clippings.

I poured about 10 gallons of swamp water into 40 gallon aquarium that already had about 20 gallons of dechlorinated water that had been sitting for a week or so. It was still a murky green color. Lots and lots of mosquito larvae in there.

I wanted to get rid of the mosquito larvae and I had daphnia breeding in other containers so I scooped out some small juvenile guppies and dropped 'em into the swampy water. The temperature was the same but I had no idea if the rest of the parameters were similar so it was kind of an experiment. I put a pair of airstones in the tank and left it.

Well, that was about 8-10 hours ago, I checked on the tank and the guppies were happily swimming around and eating at things. I decided to take a water sample ... wow:



I'm about to go to bed. We'll see if there's any survivors tomorrow morning.

Those fish must be hardy buggers.

They're all still alive... I guess conditions are good to prevent ammonia poisoning; the water is cold (less than 60F), and the pH is somewhat low, about 6.8.