starting a cycling when you have Well water

[Tazz]

ive been reading all about what you would need to do when you would  controled water like if you would live in a city where there would be all kinds of chemicals added to it for safety reasons. But i havent read anything about if you would have well water which i do have. Any and all info would be Great thanks Tazz

[TCLynx]

Just do some testing to learn what your well water is like to start with.

I have well water from a limestone aquifer so it starts out with a high pH and a fair bit of buffering capacity.

Test your water for ammonia, nitrite and nitrate as well as pH so you know your baseline.

But know that the pH reading of water just drawn from the tap will be inaccurate.  You need to let the water sit out overnight or even bubble it to get rid of the trapped CO2 then test the pH again to get a more accurate reading of what you will be starting with.

 

If you will be dealing with really high pH water to start, you might want to adjust that with acid before you actually start cycling and this could take several doses of acid to get the pH to stay down.  You only need to get it down into the mid 7 range somewhere as the bacteria will bring it down more in time.  I think 7.2-7.6 makes a fine starting range but I even cycled my first few systems up with water starting at 8.2 and the natural bacterial action brought the pH down just fine on it's own.  I cycle up systems fishlessly so I don't need to worry about the high pH and the ammonia killing fish during cycling.

[matthew ferrell]

Another consideration besides the ones listed above is supersaturated gases such as nitrogen and Co2, or a lack of Oxygen in the ground water.  There also could be elements you do not wish such as Mg, S, Fe (found very often in the wll water in Al).  While some of these might not cause issues with the health of you fish directly, they can cause several issues with maintenance.  An easy fix to most of this is a degasing tower which will both oxygenate and degass, as well as let the heavier elemnts such as iron fall out of solution.

 

Bottom line:  If you drink the water, it should be safe to use.  Cycle it just as any other water source.

[TCLynx]

I'd actually like it if my well water had some more Iron in it.

Anyway, the degassing tower or just simply spraying the water into the system in a way that will help aerate it is often a good idea with any incoming water.  Don't forget the hose timer though since forgetting the hose is on and doing inadvertent water changes is usually not good.  I use float valves for top ups.

 

Many people who are on city water that is treated with chlorine can keep a barrel with a bubbler to help outgass the chlorine before using it to top up the system.

[matthew ferrell]

The last place I worked at had so much iron it was a daily cleaning job to remove the red. 

[TCLynx]

LOL, I remember describing the water at the place I grew up was like showering with rusty calcium bricks.  I hated it, it was so bad my hair would turn orange instead of blond in the summer.  (Just not sure what I can blame the gray on now)

Every place is different and running some tests and paying attention to what sort of water stains you get in your bath can tell a lot.  Rusty stains under the faucets will tell one thing while lime scale tells another.

 

Luckily the plants will use up some Iron provided the pH doesn't lock it out.

[Tazz]

Hi TC just got to read this and thanks for your info. How would i go about testing for this nitrite and nitrate? i understand the difference between them one is bad for your fish n the other is good. Oh and i read somewhere that you could start the cycling process if you had acess to a pond or an establist aqurium that you could get rock or something like that and put it unto your tank. that all ready has fish in it to get the bacteria to start. I have such a place here on my property. There is catfish bluegill and bass in it. Could i use rock from it to start?   

TCLynx said:

Just do some testing to learn what your well water is like to start with.

I have well water from a limestone aquifer so it starts out with a high pH and a fair bit of buffering capacity.

Test your water for ammonia, nitrite and nitrate as well as pH so you know your baseline.

But know that the pH reading of water just drawn from the tap will be inaccurate.  You need to let the water sit out overnight or even bubble it to get rid of the trapped CO2 then test the pH again to get a more accurate reading of what you will be starting with.

 

If you will be dealing with really high pH water to start, you might want to adjust that with acid before you actually start cycling and this could take several doses of acid to get the pH to stay down.  You only need to get it down into the mid 7 range somewhere as the bacteria will bring it down more in time.  I think 7.2-7.6 makes a fine starting range but I even cycled my first few systems up with water starting at 8.2 and the natural bacterial action brought the pH down just fine on it's own.  I cycle up systems fishlessly so I don't need to worry about the high pH and the ammonia killing fish during cycling.

[TCLynx]

Tazz,

  You will want an aquarium Master Test kit so you will be able to test pH, ammonia, nitrite and nitrate.

Test Kit

The ammonia and nitrite are bad for fish and the nitrate is not so bad and it is what the plants want.  You might want to read about fishless cycling too.

http://www.aquaponiclynx.com/fishless-cycling

As to seeding your system with bio-filter bacteria.  I don't know how effective some rocks from a natural lake or pond will be.  Normally what people want is some mature gravel or some filter squeezings from a mature aquaponics system or aquarium.  Now that won't do you any good unless you have an ammonia source for the bacteria to start working on converting.  The bacteria is ever present and will colonize a system without you needing to seed it.  I used a small hand full of worm castings from my worm bins along with several worms in each of my grow beds to kick start my system for fishless cycling.  Worms are a good source of all sorts of great bacteria and my systems cycled up fairly quickly without using any media from an aquarium or anything like that other than the small fist of worm castings.  (No one else in my area was doing aquaponics yet when I started.)

[Tazz]

hi what do you mean when you are talking worm castings?  any type of worm  would do like what i can dig up in my yard? Im due for some wet weather here the next few days

TCLynx said:

Tazz,

  You will want an aquarium Master Test kit so you will be able to test pH, ammonia, nitrite and nitrate.

Test Kit

The ammonia and nitrite are bad for fish and the nitrate is not so bad and it is what the plants want.  You might want to read about fishless cycling too.

http://www.aquaponiclynx.com/fishless-cycling

As to seeding your system with bio-filter bacteria.  I don't know how effective some rocks from a natural lake or pond will be.  Normally what people want is some mature gravel or some filter squeezings from a mature aquaponics system or aquarium.  Now that won't do you any good unless you have an ammonia source for the bacteria to start working on converting.  The bacteria is ever present and will colonize a system without you needing to seed it.  I used a small hand full of worm castings from my worm bins along with several worms in each of my grow beds to kick start my system for fishless cycling.  Worms are a good source of all sorts of great bacteria and my systems cycled up fairly quickly without using any media from an aquarium or anything like that other than the small fist of worm castings.  (No one else in my area was doing aquaponics yet when I started.)

[TCLynx]

Worm castings would actually be worm poop

 

The type of worms most people add to their aquaponics beds are composting worms since night crawlers are less likely to stay in an aquaponics system since they like to make nice long burrows to stay anchored in.  But if your location has been populated by red wrigglers or some other type of good composting worm, you might be able to find some in your yard.  I would suggest wetting an area of soil and putting down some wet leaves and/or wet corrugated cardboard and covering it up with something to help keep it moist and in a few days you might find some worms have come to colonize for you to collect.  Some worm food to sprinkle in the area might also help attract them like used coffee grounds or even some corn meal sprinkled under the wet leaves or cardboard.

 

Or if you have any friends with worm bins (ala "worms eat my garbage") you might be able to sweet talk them into giving you a few small hand fulls of castings (which are likely to contain cocoons that will hatch worms in the future for you.)

[matthew ferrell]

From a biosecurtiy stand point you would not want to start from rocks out in a pond.  However unlikely, the chance of seeding you tank with parasites and bacteria is a real possibility.  My whole system is run on a flow through spring system, and even then I have parasite issues from time to time thanks to passing birds and mammals.

 

Cycling doesn't take that long.  Just get you a bottle of ammonia from the store, pour it in, and wait a few days.  If you are cheap like me, a pet store can cover the fish few of cycling test.  While you wait for the cycling, you can start your plants.

[TCLynx]

A little caution on the bottle of ammonia.  Make sure it has no fragrances or detergents in it, you want the clear stuff that doesn't suds up when you shake it.

 

Also, a whole bottle of ammonia will be way too much for all but the very large systems.  You only need to bring the ammonia level up a little bit to get the cycling process started.  I usually only dose up to 1-2 ppm of ammonia.  Some people have advocated dosing up to 5 ppm for the first dose but if you get much higher than that, the ammonia if too high can actually inhibit the process.

 

And if you are really cheap and not squeamish, there is always pee ponics to cycle up.  I usually recommend sealing some of the pee in a bottle for a few weeks to let the enzymes in it naturally convert the urea into ammonia (or Humonia as I call it) before actually using it to dose the system since dosing with fresh pee will not give you an immediate ammonia reading and it is easy to over dose that way.  (Sealing it in a bottle to let the urea convert to ammonia also has the benefit of killing things like e-coli which might otherwise be an issue.)