Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

It seems so unlikely that the established kit manufacturers would be able to pull the wool over the eyes of so many astute technical minded gardeners, that I'll go out on a limb and say, yeah... I think you are 100% wrong on this. Of course the kits are not perfect, we are not buying perfect in a $30 kit. But I believe they are honestly trying to report what they purport. Parts per million are so far from parts per thousand that there is no way this would be the unnoticed case.


The ppm and mg/L are simple ratios, nothing more. It is with pure water at STP that mg/L is the exact same as ppm because 1 liter of pure water at STP weighs 1 kilogram, or 1000g. 1mg is 1/1000 of a gram, so in in 1 kilogram there are 1,000,000 milligrams. Therefore 1 mg per 1 liter of pure water at STP is a ratio of 1 to 1 million, same as 1 ppm. You have to be careful about whether you are talking about mass to mass (ppm by weight) or mass to volume (ppm by volume) when speaking of ppm. I think normally gases and vapors are measured in ppm by volume and liquids are normally measured in ppm by weight. In AP we care mostly about chemical concentration in water, right? So mg of something per kilo of water which is assumed to be 1 liter, although I would expect many (most?) meters would temperature compensate for STP for more accurate results when a liter of water does not weigh 1 kilo.

Your 80ppm would be 80mg/L, not 8mg/L. 10,000ppm is 1%. 1ppm is 0.0001%, so 80ppm would be 0.008% -- 100 times more than your 0.00008%.

As an example, seawater has a salinity of roughly 35,000 ppm, or 35g of salt per 1 liter (or 1 kilo) of water.


If you just had a 1 liter fish tank, then yeah... 6,000mg of food in 1 liter would be 6,000ppm. If you've got a 100L tank, then that would be 60ppm, in a 1000L tank, 6g would be 6ppm. So your fish waste would be 4ppm in a 1000L tank.

The CDC says humans can smell ammonia in the air at about 50ppm and taste it in water at about 35ppm. Inhaling ammonia at a 50ppm concentration is enough to irritate the nose and throat. Ammonia levels above 0.02 mg/L or 0.02 ppm are considered harmful to fish. So yeah, small numbers can be significant and worth worrying about.

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Sam

Hi Sam, I am still working on the entire metric thing. I often get the number wrong by a thousand. So thanks for the check. on the gases vs solids, it it's the first time I've heard about that so thanks twice. At least I got the 1 liter FT right. lol

Ammonia is the killer of fish and the number 1 thing in my book to be careful about. It would be nice to have an ammonia filter besides the plants.

On the manufactures getting or making it wrong to set a failure on AP is with in my sights. People have done much worse to stop good things. Call it a conspiracy concept I hope we never prove to be true. Just think of it for a second. If the big boys like Monsanto own it then why would they want us to know the truth and grow food. The we are out of big brothers control. People are currently getting arrested for growing gardens and no one thinks they might fake a label? One farm in the US got shut down by them because their seed rifted in the wind to his place and he would not pay them for round up. The theory will show its ugly head if we prove those numbers to be false. Do you think they want us growing our own food.

I think the research shows that Nitrates are indeed harmful to fish. Different fish are more tolerant to higher levels of Nitrates and fish have different tolerances at different stages of life (e.g. fry versus adult). It also seems to make a difference on slow build up versus rapid increase. Studies of adult fish like Salmon show they can tolerate levels of 5,000 mg/l, while others like like Stingrays and Discus are very sensitive to high Nitrate. Ammonia gets all the press because it is generally more toxic than Nitrates and way more toxic than Nitrates. According to the Aquarium Wiki, in nitrogen sensitive fish like Trout, ammonia is about 6x more toxic than nitrite and about 13,300x more toxic than nitrate.

Here's a nice research paper talking about Nitrate toxicity -- no need to kill your own fish to prove it!

Nitrate Toxicity: A Potential Problem of Recirculating Systems


Bonn (1976) reported that adult striped bass tolerated nitrate levels up to 800 mg/L, while fry showed signs of stress at 200 mg/L, however, both adult and fry fed and grew better at levels below 38 mg/L.

In fish husbandry we want to do most reasonable things we can to enhance the growth and health of our fish. It appears that time and time again it has been shown that lower Nitrates over an extended period are better for fish than higher Nitrates. Obviously we've got plenty of examples of fish that are surviving in high Nitrate levels, but perhaps they would be doing better than surviving at lower levels.

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Sam

A couple important distinctions to keep in mind when looking at that chart. First, in hydroponics they dose their system once a week then flush the system and start over (I think that is how it works anyways, not much of a hydro guy) so at the beginning of the cycle they will be running high concentrations and then they will taper down dramatically from there . Where as in AP we are continuously adding additional nutrients so it is more appropriate to have then at a lower but more consistent level.

Second, that is the concentration of the solution before it is sent through the growbeds even once. In AP when we test our water at any given time it has been pumped through the filters/growbeds and the plants have already absorbed much of the nitrates and other nutrients.

Is that a Wiki typo and should be Nitrites. They are the dangerous ones not the nitrates?
Ammonia is the first killer. I think most of us know this or we would never need to do water changes on stand alone FTs. I would really like to find a test kit and go out to the wild and test the waters the fish are in and see what is going on there. The pond I am looking at is an over the top drain pond so I imagine that when it comes full summer and the rain stops and the mountain feeder dries up, it will turn into a mass fish kill. So many fish in it now. It will either get filled with ammonia or the O2 will go to nothing in the depths.

I have been looking for a test kit here. No luck so far.

First of all this City boy knows zip about any farming. Greens are something we by at the store or are a side on the dinner plate so all of this is new to me and I am learning everyday. Mistakes included. My research is taking me into Farming, Hydroponics and Aquaponics to see what they all do. In each case there seems to be as many success stories as there are failures. The failures list is an abundance of bad luck or people like me. The experts can grow anything in anything.

So I have found what you are talking about in Hydro about the cycles of fill drain and refill over weeks. If you look at the sites, all of the Hydro companies use code names for what's going on. They re-name the product so I can't find out what they are really using. Maybe the details are on the package but they are not on line. Company secrets. In AP, to keep changing over the water every week would be a terrible task to do and most likely damage or kill the fish.

I wrote early on that I am looking for some general rule of thumb I can use for the entire year per setup. That rule can be different with different systems if needed. And the idea that Mr Ryan has 14 different FTs and systems brings out the question of Why? At last press he stated he had 5 to 6 fish species. Then why 14 setups? he is growing fish and plants very well and I figure he has found his answer thru many tests and now holds that info close to the vest as his advantage. With all of the hard work he put into it he deserves to do that.

When I read the Monster plant thread it was full of great plants yet no details on how they got to be monsters. So everywhere I look there are secrets layered on secrets, even here.

And if anyone thinks a company like Monsanto would not buy up all the test companies and falsify the results, then I think a wake up call is needed. In the states some people are now going to jail because they started a garden. Do you really think they want AP to succeed. With GMO seeds maybe. Then we will all get AP roundup and a large bill. They want to control all food and so far they are doing a good job at taking over. Every day cotton farmers in India are committing suicide because the GMO seeds won't grow and they have nothing the next year to pay the bills with. When AP hits a tipping point then we will be arrested for doing AP. Wait and see, it is coming. Maintain as many real seeds as you can.

As far as the Hydro ferts one buys, who knows what is inside them without a very sophisticated lab report. I am staying as far away from them as I can.

Sorry, that was just a typo I made... in the following sentence I backed up what I meant to say with the Trout toxicity:


Thanks for catching that! So... Ammonia more toxic than Nitrites which is more toxic than Nitrates.

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Sam

Sam that's no problem. What it means to me is that I must have learned something along the way so far and able to understand it needed to be changed. so thanks for the test. I guess I passed that one.

Have any of you ever heard of just an Ammonia filter?

Yes, they have media that absorbs ammonia. But in AP, that's never a good Idea unless maybe you have way more fish than your plants can filter for or if your fish are gonna die in that first ammonia spike.
Are you not changing your ft water enough during watering do keep ammonia down?


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How would you put one to good use?

Check out what you can on Biocenosis "bags" or Bog Filters. There are a few threads around and research, extended use examples, abound.

BioCenosis - Controlling fish waste without plants

If one doesn't use the fish to grow the garden, or has an excess of fish to garden space, then something like this seems like a good thing, but otherwise, it seems like someone having an oil well in their backyard and pumping up oil, but filtering out the gasoline before letting the stream pass. I'm sure there are many good reasons to use them in a more aquaculture environment. Perhaps if they could be brought in to handle an ammonia spike or overabundance (while the garden is on vacation?)

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Sam

I am changing the water at 10% a week or more. So 40% a month or more.

Why? I want to be able to breed fish if I can. I want to run my home FT without it being on the AP system. I want to lower the amount of water changes to save money and filter time. I want to be able to mess with some of the plant setups, changing the water nutrients with out hurting the fish. They are/will be all tank fed with water, just no fish. I do have 3 AP tests running now with fish or shrimp and plan on improving them. With the fish, Ammonia is the #3 killer. No water being #1, No air #2 and lack of food #4. So Ammonia is way up on the list and worth looking into. Even with AP when the plants are on vacation. What do people do, eat all the fish or do massive water changes till the plants come back in.

If I could do only one test it would be Ammonia and I can't find a local kit yet.

Sam, I have read that Bio thread before and I simply do not have the room for such a large item.

Thanks for the link. It is what I was thinking about but I need it to be much, much smaller. Most likely fit under my FT in one of 2 of the cabinets.

Thinking about this I decided to try the clay balls in the FT filter. My long filter has 3 compartments and 1 of them is easy to remove. I removed the floss and added 2 cups of the balls just to see what might happen. The clay balls are cheap and when finished with them, they can either be tossed out or used as is to start seed beds or boiled to kill anything in them. For a few pennies it is worth a go. If I was to do a lot more of them I would need sealed containers that I could pump thru under pressure. If the FT filter clogs up it just runs over to the tank below. If they come fresh out of the filter they should be full of all sorts of good stuff. Ready to go.

The small amount of clay ball don't seem to be doing anything to adjust the water clarity. I let them work for another few weeks and see if something happens over time.

Hi Deuem and anyone sitting in a concrete bunker,

If you find you cant see something from youtube, or any other site, there are a few sites and even some mobile apps that allow you to download a video as a file. They do this by going to the site for you, packing it into a file, and creating a link to download from.

They are designed to allow offline viewing and saving of youtube videos, but it also works as a way around all kinds of restrictions. These sites come and go, so they are difficult to shut down, but mainly there are not heavily used so of little concern to most governments especially if you're just looking at gardening stuff.