Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Steve,
You have posted a lot of information in the "useful information" area about PH, nitrites and nitrates etc.

What would you recommend for a fast and efficient test kit. I am not interested in the PH test kits that get you to compare a colour chart to your sample and guess your PH. I am more interested in an electronic test kit if one exists that isn't too expensive.

However given how much you have spoken about the right levels of everything, I have also seem comments by you and others that would imply you don't really need to do a lot of testing etc.

Anyway I am off to the pet shop tomorrow to get some feeder fish to put in an aquarium until I get the rest setup so if I haven't heard anything I will check with them.

Cheers
FJ

Sorry if i was ambiguous Fizzj. For the record I am a tester

Just don't want to make people think that if you don't test your water everything will die.

I'll list some things that i believe very strongly.

1) the smaller you fish tank volume the more you should think about testing. Example pour a cup of white vinegar into a 50 litre aquarium and you can bet your socks the PH will probbably drop to 5 or less. Do the same in a swinning pool and you won't even register a change. Get my point?

2) Some of the hardier fish will tolerate extreme ammonia before dying, however realsie that dying is the simple solution. Imagine a child raised in an environment where the air burnt their lungs and reduced the oxygen carrying capability of their bloood. (ammonia and nitrite to fish) They might not die, but i bet ya that they wouldn't live as long or as healthy. Fish diseased almost always occur when their immune system is low becasue of stressful conditions.

I have said that i prefer to test vigerously during the cycling of a new system, especially if i have more fish that what i would like.

Not saying you have to, the choice is up to you.

Also be aware of the sliding toxicity scale of ammonia depending on water PH.

Regarding "colour change tests" AM bought a $25 ph meter. I'm a techy, i love digital stuff, but i'm also an instrument technician. Realise that an instrument is only as accurate as its last calibration check (and for cheap stuff thats regularly). Colour change test will be right all day every day.

I don't find the ph tests i have to be too hard to work out, i've scanned them below. Ammonia can be close for the first two levels, nitrite is dead easy and the second half of nitrate is really bad, but unless you want to spend $1500 each on a specific ion probe then that will have to do ya

All said and done, when both my aquariums and aquaponics systems became stable i don't ever check for ammonia or nitrites, the results will ALLWAYS be zero. I might check PH once a month, buit thats after i learned how to buffer with sea shells.

How ever, if i check my aquaponics tank which i don't have the long term PH buffer in and find it anywhere near 6.5 you bet i will test ammonia and nitrite, becasue i know what an effect PH can have on the whole thing.


Steve

I've scanned all my test kit colour charts incase people wanted a look.

As i said;

the nitrite one is easy

The nitrate one is useless after about half way (but this is not a critical parameter, its just nice to know when we have a cartain level of plant nutrient)

The ammonia one is sort of ok, first two can be a bit hard, but from 0.5 to 1.0 are discernable

Hmm, don't look to hard to me, better get some I reckon and start practicing on the goldie tank. Would be interesting to test it considering I have never used one before and nothing has died in this batch... touch wood!

Monya, i think your secret is sticking to the low fish/litre rule for cycling.

I still saw define peaks with the 35 perch in the 1000L tank, but just at the level before i would change out water.

Where as when i had 29 perch in the 200lt aquarium the scary point was every day where i would change out 80% water. I tend to buy stuff like 40 perch from 1200kms away and then go "oh.....hmmm......now where i gonna put them "

LOL, a fine linehas to be drawn between getting lots of fish at a good price or getting a few dear ones that will actually have a properly prepared home rather than a water filled coffin!

I calibrate it every second or third use now - no sense in taking unnecessary risks - I also us the old colour chart system to double check once a week (I am paranoide abouut loseing some of my fish!

I have seen permanent ph instruments used in industry (4-20mA jobs that feed into a control system) in things like gold leeching. They are notoriously inaccaurate, even with weekly or daily calibration, and expensive to boot. Steve probably knows more about it than me, but I think some of them need flushing. eg. They sit it little tank that is flushed with fresh water of known ph, then drained and filled with what you want to measure. Unless your churning out fishies of solid gold, not really an option.
Does tap water vary in ph significantly? Could you use this to calibrate a cheap hand held meter, rather than compare to a chart testing system?

I grabbed a tester kit the other day, I think it is the same as the one you have Steve, the colour charts are identical to your scans. (I just happened to be passing an aquarium shop and couldn't resist the urge to have a look)

Everything was A.O.K when I tested my water at home. ph somewhere between 7.2 and 7.6, ammonia and nitrites were at very low levels and the nitrates were up to the 2nd-3rd colour bar, so all looks good.

The kit was a little pricey at $59, but it reckons there will be 700 tests worth of indicator in all the bottles so it should last me a while.

Simon

AM ( ): How is the calibration when you check it? is it far out? which buffer soution are you using?

B2B: As far as industry prices go $500 or so hould get you a half decent PH probe and meter. The one used in the gold leeching are probably flushed to to being put through their paces with harsh chems, many process line units that are in "tame" solutions i don't think need this treatment and are quite accurate, industry has become demanding. I'll try and get my mate (ssgem76) to post here tonight. (will be my excuse to get him to stop working so late and get him addicted here I left the process control scene 6 years ago and he stayed on and is now a system intergrator with his finger on the industries pulse

S77 Glad you went that option (not dissing the $25 probe AM (well, actually i am, but its fine if you keep checking the accuracy.

S77 what day / week is your system at, have you posted a blow by blow in the systems thread yet?

B2B, Buffer solutions are fairly cheap and last forever. nice easy way to chech the probe, i think AM "borrowed" some

AA??? cant be talking to me.....

since the initial calabration it has only been 0.3 out .... used a 7.0 and 5.0 buffer from the school lab (no idea what it is made of)

Will do tomorrow, been busy today with work and some more playing tonight with auto-syphons - ingenious but infuriating until you get them just right... I just looked at the clock and noticed I've spent the past 3 and a half hours playing around with 3 syphons. (and I'm still not certain they are 100% reliable, am waiting for the system to drain completely now before 1 final cycle for the night)

I think we all experience this strange event - as soon as we realy get involved in some part of aquaponics on our systems, time is accelerated! What feels like a few minutes turns out to be a number of hours - have landed in deep poo poo a few times with the missus because I dissapear to my system for "hours" on end, but ifyou ask me it was just a few minutes....

My fishtanks tend to go through 6 weeks of iffy conditions, after that if there is a good bacterial colony in the filter i don't bother checking, haven't pH checked my 6 foot tank for over 3 years and i have only lost fish through aggression and old age.

It's more important to do thorough pH checks on your tap water, over time, to give you an impression of how it comes out of the tap. Once your fish conditon to your tap water you need to change very little.

Here in Newcastle my tap water is slightly hard and has a pH of 7.2--7.5 perfect for most of my fish.

I do howe ver keep bumble-bee obies, they are a dwarf goby from indonesia, and like soft acid, brackish water. so i add a few sponfulls of salt after every waterchange (i use my homebrew hydrometer to check SG) and to soften and acidify the water i use the toe of a stocking with a little peat moss and gravel (to avoid clogging) (B-word, $3.50 for 5kg)

SImily it seems that alot of you use sea shells to harden and buffer the pH up so i assume your W.A water is slightly soft/acid. Another alternative (though a little more pricey) is coral sand, it's great for packing into filter for suface area and also slowly breaks down to buffer the water. This stuff is used most often by african cichlid keepers as the rift lakes (where some tilapia come from) are very hard/alakali (upto pH 8.5)

I seem to have lost track of point somewhere there...?

Anyhoo, i think i mean, i prefer to buffer pH with solids (peat, seashells, shell grit, etc) than by checking and adding pH up and pH down. As too extreme a change in pH, to quickly is just as bad for your fish as the ammonia and nitrates.

Another lont term problem that comes from exposure to high ammonia levels is that the gills of he fish are burnt and even when this is remedied the fish's gills remain permanently damaged, a good indicator of this is fish with exagerated breathing or white/discoloured gill membranes.