Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

No walleye?


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I think I might have seen one walleye one time in my 9 years of diving... Just not in the areas or lakes we dive... There are a couple lakes which I'm sure have walleye in them, they just aren't as friendly or are out deeper where there is nothing for us to see or something...

I hope I'm not getting ahead of myself, but I think I might finally be in the clear with my bluegills. I ran out of ammonia solution #2 from my old test kit so I ordered a new freshwater master test kit. My ammonia is still 8+ even with the new test kit, but my pH is below 6 sand water temp is low enough that trusting the old backyardaquaponics ammonia toxicity chart it says that someplace in the 40 to 50ppm range is ok... So not too worried about it, I'll keep doing partial water changes every few days until it gets under control. But more importantly my nitrites have finally came down to between 0 to 0.25... I ran the test three times (twice with the new kit and once with the old) to make sure. Nitrates at 5 so that confirms the bacteria are finally catching up, hopefully they are ok to the point that as ammonia gets converted to nitrites the nitrites don't jump up again, but I was starting to get worried after several 30 to 40 percent water changes the last couple weeks that I was going to start losing fish. Hopefully I'm in the clear now.

So your ammonia is 8 ppm? And pH is 6? What's your water temp? I want to see what my ammonia calculator says.


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my pH is actually below 6 right now because I am using RO water in this tank which is about 7 normally then I used some of API's "Ammonia Safe" which lowers the pH to make ammonia less of a concern. So the API pH test only goes down to 6, which is what the test shows up as, but I have a digital pH test which is actually registering between 5 - 5.5 (but I have not calibrated it in a while so I can't be certain that is 100% accurate, but I know it's 6 or less). The pH will start to come up slowly as I do water changes moving forward as now that I'm hopefully out of the woods I won't use any more ammonia safe (hopefully... the water changes should start cutting the ammonia while increasing the pH so I'll keep an eye on it to make sure I don't get near the danger zone as my pH gets back up to 6.8 - 7 the ammonia will need to be at a testable level below 8 or I'll have to add another bottle)

water temp is 68F - 70F so max of about 21C. Refering to the BYAP chart found here... http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/infor ... nd-charts/

it says that ammonia levels aren't toxic until about 50ppm at 20C and 40ppm at 24C, so I have no idea what the ammonia is really at, I have done several 30 gallon (out of 75 gallon tank) water changes the last 2 weeks and it still registers 8+ by the next time I test.

Well according to my calculator the toxic form of ammonia is 0.003 mg/L.


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I am hoping that I got all the information correct.


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Crackenfish what calculator are you using? that seems highly unlikely that 0.003 mg/L is accurate. The mg/L to ppm conversion is nearly 1:1 (with a bunch of decimal places), so my fish would be highly dead by now =) or is that lowly dead? I don't know... but it doesn't make sense to what I'm seeing, and BYAP chart doesn't agree with it either.

The calculator is one from a Texas university that was recommended in one of my text books. I don't think your fish would be dead because 0.003 is a fairly low number. The BYAP chart would agree too. The test kits that you or I have can only test the TAN not unionized ammonia. The calculator calculates what the toxic level is.


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The calculator is one from a Texas university that was recommended in one of my text books. I don't think your fish would be dead because 0.003 is a fairly low number. The BYAP chart would agree too. The test kits that you or I have can only test the TAN not unionized ammonia. The calculator calculates what the toxic level is.


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Have you tried your foam cubes yet ?
I have started Tomatos,Chillies and Peppers ready for the start day on the system,the Tomatos germinated in four days,pic is on day five,only one type of Tom has started at the moment still waiting on the rest.

I tried planting six cubes of lettuce, double seeded them, not one sprouted in over two weeks. I'm having very poor germination right now on everything.... I was debating if it was just too hot because it had been in the 90s for a week straight..
Now it's cooled off 60s this week, greenhouse going between upper 60s and mid 70s now so will try some more and start some in paper towel and plastic bag at the same time to see if maybe my seeds just aren't any good.

Last Sunday I didn't post but I cleaned 17 tilapia, today I cleaned 15 more. I think that puts me at about 75 cleaned so far, so I think I should have someplace in the 25 to 50 range left in the tank.

another population check...

this is a bit of a long video, but it is the new lake just down the road from my house.... we finally dove it yesterday. not my best video, but I was able to edit it enough to make it OK... the colors were all messed up from using my gopro filter in too shallow of water so it washed the colors out and could barely see anything so it took me a while to figure out how to edit it in ways I've never done before to salvage it...