Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

"...the poor old fish don't know what hell is going on." I imagine all the wildlife tends to freak a little. We're seeing greater weather swings than usual here where it is a well known fact that one does not go for a hike without hauling a good jacket along in case you get stuck out after dark. The temperature can drop 40 or even sixty degrees in the Fall, probably because of the altitude. But these past years I feel our mean temperature may be rising, if only a degree or so. I wonder if wildlife will do a Musical Chairs (kids game) as they try and find a zone that matches their comfort level. Will they take companion species and predators with them? I don't know what the future holds, but I imagine it'll be a little different out there if we were to observe.

My poor old fish have been doing it tough both with fluctuating weather and the nitrates up through the roof, the nitrates were just climbing higher so I took the drastic step of a massive water change and a total clean of all 3 filters.

With the nitrates sitting on zero for 3 years and to suddenly see them rise overnight was a shock and with 3 or 4 water changes and adding plants not halt or slow the rise up has been a real worry.

I've been putting seedlings in on a weekly basis with a fair percentage dying off due to the high nitrates and hot weather, I've been flooding every 3/4 hours to make sure the young plants are getting enough water, I can't run all GB's on full flood all at the same time because my sump isn't big enough so I just flood 2 at a time.

The first MBBF hadn't been receiving any CO for a while and when I turned the air back on I think that distributed anaerobic rubbish through the whole system and caused the nitrate problem so I thought I'd clean it and see how bad it was.

It was definitely the problem I removed a bucket full of fish solids in the bottom of the barrel, with the K1 not turning over the fish solids stayed below the K1 and built up in the bottom of the barrel and there was quite bit of solids up in the bottom third of the K1 media.

I removed and hosed the K1 media, which probably killed off the bio filter but it had too be done, what I also noticed was a lot material from the seedling potting mix in the K1. I've always removed ALL the potting mix from any seedlings I planted in the GB's up until recently after I read somewhere, possibly here on this forum that it was better to leave some soil on the roots and give the plant a better start. So the last few plantings I've left a bit of soil on the roots, not a lot, that probably works well in systems that don't have MBBF's, but the small pieces of bark they use in the potting mix gets stuck in the grooves of the K1.

With all the water changes and some heavy rain the pH has jumped around a bit, the nitrates dropped slightly yesterday and hopefully will show signs of dropping further when I check them again this morning.

Nitrates up slightly on yesterdays reading and pH down to 6.4, after adding 72 litres of top-up water and 2 kgs of salt the salt still remains at 1.0ppt ???

With all the water changes I've had to keep adding salt and I'm trying to get it up to 1.5ppt at least if not up to 2.0ppt to avoid any nitrate poisoning.

What seemed like "a good idea at the time" was the 50mm PVC tube running across the bottom of the MBBF's have both now been removed to allow a better flow through the barrels.

Again another good idea at the time was to have the small baskets to keep the K1 media away from the outlets they have also been removed, I found that some of the K1 would bank up behind the baskets and not turn over. The reason for the baskets in the first place was because K1 was sticking in the slots on the cowl, after changing to cowls with smaller slots that is no longer a problem.

You can see by the slotted PVC Tube there was no solids issue with the second MBBF and the filter was quite clean except for the potting mix particles in the K1. The black threaded angle was the RFF outlet and that was almost blocked with solids so I replaced that with a temporary fitting that I had at the time and I can easily replace that if it causes any problems. I am definitely looking out for a couple of conical barrels to stop any solids building up.

Today we'll have another large fluctuation in temperature, the overnight temperature at Essendon Airport was 8.4c with an expected high of 29.0c so I'll be out keeping an eye on the water temperature later in the day.

Because I'm using a dual SLO system one half of my water goes through a RFF and a MBBF, the other half only goes through a MBBF and due to recent high nitrate problems yesterday I decided to convert the PVC barrel I was using as a small settling tank into another RFF so now both SLO's will flow though RFF and MBBF's.

I haven't decided on what size pipe to use for the vertical tube as yet, the other one is 150mm, I might try this one at 100mm and see if it performs any better, if not I can change it up to 150mm.

That should help improve things a little and along with Dr. Damage's advice, plus DuiDoi's heads up on Zoelite my nitrates are back on zero.


Thanks Guys

"The first MBBF hadn't been receiving any CO for a while and when I turned the air back on I think that distributed anaerobic rubbish through the whole system and caused the nitrate problem so I thought I'd clean it and see how bad it was." Damn, that's a bummer. Time certainly tests our backyard engineering skills. Lucky for us we're even better at retrofitting new solutions I better look in my MBBR I know my sock filter overflowed letting fish food into the sump tank, grr. I'm supposed to stay off my feet for a while, but it drives me crazy not participating in my AP

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Gotta get some .. sounds. Like a handy product to have

Got a feeling these last two are unfriendly, but I doubt that even from overspray on clay, that it would be over dangerous
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BuiDoi,

Dasboot put me onto it and he swears by it, I use very sparingly and diluted at 200:1.

It smells pretty toxic and kills most thing instantly plus give the plants a lift.

I use methanol for processing biodiesel. yes, it is toxic. Just thought I'd mention, the antidote for methanol poisoning is alcohol. That's right, drink whiskey it helps metabolize the methanol. The main issue working with methanol is not to vaporise it. It is very bad to get on your skin as well, flush it with lots of water. Bottom line is do not breathe it, do not get it on your skin either, ever. Gloves and mask are a must.

Brian if the antidote for methanol poisoning is alcohol I won't have any problems I've usually got enough alcohol running through my system to protect me and on your advice I will increase my protection even further


BuiDoi I use it very sparingly, one spray and it kills the bugs instantly there's no need to spray again unless another lot come back, the guys you sprayed won't give you any more problems. It's an interesting product, they say it's slightly toxic to fish and very toxic to plants if too much is applied and it does smell very toxic. The only thing I've noticed with the plants was my Celery leaves dimpled slightly, not a problem at all but they are the only plants I've seen any sort of negative reaction from even though it was only slight, all the other plants seem to benefit and all lift a bit for a day or so.

They also say that Wood Vinegar is safe to living matters in the food chain, especially, insects that help pollinate plants.

Here's some interesting information on Wood Vinegar:

http://www.agnet.org/library.php?func=v ... 0720153306
http://www.agrowingculture.org/2011/04/ ... chemicals/
http://www.afaci.org/ansoft/B01/view.as ... =&curpage=
http://www.sphinxsai.com/Vol.3No.3/Chem ... (1658-1662)JS11.pdf
http://cdn.intechopen.com/pdfs-wm/21988.pdf
http://www.sfm.state.or.us/CR2K_SubDB/M ... N_MNRP.PDF


THE DISCLAIMER:

I'm not selling Wood Vinegar, only the benefits of using it

Caution: It must be used carefully:

I have used wood vinegar for over a year now with only positive results,i use it as part of my foliar spraying as it is claimed to improve nutrient uptake of the leaves of the plants so much so the claim is you can reduce mix strength by 50%,this is a copy of mixing instructions.
The Appropriate Technology Association of Thailand recommends the following wood vinegar/water solution rates for various farm uses (ATA, p. 27-28). Note that, in some cases, no details were given regarding the specific identity of pests:
Repel nematodes – Tomatoes, 1:500 (apply to the base of plants); strawberries, 1:200 (apply to the base of plants); and black pepper vines, 1:1500 (apply in place of water).
Repel insect pests – Cabbage and Chinese cabbage, 1:1500 (apply in place of water); corn 1:300 (spray onto leaves). Control of fungal diseases – Tomato and cucumber, 1:200 (spray onto leaves).
Control of root rot – Tomato and cucumber, 1:200 (apply to the base of plants).
Reduce incidence of chili pepper flowers aborting – 1:300 (spray onto leaves).
Improve flavor of sweet fruits and stimulate development of crops. Mix solution rates of 1:500 to 1:1000. Wood vinegar prevents excessive nitrogen levels, improves plant metabolism and contributes to higher fruit sugar levels.
Stimulate compost production. A solution rate of 1:100 will help increase the biological activity of various beneficial microbes and can decrease composting times.
Combat bad odor. A wood vinegar solution of 1:50 will diminish the production of odor-causing ammonia in animal pens. Supplement for livestock feed. Mixed with livestock feed at rates of between 1:200 and 1:300, wood vinegar can adjust bacterial levels in the animal digestive tract which improve the absorption of nutrients from feed.
Enrich garden soil. Use a strong solution of 1:30 to apply to the garden soil surface at a rate of 6 liters of solution per 1m. to enrich the soil prior to planting crops. To control soil-based plant pathogens, use an even stronger rate of 1:5 to 1:10.
Repel houseflies. Dilute wood vinegar at a rate of 1:100 and apply to affected areas.
I use 1-200 for bug control,1-500 in my Foliar mixes.

Andy I tried mixing it with Magnesium and Iron and kept it at 200:1 and didn't notice a lot of difference, maybe at 200:1 it was over riding the Magnesium and Iron and possibly I would be better off diluting it to 500:1 as a foliar mix like you have done. It works a treat for pest control diluted to 200:1 and I've been very happy with that.

I put an end cap on an old media guard and hung it under 2 of the sump return pipes too be able to put stuff like shell grit, Zeolte, lime and salt in the return water, I've always had problems dissolving salt until I started hanging it under one of the return pipes.

One return pipe is from a GB running on F&D and the other is from a PVC pipe with net pots running a constant trickle.

It should work a lot better than just hanging a shell grit bag under the the return pipes, if it doesn't work any better it certainly looks better.

I under estimated how much shell grit would fit into a 90mm pipe and had to split it into 2 bags to get it fit .

Using the old media guard it's a lot easier than burying bags in the Gb and I don't lose any growing space.

I'm also very happy with the Zeolite I've been using so far and now I'm trying a coarser 2mm plus grade to try and stop any fine particles floating through the system, the sand even after washing still has particles floating aroound.

A nice tidy and well managed system
I always dump shell grit cco2 direct in grow beds with good results
I also found with the big system you needed to add lime every so often

Hi Milne, I did have shell grit sitting in each GB in small bags so if the pH swung I could just remove the bags but that space has now been taken up with bags of Zeolite and if I keep adding bags of goodies to the GB's there'll be no room for any plants

I like the idea of having everything in bags rather than just throwing it straight into the GB's, I'm using Zeolite to keep the nitrates down and if I find the plants are needing more nutrients I can start removing the bags.

In the past I had just added the lime straight into the GB and hosed it in and that hasn't been a great success it never all dissolves and leaves a sticky mess so now I'll try placing it in bags inside the old media guard.

With it getting the full force of the water from the bell siphon it should dissolve and distribute evenly through the whole system and not just sit in one spot in the GB.