Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Patience it is. Also, research seems to indicate an overly high ammonia level can have an inhibitory affect on Nitrite production, which is counter-intuitive to me. But I'm doing some water changes to see if I can pull the ammonia level down some.

Big rain this weekend so that helps with adding non-chloromine water. Adding tap and ascorbic acid kind of defeats the purpose, since a byproduct of the vitamin C + chloromine is in fact ammonia. Geez, can't win for losing.

Question, my fish source is going to have some tilapia and channel cats ready for me in a month or so. Assuming my bio-population starts to function, what stocking density do ya'll suggest, and am I crazy to attempt to raise both in the same 1000L IBC?

I have two 400L media beds, along with one shallow IBC DWC, and a biofilter/mechanical filter/aerator, with a RRF back up, and I'm thinking about adding some vertical towers. And possibly another 1000L fish tank plumbed together (water wise, blocked off from fish swimming back and forth).

I have catfish and bluegill together without any issues so I think Tilapia will probably work with catfish. Someone here has probably tried it.

You can probably get in the ballpark on fish numbers using the info in this thread http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=6646

Zucchinis are really going nuts

26 tomatoes grown from seed!

Parsley and Beans are coming up great

Kale, Jalapenos and Cucumbers doing pretty fine.

Grow bed coming along ok. Doesn't get much sun. I'll need to address that.


All the plants are a little less than a month old.

Adding some brewed worm tea every few days.

Still have sky high ammonia with no nitrites or nitrates. I think i was too aggressive with the addition of fish food, hummonia and fish emulsion. Doing gentle water changes hoping to drive it down. Also my pH has been too high, i think inhibiting bacterial growth. That's a hard one because tap water coming out has a high pH, i don't have access to rain water.

Overall I'm happy with the plant growth, but itching to see some Nitrates!!!

Stay tuned, next week I'll have some structural changes, trying to make it look a little prettier.

Worm tea only so far. Can't wait til my bacteria get in line and I can add some fishies!! Nitros! Fall in!

March 20


March 30

looks good. did you start all the plants with seeds?

Started all plants with seeds. some of them I germinated inside in some worm casting soil, and then transferred out to the media bed and DWC.


For any who are interested, I did an experiment last night. Filled up a 5gallon bucket with city tap water, tested Ammonia, pH, and Cholorine and Chloromine on it.

Ammonia - 1.0
ph- 8.4 or higher
Chlorine 4.0 or higher

Added appx 1/8 teaspoon of crushed vitamin C tablets and waited 2 minutes and tested again

Ammonia - 1.0
pH 8.4
Chlorine 0

Incredible how the things you read about on the internet really work!
I was particularly interested in how the ammonia did change, as I thought that treating the chlorine would release the ammonia, driving the ammonia level up, and thus making PWCs worthless (at least for the purpose of bringing a system high ammonia down).

Anyway, it eased my mind a bit.

AND

Nitrites MIGHT be starting to show a little life, now that my ammonia has been down to 5-6 for a few days. Geez it's been a long cycle.

Thanks for reading, share your thoughts if you want.

Carry on.

I mean "didn't".

April Update!

Amazing how after a long day at work an hour of AP tinkering brings the world into focus again.

Here is a video of my system as it stands currently.
https://youtu.be/0HkGWn8DPbw
Nitrites are off the scale, starting to see some nitrates. Ammonia levels dropping. Things are looking up!!

I know my filter situation isn't the greatest. It will change i think. My problem is that being outside under some big trees means there are always new particles of stuff finding their way into the system. The DWC IBC is like a magnet for gunk. Don't know if DWC is in the cards for me at this juncture. Might convert it to a NFT row of tubes or something. Not sure.

Anyway there it is!

Few pics of the growth and a exterior box to pretty up the grow bed

Tomato growth. Can't get enough of this. Love watching them grow.

March 9 Planted seed in worm casting/sand/clay pebble mix

March 20 - Pretty dang good growth


March 26 - Transferred to the AP media bed.


and a few to the DWC


March 29 - Settling in, looking pretty good


April 1 - Starting to really perk up!


April 6 - Holy cow this could work!

Looks good . You're going to be overrun with tomatoes pretty soon, that's pretty tight spacing.