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3 weeks and no Nitrates

The image in this post shows a graph of my water tests over a three week period. I am doing a fish-less cycle. I thought I would have Nitrates by now. We did have quite a bit of rain last week and over night temperatures have dropped to the low 50's this week. Maybe these conditions have slowed the process a bit. Any feedback would be great....

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Permalink Reply by Doug Johnson on April 30, 2012 at 7:50am

Thanks TC.

TCLynx said:

Your plants are simply using the nitrates as fast as the system is able to produce them. Your nitrite is still high so you probably have a little longer with fishless cycling before I would recommend adding fish.

You need to wait out the nitrite spike just a bit more and then you want to be able to dose to between 1-2 ppm ammonia and have both ammonia and nitrite to be 0 within 24 hours, then you are "fishlessly cycled" keep dosing daily till a couple days before you put fish in since you want to be sure the ammonia and nitrite are back down before you put the fish in but you also want to keep your bacteria alive until you are ready to get the fish.

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Permalink Reply by Doug Johnson on April 30, 2012 at 7:51am

Thanks Jonathan.

Jonathan Kadish said:

Yeah TC, that is why I asked if there were plants in the system when we were seeing no nitrates... good call.

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Permalink Reply by Doug Johnson on May 1, 2012 at 7:46pm

Nitrates showed up this morning (5 to 10 ppm). I tested again this evening and they were almost completely gone! My Nitrites were at 2ppm this evening as well. I dosed up with some ammonia.

Is it normal to get a reading on Nitrates and then for it to drop to trace even if there are plenty of Nitrites to process?

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Permalink Reply by TCLynx on May 2, 2012 at 7:06am

It is just a matter of how fast your plants are able to use up the nitrates. You bacteria are still working hard to expand their colony to keep up so a little more patience is in order. Nitrites of 2ppm is still high and the bacteria is still building up.

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Permalink Reply by Doug Johnson on May 2, 2012 at 7:44am

I understand. The Nitrates are the byproduct and are being eaten up by my hungry plants. The bacteria that is doing the work has not grown enough to handle the load I am expecting. Being a Newbie, I was expecting a perfect graph of overlapping values. When it did not look that way in the short term I was already to analyze and react to some underlying glitch. So, slow and steady is the pace...

By the way let me know when all the smoke clears at your new place (It looks like a great location!). My boys are home-schooled (and now aquapons) and me and my wife would love to bring them over for visit if you are open for tours.

Thanks for the feedback

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Permalink Reply by TCLynx on May 2, 2012 at 5:42pm

Once we get moved I will definitely be open to give tours at least by appointment the way I always have and I may set up a regular day each month or week for tours as well. I now have a sign up for a newsletter on my site if you want to get the notices of things like that.

http://www.aquaponiclynx.com/

Doug Johnson said:

I understand. The Nitrates are the byproduct and are being eaten up by my hungry plants. The bacteria that is doing the work has not grown enough to handle the load I am expecting. Being a Newbie, I was expecting a perfect graph of overlapping values. When it did not look that way in the short term I was already to analyze and react to some underlying glitch. So, slow and steady is the pace...

By the way let me know when all the smoke clears at your new place (It looks like a great location!). My boys are home-schooled (and now aquapons) and me and my wife would love to bring them over for visit if you are open for tours.

Thanks for the feedback