Comment

Comment by TCLynx on February 22, 2012 at 4:23pm

Michael, is the system cycled up yet or not?

If the system is not yet cycled, you are going to have to get through cycling which means you will be subjecting your fish to unhealthy levels of ammonia and nitrite or you will be doing water changes daily which will greatly slows the cycling process.

I would say go ahead and salt the system unless you are planning to do water changes daily if the nitrite gets up.

Comment by Michael Welber on February 22, 2012 at 4:12pm

Let me ask the question a different way. I have fry that have been in the tank two weeks and have grown to about 3 inches. What level of nitrites can they tolerate. I added about 20 gallons of water and that brought the levels down to under .5 and the ammonia is fine -- about .25. I have ordered a stronger pump because the current one, which pumps at 700 is  not getting the poop out of the fish tank effectively enough (300 gallons). So at what level of nitrites should I worry. 

Comment by TCLynx on February 22, 2012 at 3:40pm

Michale, might be worth you starting a discussion thread and tell us the following about your system,

How new is it?

Have you already cycled?  Fishless or with fish?

What do all your water tests say?

How big is the system?

What sort of filtration? (flood and drain gravel or Raft or What?)

How much filtration?

What is the pumping schedule/flow rate?

How many fish?  How big?

Then describe the problem and anything about the timeline you can.

Salting to 1 ppt can help mitigate nitrite toxicity to an extent, here is a blog post with some details about salting (amount/what kind.)

Comment by Michael Welber on February 22, 2012 at 11:59am

My nitrites are going up a bit. Up to .5 this a.m. from, basically, 0. I added some more water to the fish tank and that helped. Anything else I should do? Sylvia's book suggests non-iodized salt. 

Comment by TCLynx on February 22, 2012 at 11:00am

There is an off grid group that might have more in depth advise for those trying to do solar and other such things

Off Grid Group

Comment by Michael Welber on February 22, 2012 at 9:56am

Rolls batteries are the best out there. Pricey but worth it. 

Comment by Heidi Burrows on February 22, 2012 at 9:49am

Hi Kim - I am def interested in a stand alone solar powered system as well - As we run both an ebb/flow and NFT out of our system and I worry that if the power goes out we have no way to cycle the water.  We have been researching to find the best for the most reasonable price.  Do you have any suggestions?  We also would like to be as off grid as possible so a system that can operate the pumps would make our eco-system be very eco friendly!  Also does anyone have suggestions on deep cell batteries to run a 12v system? - again we are looking for cost factors - most bang for the buck.  Thanks!

Comment by TCLynx on February 22, 2012 at 9:02am

No the kiddie pool for the duckweed didn't work out very well, and not really sure why.  I've got lots of duckweed in the raft bed/turned into pond plant bed with towers hanging over it now.  That bed has water flow through it and air stones so the idea that duckweed needs still water is not entirely true.  It needs some sort of still water but does far better with some aeration and flow.

Comment by Sheri Schmeckpeper on February 22, 2012 at 7:07am

My understanding is the hard sided kiddie pools are safe; I know they're commonly used. The softer sided pools (liners, inflatables, etc.) can be risky.

Comment by Michael Welber on February 22, 2012 at 4:43am

Has the kiddie pool in which you are growing duck weed worked out OK? I am concerned about the off-gassing of chemicals from those pools. 

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