• Everything other than hot peppers. Questions, discussion, and grow logs. Cannabis grow pics are only allowed when posted from a legal juridstiction.

Aquaponic systems (let's experiment together!)

St. Lucia, huh. And you're actually going to go back to Nebraska from there???

I went with channel cat. I put twelve 3-5" fingerlings in the 275 g tote along with a couple dozen fathead minnows. Yellow perch, yum. I'd do that if I could--they're not legal to have in California. I've got zeroes on all forms of nitrogen--ammonia and nitrites (zero good) but also nitrates (zero bad). My plants have stopped growing and I probably won't get much out of them until the cats start to kick out more waste.
 
Sweet. I just got back today from St. Lucia and got caught up in this late winter storm. Where the hell is doing dammit!!! Anyway my cycling is coming along. Almost there. Haven't lost any of the feeder gold fish and nitrates are on the way down so my yellow perch will go in tonight. My friend is storing them for me and wants me to come get them tonight.

null_zpse4c35a50.jpg


It seemed when I was gone that they were over feeding the gold fish. I had to drain the sump which was full of uneaten decomposing food. The top of the fish tank was full of food also which I scooped out. My nitrates took a jump and nitrites went up to 1ppm but that should come down within a couple days now that the extra food is gone. Fish going in anyway. Will lightly salt to help them with the nitrites.
 
you might want to do a partial water change, especially if you're going to add the perch. They aren't going to be as forgiving as the goldfish.
 
I drained the sump and added about 35 gallons of fresh water into it. Didn't test it after that but the perch are in and we will see if they are alive tomorrow. I will slightly salt the system to help with nitrate tolerance.
 
I just threw 15 fat bullhead into my tank. I'm counting on having some real numbers on nitrates now that I have more significant fish biomass. Hope your perch make it.
My pH is up in the same range as yours--around 8.0. For the brief period in which I had nitrates, chinese mustard was the only thing that grew for me. Peppers and cucumbers did dismally--I think it was the pH. Now nothing is growing but that could be due to the absence of nitrates.
 
They claim as ammonias and nitrites drop to 0 and nitrates rise, the PH should get pushed towards the 6.0 range. I am banking on that!
 
My baby channel cats have ich, so I moved as many as I could catch (not easy in 275 gallons!) into a tub with salted water. Three have died so far. Still no nitrates. I think I'm going to hit the system with some Maxicrop to kick up the micronutrients, and maybe that will kick things into gear.
 
That sucks about the cats! I heard with ich, the whole FT will have to be treated. I hope you can save most of them. Did they catch it from the bullheads? Also what is your plan to get the PH down if it doesn't migrate downward on its own?
 
I'm pretty sure the channel cat were the source. I might go back to the seller to complain, but they were way out in the boonies--my body would probably disappear and never be found.

So far the bullhead look okay (I put them in after I saw signs of ich, though I didn't recognize it at the time).

As for pH, I had been adding acid (sulfuric acid and hydrochloric acid) daily for about three weeks with no measurable effect on pH, and I figured that was due to carbonate buffering. I just gave up, figuring that the greenleaf vegetables wouldn't be picky about pH for the AP garden's first year, which I hear is always kind of sketchy anyways. I understand that plants use up carbonates over the first year or so, and after that the pH tends to drop with the nitrification process. I bought a KH/GH test kit and it looks like my carbonates are relatively low, though general hardness is way up. Don't know what that entails--I would think magnesium and calcium would be a good thing to have in abundance for the plants.

On the positive side, I'm getting some (low) readings on nitrates now, and plant growth has picked up again, thanks to the bullheads!
 
Thats awesome. My nitrites jumped off the chart and so did nitrates. The fish are all alive though thankfully. The ammonia levels were way high but dropped down to 2 ppm today so the nitrite bacteria seem to be taking hold pretty good and just waiting for the nitrate bacteria to catch up and bring my nitrites down. Its amazing how fast the seedlings react to an excess of nitrates. Its like injecting them with steroids!
 
Ich was wiping everything out, and the salt alone wasn't working fast enough with the cooler temps that I had. I decided to kill off all fish and let it go fishless for a few weeks. According to what I've read ich doesn't persist for more than a few days without a fish host. 
On the bright side, I did more or less a complete water change (to get rid of the salt), cleaned out the tank, started dosing with ammonia and got nitrates up to perfect levels for the plants. I also goosed micronutes with Maxicrop.
The new problem is that some kind of caterpillar is mowing down my brassicas superfast. I think they're hiding in the gravel during the day, because I never get to see an actual worm.
I just got a wasabi plant today and I'm going to put it in my sump tank in a big net pot filled with gravel.
 
Well bad news. I found 4 dead fish today. Seems like my nitrites are spiralling out of control. My ammonia is still at 0 ppm and my nitrates have dropped from being off the scale to 40 ppm. Nitrites are off the scale and above the 8ppm max the kit shows I am sure. All 4 fish lost was Yellow perch and that leaves me with 9 yellow perch unless I lost more and just haven't found the carcasses yet. The goldfish seem to be fine though and I salted the system heavily with API aquarium salt to help prevent the nitrite from bonding to the gills of the fish. Used the recommended dosage of 1 tablespoon for every 5 gallons so I added 11 tablespoons to account for 55 gallons in the whole system although it has a bit more water than that. This is why some people do fishless cycling I guess.
 
Dang. Sorry. 
Nitrites at 8 ppm (or higher) is going to cause some damage, and from what I've read adding salt is something you need to do before nitrite intoxication. When I was adding salt, I used the calculation based on parts per thousand. I was shooting for 3 ppt, so that meant converting my gallons to liters (I had 1500), and figuring 3 grams per liter, or 4.5 kilos of salt--which is over ten pounds. I had added over half of that when I decided to kill and reboot.
BTW, my nitrite spike lasted for over two weeks from first reading to disappearing altogether. (3/30 to 4/16).
 
Well the day after added salt, my system seemed to just have completed cycling. I tested again today and ammonia and nitrites are zero and nitrates are 20 ppm. I thought it was weird and asked the gurus on the AP forum is the salt was affecting my system and they said no, cycling is just completing. I have lost no more fish and it all seems good except ph rose it 8.4 now and shows no signs of dropping. It is causing a nutrient lock out on my plants and they are growing horribly.
 
Not knowing anything about aquaponics, I assume there is a reason you can't put some acid in there to get the pH down?? 8.4 sure is high. 
 
7.8-8.6 is where the nitrifying bacteria like to be but after they are established the nitriticafion process should naturally bring the ph down. Plants like ph of 5.5-6.5 and fish like 6-7 I think so you want ph about 6.5 to balance between the fish preference and the plants preference.
I could buy some aquarium ph down but lowering it too fast can shock the fish and it could disrupt the biological balance and maybe kill the beneficial bacteria. The aquaponic guys on the forum are advising me against added chemicals to the system and keep telling me to sit back and wait a bit for it to drop.
 
I would say use the acid (sulfuric, phosphoric, hydrochloric--not acetic or citric) to get the pH down to 7.6-8.0, then sit back and wait. Bacteria will be fine. You can do this gently by acidifying the top-up water to pH 6 before adding it.
I'm still in a holding pattern waiting for a substantial quarantine period to pass before trying to add fish again. In the meantime I have a chorus of tree frogs using the sump and fish tank as their jam session studio every night. It's really loud.
 
Just an update, Dan. I got a new set of fish in, and the plants started to take off. I've been harvesting greens for the table abundantly. Fish are growing, too. I hope to keep this thing going through the winter.
970438_10151794329802329_1670274751_n.jpg
 
Wow yours is taking off!! My yellow perch are almost 5 inches now and nitrates are off the board. PH is now at 7.9 but still up there. I have been vigilant with my water changes and it is slowly taking the PH down. The plants are starting to finally grow and I replanted the grow beds after not paying much attention to them after my animal attack. My pepper plant and tomatoes took off running and the carrots, broccoli and lettuce are all germinating and growing better than before.
ImageUploadedByTapatalk1375206135.531231.jpg
ImageUploadedByTapatalk1375206151.752389.jpg
ImageUploadedByTapatalk1375206174.253309.jpg


I also moved the system into the sun and ditched the shaded area as I felt that the plants needed more light. That has helped a lot also.
 
nice! the pepper plant that I put in (the one that survived) is all of 5" tall (but it has a pepper on it!). didn't even try with tomato.
 
I have been adding iron chelate, too, and I think that helped once the plants got going. Fish growth increased dramatically when I cranked the protein content of their diet (with fresh anchovies). So much learned the first year, huh?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top