Adam Shivers

Welcome Adam,

 

I love "involuntary urban farmer"!

Thanks for joining the Aquaponic Gardening community!  I hope you find it a fun place to explore aquaponics.  There is a real blend of experienced and new aquapons in this community, so please don’t hesitate to get in there and start asking questions.  Everyone is quite happy to help out new members – no question is too basic.  

A great place to start is to read the “How to Use This Site” link on the upper right corner, “Start Here” section of the Main page.  You might also find the “Aquaponic Gardening Rules of Thumb” guidelines helpful.

Please add a profile photo, participate and check in with us every day!  We are constantly posting news about aquaponics and the good food movement.

Thanks again for joining us, and I look forward to getting to know you.

Sylvia

Wonderful!

Yes Adam we have met and yes thats my meetup groups chicken swap.  Just started to put more Coturnix quail in the incubator for the spring

I raised tilipia in a 55 gallon barrelponics system for almost 2 years with no tests. I had 15 or so tilipia, and was able to harvest numerous crops including green beans, basil, lettuce, and tomatoes.  I don't know how long you "primed the system", but if you don't push it hard there is no need for test if you just want a little fish and some produce.  My system was taken off the web (search barrelponics).  There is no reason you should not have success using your tank instead of a barrel.  In fact I never did a water change on purpose (since most of the time I left the water hose on to long since I have no attention span).  I used city water with no treatments on tilipia.  The best thing to do is build your fish population slowly at first, and then go all out.  Once the bacteria is there it takes little to no time to adjust to the new inputs.  Your grow bed might be just to small if it was a water quality issue, or it might be something totally unrelated.  I was using 55 gallons of grow bed to 55 gallons of fish, but I was using pea gravel as the bed.  The only difference between our systems besides the tank is the media. The only difference between the different media is that hydroton and pea gravel take up different amounts of space and the surface area for bacterial growth.  You might have run into problems(most likely not) from the plants not being able to uptake nitrates fast enough since the plants in your pictures seem small(if not seedlings). 

 

If your system is really new:

The most likely cause of the death is not cycling properly. 

 

Solution:

Keep running the thing.  In a few days add 5 fish.  Wait a 5-10 days and add some more.  Make sure you buffer to 80-120ppm alkalinity and hardness (baking soda) so that carbonic acid does not become an issue when you get closer to full capacity.  And for a cheaper way to kill fish, use feeder goldfish.  They are only 10-20 cents each.

Thank you for the welcome.  I am planning to get started putting my first system together in the next few weeks.  I have liked reading about your new system.