Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

If your pH is still in the high 7's Id go for a small water change Chiggy. Should drop off over the next few days. Any nitrate reading?

Not checked nitrates today, just nitrites showing 0ppm


I've got about 600L in the tank currently - drop 200 from it and fill?

All starting to happen now...

Ammonia sitting at about 2ppm, PH 8, nitrites just kicked off (actually, last time i suspect was a test error, so i double checked this time!) at 0.25ppm...

Tank has been salted to 0.8ppt, with a 1/3 water change about a week ago, when ammonia was getting a bit high (4ppm).

Fish are still quite happily swimming around... have given them a few (small) pinches of food spread out over the last few days, which they vacuumed up pretty quick...

Have been planting a few more things in the growbed as i've been going... Now have about 4 tomatoes, some ginger (an experiment), the original lettuce and chives are still kicking along, as strong as ever, and just planted in some cucumber seeds, see if they'll germinate as-is.

Well, ammonia down to 1ppm, PH has now dropped from ~8 down to 7.2... I'm thinking because nitrites have gone crazy, sitting at 5ppm+

Thinking a 1/3 water change may be the order of the day.

Added an extra 100gr of salt to the water yesterday when i saw nitrites spiking, so it should be sitting at about 1ppt now.

No more feed for the fishies until the nitrites start getting under control (they've hardly been fed as it is).

Talking to myself here, but i assume if i'm doing anything wrong, people will say so Mostly it's all for my own documentation anyway, and perhaps some others can learn from my experience (mistakes!) in the future...

Did what was going to be a 1/3 water change today, to get the nitrites down... ended up being a 3/8 water change with a little overflow... Must measure the LPM coming out of my tap next time... timer had only gone half way! Re-added 200gr of salt to go with it, which should bring the salinity up to an acceptable level.

Chlorine isn't such an issue - using a carbon filter as suggested by Colum in one of his youtube vids (thanks for that!). I'm sure it doesn't remove all of it, but it'll have to help.


No issues so far though, and the system has been on constant flow for the whole day... Anyway, as seen above, nitrites are at 5ppm+, which is as high as the API kit goes of course - bright purple within about a minute of starting the test, let alone after 5 minutes.

Nitrates are showing through now though, sitting at between 5 and 10ppm i suspect. So it's only a matter of time.

Re-tested after the unexpected 3/8 waterchange... still 5ppm+ off the charts... May require another waterchange in a day or two i assume...

Cheers!

Did I miss something? What are you using to get so many important readings off your system?

Google spreadsheets... just updating it and it creates a graph for me to show historical data in an easier to read form.

Take a look at it here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing

So a quick update...

Ammonia 0
Nitrites 0
Nitrates... Now 0, after a high of about 80 and a slow decline as a result of me not feeding the fish much until the nitrites dropped.

Last two days the fish have gotten about a teaspoon of feed each day. Everything is sitting pretty.

After the photo below, i've added an extra 4 young tomato plants, two cucumber seeds have germinated, just sprinkled some beetroot seeds in the empty spots today, and planted some rosemary along the back edges, just to get the roots going before i transplant it back into the soil.

Here's what the system looked like a month ago... Just to remind people...



So 4 weeks of growth, as shown in the previous photo...

Not bad! And people said not to expect much with a new system! Pfffft...

A mate of mine has a youtube channel on homesteading and general self sufficiency, decided when he dropped by he'd take a video of the system for his viewers. For your entertainment...

Figured i should update this.... somewhat.


I rarely take readings these days... Just to see how many nitrates are in the system. I go off the "how blood red is the test result' method... Because it's always high! Ammonia and nitrites have been at/near zero since forever now.


Not only have i added one new fish tank and growbed to the system, but i just added another as well! I recently bought a new (second hand) 1000L tank, two of the smallish growbeds you see for sale at woodvale, and one of the growbeds you see at BYAP. The BYAP growbed is far superior, but i got the whole system along with about 40 fish, and all the clay i need for the system for not too many dollars.

Something something photos, thousand words, etc.













The original growbed from this thread:


And then the second growbed i added to a second IBC tank: