Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

It sounds like the city i live in switching from deep deep hard well water with lots of gh and kh treated with chlorine (not chloramine) over to surface river water treated ... I cant find any information on how it's going to be treated. What i have read says it will have less minerals, less chromium, and less lead. I just picked up the api ph test kit so i'll be keeping an eye on the ph for a bit.

Every time i test my tap water i get a higher reading. I'll post pics in a bit but it looked to be high 8's today in the system and i found a dead goldfish in my tank today, which made me sad.

It's been super hot here as well (100f) and i've been feeding twice a day, so i'm gonna skip feeding for a couple of days.

I hate to do it but with tapwater up near 9ph with heavy minerals i think i'm finally going to have to bite the bullet and go buy some ph down to treat my top up water. I had already been holding the top up water in a little stock tank with some vitamin c and an airstone for a few hours before pumping it into my sump so it's no real added hassle to put something else in there.

Plants are looking great to my eye. I'm slowly adding a row of buckets running off the sump with a separate little pump.

Pics for system ph and ammonia below. I tested the tap the other day at top of the chart 8.8.

I'm assuming my dechlorine process is solid and it's most likely ph/ammonia/temperature that killed a fish this morning.

Seems likely since you're in the toxic range for ammonia at that pH and temp... the colors didn't come through real well on that pH test.

(a) get a larger drum or something if you can as you need to leave it for a bit more than a few hours

(b) don't worry about pH down, try using hydrocholric acid (or muriatic acid) and leaving water to settle.
bring it down to 7 and let it sit for a while with air.
as it is a different pH add it gradually to the system so you don't shock fish.

(c) airstones are good idea.

(d) cutting feeding is good idea. If you have a bit of algae or green on the fish tank fish will graze on that.


do you test for nitrites and nitrates ?

Glad you asked dlfperth. I hadnt tested for nitrates in about a week, at which time i was at about a hundred mg/l. Today it looks like zero to me. It also looks like trace ammonia and no nitrites either. I saw zero nitrates and tried not to freak out thinking i had killed my bacteria but no ammonia to speak of so i guess the tomato is just eating it all...?

Headed to the store to get some ph down. I'll look for hcl.

I am shopping ph testers and i have my eye on the oakton testr-2.

Does anybody have one of these? Can i store the elctrode in generic (pottassium chloride) storage solution or do i have to spend twice as much on their branded (mostly pottassium chloride) storage solution?

can't comment specifically on the oakton testr-2 but the pH meters I have simply require pH4 buffer solution in the cap. Just got to soak it if you let it dry out. In these cases standard solutions are available from most scientific instrument providers.

whatever you get you will need tester solution for calibration - and should get an additional test solution on your expected pH range (particularly if testing for alkaline pH > 7.5)

how much were you looking to pay ?
Not really a fan of pocket testers myself - but I gather they are attractive at the lower end of the price scale.

If I got one I would at least get a temp+pH probe unit.
More expensive to buy initially but much cheaper to replace the probe only later (if ever).


[edit] deleted and posted below...

Thinking $50 us. Maybe another $20 for the chemicals is fine.

I got the following test results from a fish store today:

Tap-400 tds
Tap ph- 7.5

Aq - Ph 8.2
Aq Ammonia - "almost nothing" 0-.25
Aq nitrate - 5 ppm

My tap water is fluctuating a lot. 8.5 -> 7.5 in a week. Still a lot of minerals in there though.

oops posts crossed over...

Milwaukee gear is a medium level quasi-professional outfit and IMO better than most home/hydroponics/spa etc.

search on eBay - we have geo locating forcing to Australian eBay but even here there is a pH probe&meter
for <A$100 and a temp+pH meter for A$150. Bet they are much cheaper stateside, and the US$ price
will be at least 1/4-1/3 cheaper anyway. Postage is the kick for us but that wont affect you.

There are a couple of US places shipping here to Aust so you should be fine for options.



on your water:

Wonder about using a drinking water filter. May knock some of the TDS and minerals down a bit.
you can even use it for drinking water - your local supply doesn't sound the best.

I do have a drinking water filter. It hadnt occured to me to use it for aquaponics. I'll do that for sure. Hot rumor is, though, that my tap water is getting better soon.

If the tds drops will my ph fluctuate?

depends on what is causing the issues....

pH is often either fine or dissolved solids (from media or something in the water like calcium) or in worse case ammonia (it is a base so drives pH up). The ammonia does not appear to be your issue.

there is also some binding with solids. So in cases one can see a drop when they are filtered out as 'purer' water tends to be more neutral - acidic and AP systems running on it tend to go acidic with nitrates anyway. depends on how much filtering is done.

In industry it is typical to test filtered and unfiltered water to resolve the solids impact.
Obviously depends on the level of filtering.

Thanks for the info. The internet filter thing sounds obtrusive.

there are many things where the stateside price is much lower than that for anyone external. Many sites flick you across to your local 'variant' (which for Australia usually means bit more expensive). I have had colleagues in the US by things for me before and ship separately.

In some countries geo-locking is a big business.... in cases it is partly justified (shipping and importing) but when it gets well beyond that and/or placed on things like downloadable software and computer operating systems....

the biggest laugh I ever had was when one vendor who sold to 'North America' came back and told me that I would have to pay for overseas rates to Canada. My 'bud' (in Canadian/US lingo) who was going to buy the item for me pretty much said that was par for the course...

As i add heavily mineralized top up water from the tap and it evaporates, is my system accumulating the minerals? It seems like they wouldnt evaporate.