Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Yes, you want your nitrites and ammonia to be near zero, and return to near zero quickly after adding ammonia equivalent to what your fish will be adding. Adding ammonia to ~1ppm and seeing zero ammonia and zero nitrites by the next day will mean you're ready to go.
You should keep an eye on the levels for a while after adding fish, or increasing their feeding rate later on, just to make sure the bacteria are handling the load, and you can cut back the feed a bit if the ammonia and nitrite levels go up.

Adding 1ppt salt helps protect against high nitrite levels, and is ok to have in your system all the time anyway, as a general 'fish health tonic'.

Thanks Gordon,

how much salt is required to create 1 ppt in 1600 lt of water? Where is that measured?
Any kind of table salt?
What do you think about the water exchange idea ?

Pete.

One part per thousand salt would be one kilo per thousand litres of water - so in 1600 l it would be 1.6 kilos. Table salt generally has iodine and anti-clumping agents added to it, which isn't what you want in your system; look for 'pond salt' at aquarium supply shops or 'pool salt' at hardware stores / pool supply places.

The B store has large bags of pool salt for $not too much, it's what I use.

I wouldn't bother with exchanging water, it wont speed the process up - you really want the nitrite and ammonia in your system when getting your bacterial colony estabished- it's their food.

Doesn't look like it wants to change much, how can the ammonia increase with out input to the system?. Ft is slowly becoming a lighter brown and can see deeper into the tank.

Remind me what your ammonia source is? If it is not ammonia additive (intentional or not- dead critters etc) related, then it could be test related, there isn't really anything else it could be.

Because Powerfeed doesn't contain just ammonia - it contains nitrogen compounds that break down into ammonia (urea and so forth). If you put in enough that the water turned brown and is still kinda brown, that's a lot and it's still processing.

This is one reason why it's really easy to overdose with products like Powerfeed and Charlie Carp if you're trying to add some nutrients/nitrates to your system. You add a little, a few days later the numbers are still low and you're impatient so you figure that wasn't enough and add some more, and then WHOOPS ammonia/nitrite spike! Ask me how I know... At least you're not doing it with fish in the system.

*reads back on the thread*

...yeah, you put in 600ml of Powerfeed ten days ago. That's a lot, so it's going to take quite a while to process through. Time to practice being patient.

On the 14/10 I put approx 360 ml of Powerfeed into the fish tank. Nothing since then except the 60 lt town water top up.

Because I have no fish would it be beneficial to dilute 50% with town water? or just let it go on?

IMO, just leave it (as long as the ammonia doesn't rise too much higher)... and be patient

So the yogurt tubs weren't 200ml each then? 360ml is still a lot - I get a small but noticeable ammonia spike from putting about 40-50ml of Charlie Carp in my system. Yeah, just let it go; by the time it's all worked its way through you should have a good head start on a strong bacterial colony, at least!

I estimated the volume then but tonight I weighed a full one = 180 grm. = 180 ml approx. So 3 x 180 + 20 ml (2 caps) + 40 ml(4 caps) = 600ml. You're spot on Mel I didn't see anything happening then WHAMMY!

I makes sense what you've said about the Powerfeed Mel, it's kind of doing the ammonia test for me. I was thinking I should plot this on a graph like Gordons' - only if I had the time...

I'll let it continue and monitor.

Thanks so much Mel, Gordon and other contributors this would be a nightmare with out your advice.

Pete.

After coming to terms with my mistake of adding too much Power feed I've elected to let it run it's course.

On a brighter note we had another power outage from 8.30 am till 12.30 pm today.
Why was this bright ? Because I was prepared, oh what a feeling! Within 15 minutes we had the 2 Kw genset plugged into the essentials and off to work I go.

Err - I work from home, well in my factory up the back behind the AP unit. In there I set up my UPS (uninterruptable power supply) for the AP system. It can do other things too like charge other batteries operate electrical appliances up to 1200 watts but I assembled the components for my first and future AP systems. See pics.
Basically, I'm using the Ctek battery charger to charge a deep cycle battery (used for starting my 50KVA genset).
The battery is kept in top condition by the multistage charging system all the time (except when the mains power cuts out).
When the pump timer requests power the inverter draws power from the 12 volt battery and converts it into clean 240 volt power and the charger immediately replaces the consumed power.

When the mains power is cut the charger stops working but the inverter keeps the timer going and when the timer requests power the inverter draws from the battery. The pump knows no difference as it always runs off the inverter.
I'm using an acdc 300 air pump which has it's own 10 hr battery back up supply. If it looks like we'll exceed ten hours it can be plugged into the inverters power board.
The 50 kva genset is operated 1-4 times a day and it's alternator will top up the battery as it goes.

Pete.