Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hey guys,

I am at a cross road and have no explanation for it. Need some clarity from the pro's (u guys)

If I test my water for ammonia, nitrite and nitrate levels everything comes up as 0. My plants aren't really growing, my pH level is 8.5 and (touch wood) I have not had any fish deaths due to water issues, only one jumped out and the other one had a bite out its side, I have had my system since about February this year.

Did some reading up today and this is a paragraph from the article:

When your water testing shows no ammonia and no nitrite despite regular feeding, cycling is complete, and you can start adding more fish to your aquarium.

If this is true then technically my plants should be growing like wild fire and not so slow that they almost going backwards.

Any idea why?

Thanks in advance for all the help.

(1) cycling establishes the pathway for nitrogen as ammonia (from fish and fish wastes) being available to plants as nitrates. If all readings are zero (as that quote says) it is likely that the nitrates are probably insufficient to meet your plants needs. Having ammonia AND nitrites AND nitrates of 0 pretty much indicates that the plants/system is using up everything being produced.

I suspect this is where you are at. Particularly since you started in February.
But it would depend on knowing about the fish for anyone to comment more.

how are you testing the water (what type of test kit).

(2) Your pH is pretty high. That will affect some veg.

You will also have to be careful about adding additional fish.
It will need to be done carefully because at high pH fish are extremely sensitive to both ammonia and nitrites.

(3) in fishless cycling you can test simply by adding ammonia and checking to see that it is converted to nirtrates within a couple of days without getting any appreciable increase in nitrites. It is a harder to do this if you have fish already in the system - this is the primary way of testing for cycled system.

(4) what is your water - where has it come from. Is it particularly hard or does it have a lot of calcium etc in it.

this can create issues for plants. In which case with you 8.5 pH you may need to **foliar feed** your plants.
** all systems will need some additives anyway from things like Seaweed extract and potash etc.
** I am sure we will get to that in this thread shortly.

(5) you need to provide some background information - what size fish tank, what sized grow beds, how many and what type of fish (and how big are they). What veg have you got growing and what are your water and air temperatures.

A few pictures would help as well. You can get instructions here... viewtopic.php?f=4&t=21754

Then it will be possible for people to provide you much better and relevant feedback.

finally


no, there are lots of reasons why plants are possibly not doing well.
need to work through the points above....

presumably you are also coming out of winter. So things are a bit slow then anyway.
(hence the Q on air and water temps).

Ok my system is about 200 litres I have gold fish that are around 5cm in length. I have bout 30 of them in a tank that's about 1.2m in length, I only have some chives that are split up in a few cups as well as an avo pip, some parsley,dill and rocket. The herbs are still the size of sprouts except the chives.

Please note these pics are a few months old so there are different plants in and maybe even more than now. Only have the 2 grow beds

Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk

Oh air temp is bout 30 the last 2 weeks and water temp starts at about 18 in the morning and by late afternoon it's bout 28

Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk

Already been crucified bout the glass tank so no need to to go into it again everything u see is temporary.

Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk

The water heater is not on and I don't use it either.

Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk

OK - I note that a lot of this is in anotherv thread from some months back - here -> viewtopic.php?f=14&t=27429

there were quite a few things raised there at the time.

Can you step back and take a photo of the whole setup ?

as per a previous post on the other thread - my main concern would be the lack of media and how effective your bucket bio-filter really is. A better setup would be to have the water going into a tub or half-barrel of media and then in to the DWC. As it is a temporary system something like a 100L plastic tub would probably be OK.

Thats correct, alot was said and i have learnt alot in the meantime. Ok I will send through wen I get home this afternoon. Also it was winter at the time so my fish were a lil less active and plants probably too. But now that summer is almost here there are new changes everyday that I'm not entirely sure how to do and handle

Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk

yep. It is the period of rapid change, and algae and all the good things that come with spring.
30+18 degrees means you are hitting it now definitely - so most cold water issues will not be applicable.

I presume you are using something like the API Freshwater test kit ?

In any event I doubt you would have an excess of nitrates because you would have an algae bloom or pea soup at these sort of temperatures with the glass tank.

Yeah. My fish seem ok in the water at that temp but can't help worrying it is bad for them

Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk

how do you mount the plants in the baskets ? And how do the plant roots look underneath.

here is an example of a simple setup that works pretty easily - it uses a 100L tub of media.
Water out of the tub goes through a DWC and then overflows back in to the fish tank.
I also use media in the baskets. Rather than floating the sheet sit a few centimetres above the water with the bottom of the baskets sitting in the water. Get very good root growth and thus good plant growth (they are english spinach in the DWC baskets).

At the moment the plants are either in some rockwool the ones that are the size of sprouts and the other are just loose in the baskets. Their roots look amazing thick and long and look very healthy. Added a tomato plant from my veggie patch in last week and the roots are already hanging over the side if the basket. So I will see how it goes.

Do u think I should try take out plants and only have one or 2 plants in my system to see if they grow faster?

Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk

probably. The fish look only small. I suspect that your fish tank cant really take too many fish and also there is probably only limited nutrients from the feed you provide (as they are pretty small fish).

I take it you have two half barrels ?

I would modify the system to have one half barrel as media and the other as a DWC.
Connect them up like the example photos I posted above.
Stay with the lettuce etc - as they are the best indicators and need the least nutrients.
Your tomato will hog a lot of nutrients for not many tomatoes I expect.

Then you can add seaweed extract to the media barrel without affecting the fish too much.

The best next step would be to get a larger fish tank/tub.
Then you can afford to push the goldfish a little more without risk of it being detrimental to them.
They could take a pellet with around 30% protein and they would grow quicker then.
(they are still pretty small for 6+ month old fish).

[edit - got caught in post cross-over so deleted and added text in next post]

Those pics are old the fish in that pic have already grown a lil but not much. Recently added some more gold fish that are a bit bigger
These are the most recent pics of my fish with the new bigger ones. (Only fish I could find)

Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk