Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I started my very first batch of 80 trout in June, and had a decent harvest in December, so you certainly aren't too late to start in the next month or so.

Darren Mel and Gunagulla Thanks heaps for the encouragement and advice

Mel I reckon your maths is pretty close. 1000 litre FT and 750 litre ST (about half full) and 3 x 300mm growbeds + about 150 litre RFF. I calculate that at about 1900 to 2150 litres, so not far off.

You saved me tonight as I was about to add more urea. Glad I read your post first.
You are spot on with the ammonia - was about 0.25ppm as far as I could make out. PH is 7.2 and nitrites and nitrates are at 0ppm as expected. I will check the levels daily (keeping a spreadsheet) and if not up to 2ppm with ammonia I will add some more urea before I go away in 4 days.
Haven't checked the H20 temp yet as I forgot to get a thermometer. Daily air temps though have been highs of 25 to lows of about 12 degrees over the last week. Thanks for the advice on the holiday bit.

Darren and Gungagulla- Thanks for the encouragement to give trout a go. Yeah I know patience, patience, patience, but its hard when you have the plants in and all you want is to put some fish in and watch the little buggers grow. I just gotta be patient and get the cycling right before get the fishies. Not one of my strengths so my wife tells me.

I am a bit worried about some of the plants though. They seem to be suffering a bit. I have checked the wet zone gravel and it is about 30mm down from dry top zone, so I think I have that right. The strawberries and the carrots, a couple of the lettuce seem the most stressed and one chilli plant. The sugar peas and snow peas seem fine but maybe because they produce their own nitrogen?? There has been a few leaves dropped here and there. I have been direct watering into the grow beds with a dosing rate of 2 x caps of "regular" seasol in 20 litres of water in the evenings. I guess thats about 60ml of seasol in 20 litres. I have been using two x 20 litres drums total over the growbeds so I think I am giving them enough. They perk up a bit overnight so maybe they haven't fully got their roots down deep yet. Gotta get my son trained in dosing them up while I am away

anyway here's some pics of the progress and the plants tonight. You can see the RFF in the background all plumbed in

>> You are spot on with the ammonia - was about 0.25ppm as far as I could make out. PH is 7.2 and nitrites and nitrates are at 0ppm as expected.

if you are using Powerfeed etc you may get some low nitrate readings from the fertiliser.

>> I just gotta be patient and get the cycling right before get the fishies. Not one of my strengths so my wife tells me.

as per previous read Petes thread. He really did go through the wringer with worry and wanting to be doing things - basically the system will do its thing, and the easiest approach is to sit back and let it do it. As before it is not critical that you get to 2ppm NH4 - provided there is ammonia in the system the bacteria will establish - you can load them up a bit when you get back (it will be a good indicator of where things are at that time).

Don't use too much powerfeed. Enough to keep them going but not every day. If it is going on the grow bed then they will access it anyway. Just use system water in between if you want to water them daily. Plants look fine in the pics.

>> Gotta get my son trained in dosing them up while I am away

I would only get your son to do a fertiliser feed once while you are away. If there is ammonia in the system then the plants will be fine. Better than ending up with too much. The system will be fine for 10 days just doing its thing.

Just a watering can of system water if plants look a bit down...they will soon perk up.

Darren I'm nust using regular seasol in the white bottle, not the Powerfeed in the green bottle

I had started to read Pete's thread before and finishec reading all 18 pages of it tonight. Learnt a little bit from that - thanks

Yeah was only gonna get my son to do watering with the water from FT with some seasol, just to keep the plants happy. I wasnt going to get him to do anything else, certainly not do anything to upset the chemistry. That would be too painful.

Yay maths! I was doing that before caffeine, too, so I'm kind of surprised

There may be an aquaponics enthusiast around here who doesn't struggle with the patience necessary to wait through cycling etc, but they're keeping very quiet if they exist. I've certainly fallen into the trap of adding more slow-release stuff because I was impatient to see results, and was just very lucky that I didn't kill my fish, so there you go - you get to benefit from my mistake.

I'm not sure what is going on with my plants. They seem to be getting worse.

The chillis have dropped most of their leaves, The parsley is browning off on the leaves, the carrots are much the same and the lettuce is looking a bit limp. Some of the red onions are doing OK and some are not. The strawberries were a bit ordinary but seem to be picking up a bit

Basil, chives and snow peas and sugar peas seem to doing OK.

The system is till cycling and the plants have been in a week. Some Ammonia present 0.25 and pH is 7.2, no nitrites or nitrates and I have been using regular seasol in the white bottle - not powerfeed (initial dose about 400ml and then about 60ml a day watered in 60 litres over the plants in the beds in the evening.

Here are some photos, anyone have some clues??? Will they recover and is this a temporary thing?

More photos - The chillis have dropped most of their leaves, The parsley is browning off on the leaves, the carrots are much the same and the lettuce is looking a bit limp. Some of the red onions are doing OK and some are not. The strawberries were a bit ordinary but seem to be picking up a bit

I'm not sure exactly what's up with your plants, but I can tell you that peppers and some other plants did horribly in my system at first - dropped all the leaves etc, same as yours. Now that the system is about ten months old and (I presume) things are maturing, the micronutrients are building up and so on, plants that have been sitting there looking miserable all spring and summer are suddenly booming. I have an eggplant, a couple of capsicums and a little sweet chilli plant that are putting on huge growth spurts and fruiting. So you might just need to wait.

Well back from Holidays today. Wonderful motorhome trip around Melbourne, Phillip Island and the Victorian Alps. Even went to a trout farm to catch some trout until I can grow my own.

There has been some changes in the system while I have been away even though my delegation on watering(son) didn't quite follow my instructions of watering every day when possible. I think they last got watered from the sump about a week ago.

The chillis are completely naked except for about two leaves. I think your right Mel - they are probably for a system that has some maturity not a new start. I will see how they go and if they recover.

Some strawberries are fruiting !!!
The onions are looking better and the caulis are leafing up. Basil is not doing much and the peas are doing well.

We also have some nitrites and some nitrates so it looks like we are kicking along OK while I have been away.
So from what I can work out the nitrites need to go down to zero, and then I add some more ammonia from a source and if it the nitrites and ammonia go back to zero within 24 hrs then we are cycled? Is this correct?

You'll be cycled for that amount of ammonia loading, but if you add fish and feed them such that they produce a lot more ammonia that you have been adding, then you will have problems with high ammonia, then nitrites. So it is best to start feeding small amounts and monitor your ammonia, if it starts to increase, go easy on the feeding until the bacteria can handle it.

Thanks Gordon. Given that my nitrites at the moment look like they are reading at 5.0ppm, and nitrates at 160ppm and ammonia is at 0.25ppm, do I need to see a drop in the nitrites before I add more ammonia to test if it is cycled? I assume that the nitrites reading is quite high at the moment and would need to drop a bit more and I am probably seeing a nitrite spike at present. Is this correct?

Or should I be adding more ammonia now to help the system "improve"

The plants look hungry

I'd wait a bit for the nitrites to come down before adding any more ammonia. Yes it is a spike in the nitrites as the bacteria which convert it to nitrates can't cope just yet.


You need to get some plants going to use up those nitrates, maybe try sitting some soil (as long as there is nothing toxic for the fish in it) pot plants with esablished seedlings into the media until you sort out what is going on with most of the other plants. Chard, broccoli etc should suck up the nitrates pretty fast.

Hi Kadarra,
while your system is adjusting chemically so are your plants so don't give up on them until they're bone dry. They'll bounce back when their conditions are right.
Wait until the nitrites get back to the blue before dosing again then see how long it takes to go through and ramp up from there.
My second system has 150 odd seedlings in it and chewed up about 175 grams of power feed and later Seasol in less than a week while waiting for system 3 to do its job.

I added 40ml of normal seasol tonight to the ST, so that should keep thm going.