Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I sprayed a large wasp nest today with poison and of course one of them flew across the yard and fell into the fish tank

So, Im in the process of doing a 100% water change. I am draining it half way and letting it refill at a trickle over a couple hours. Then I am going to do it again..


The gravel for my grow beds should be here next week. So I will be getting them set up.

After the water change the fish seem happy and playful.




I hope this will not set me back on my cycle. The fish are getting 3 meals today

did you use chlorine free / neutralized water for your water change?

Yes, I have well water.

The last test showed 0 ammonia, .25 nitrite, and almost 0 nitrate.

cool. For the record i just use straight tap water when topping up my system. the way i figure if my tap water has 1.0ppm of chlorine and i top up 10% of the water then the resultant chlorine level will be 0.1ppm.

For a new system though i'd ALWAYS suggest completely chlorine free water.

keep at it dan, you're getting there!

Probably not a practice I'd encourage others to follow Steve. Water companies have a habit of upping the amount of chlorine at times and also some have been known to change over to chloramine without telling users.

The fact that the fish do not die doen't mean that they have not been affected and may not become more susceptible to something else as a result. BTW - I used to follow the same practice with my aquarium.

Todays Test: pH 7.13

I age tap water for a few days before using it as we only have chlorine, but VB is trying to keep me awake worrying.

I started doing that Dave, but then I heard councils were changing over to chloramine, so decided to have a bottle of chlorine remover on hand...plus put in an AP rain water tank

Dave - find out whether your water mob uses ammonium. If not, then aging water like you are will do the trick - add a bit of aeration to speed up the process.

geeze, that reminds me of the other shit thing with chloramine...............its one step forward two steps back for HSM water changes in a newbie system becasue it breaks the CL-NH3 bond and leaves free ammonia

Good point, Steve. Maybe the thing to do is to test the ammonia level of tap water that has been de-chlorinated. Then know that it is only worth doing a water change if your system ammonia level is above that.

i'd say that on chloramine dosed systems you're going to get about 1ppm free ammonia.

I did call the water department supervisor guy about 4 months ago. If I think about it will call him again sometime soon and ask if they have any plans to switch over.

Todays Test: pH unchecked



I took the pic indoors so its hard to tell from the pic, but to me it looks like 0 ammonia, 0 nitrate, and 0 nitrate..

Whats going on?