Aquaponic Virgin, hobby level with beginners luck

[Jordan Semple]

Hi everyone, 

So after years of talking about it, i've finally gone and set up a small indoor aquaponic system. In true fashion i gleaned over a few websites over the years, then used the down time, while waiting for the internet and TV to be installed in our new place to go blindly into this new territory.

Once I had the use of the internet again, and consulted the 'rules of thumbs' i realised i have made some major errors, however saying that, one week in everything seems happy and not dead. Besides the two goldfish that didn't make the first two days.

So i've got a 100l tank with five remaining (and lively) goldfish. This is flooding into a 30l capacity growbed filled with 20mm gravel. This is draining back into the tank by means of a bell siphon.I'm growing indoors with the use of 125w compact fluorescent, which i might swap with a 250w HPS.

Some of my errors:

Growbed not as deep as recommended

Over crowding in the growbed

Pump is too large and therefore the flooding takes about 7 to 10 minutes

Didn't 'cycle' the system before, just put fish, media and plants from the nursery

Didn't wash media and soil ball of sufficiently with resulted in a emergency filter purchase.

I used Tetra Safe start to get the water ready for the fish (don't know if thats a mistake)

Saying all that, i think that the mistakes are working in favour of each other. i.e. the frequent flooding making up for the overcrowding and shallow growbed. Fish are lively, plants are looking healthy and some growth has even been noted.

A few questions though if anyone would be so kind.

The emergency filter has been running 24/7 for the whole week and has done the job of filtering the dirty media and remaining soil well enough, as well as adding extra oxygen. Is it possibly filtering too much fish waste, now that the water is clean, should i take the chance and turn it off and let the system recover and adjust?

After noting the fast flood time, i put the pump on a timer to run on 15min intervals, and off in the evening when my light is off. Sometimes the timer cuts out mid flood with the result that the media bed stays half full until the timer restarts the pump and the siphon then can drain. This hasn't seemed to have too much of a negative impact and i make sure the bed is fully drained before the lights go off at the end of the day. Should i maybe just leave the pump on all day and again get it used the the quick flood and drain cycle, or just switch to a smaller pump?

I also remember seeing somewhere a year or two, but haven't been able to find it since, about worm castings being sufficient feed for fish, is this true. I am a chef and hopefully the large scale version of this will be a selling point of my products, and the sustainability of feeding the system with my kitchen waste is highly appealing

I'm using this as a learning curve, and hope to go large scale in the back yard next summer with guttering, vertical and deep beds. 

Thanks for listening and any advice or help is much appreciated,

Also anyone else in SE London playing around with this?

Many thanks,

Jordan 

[Jim Troyer]

Hi Jordan

first off - the only rule is: there are NO rules! Yeah! 

Water depth is no big deal, that's mostly for the media bed folk and room for roots in a raft bed.  What are the physical dimensions of the grow bed,

Big flow is no big deal either. You can add a bleed off so a portion of the water returns to the tank by drilling a hole a section of tubing you insert in the pressure line so it sprays water back into the tank, this increases DO too.

Pump timer is okay too, try to keep the same resting depth, so you know it's not THE problem WHEN you have A problem.    I use a timer with a short and tall stand pipe (SP) in my raft setup, works similar to an ebb/flow cycle in a media bed.  The short SP is for when the pump is off (ebb) and the tall SP limits the maximum (flow) depth.  You will want a larger diameter tall SP to make sure the pump does not over flow your GB.  I use 1/2"(14mm) x 3"  and 1-1/2" (45mm) x 9"  pipes.  The pump runs for 1/2 hour and off for an hour (1.5 hour total cycle time) during daylight hours and only 3 - 30 minute times overnight.  Set your "full" depth 30 mm below the surface of the media to keep mold from growing on the surface (a bad thing).

I would leave the filter in place until after your system cycles, the beneficial bacteria will collect there, possibly first.  To speed up cycling you could add a bucket of stream or lake water to your system.

Watch your fish closely for signs of distress.  Check the chemical balance of the water daily, any cloudiness is a reason to be concerned until the system cycles.  Since you did not cycle your system, watch for ammonia (first) and then the nitrates and nitrites will all three spike.  All three may kill fish! Quickly...  All 3 will drop to zero when the system seasons.  Do a half water change when they spike; have lots of seasoned water standing by.  You may need to do a half change several days in a row, so fill the containers back up as soon as you use them.  You may need an air stone too

Castings are for the plants, not the fish.  Feed the fish 30-40% protein fish food, try to find a farm type feed store, get the 50 pound bag to save some major euros.  Discount stores are about 4 times the price of a feed store here in wild west Arizona, USA

There is a world map of aquapons, put yourself on there and check your neighbors (5th from the left on the green navigation bar at the top of this page).  You can also search the members by location

all the best

,

Jim

[annikan]

Jordan, 

Thanks for the post. I laughed so hard because i know now that i'm not the only one. I'm right there with you. It looks like we started at the exact same time and made about the same mistakes.. I had the additional mistake of clogging my return and overflowing my GB that FELL (yes, as in dropped from above) into my tank!!

I first just ran some tap water and dropped so poor fishes into in after it was aerated for a few days. RIP little fishy, I know what chloramine is. Apparently you can boil your water for 10 mins to get rid of it. 

Of course i didn't do that, I used tetra safe start which is a mistake (as the company said it may not be safe for food fish for consumable plants) to get rid of chlorine and chloramine. 

I also just replanted some rinsed off soil plants into the grow bed. Having no knowledge of the nitrogen cycle, I thought the plants would just feed on the nitrogen (apparently also true) and that the plants converted it into nitrate. *rolls eyes* So, i contaminated my system with soil that had fertilizer in it, among a multitude of other contaminates I don't want in my system. 

I also have more pump then system. so i also put it on a timer. and shut it off at night. the problem with that is that any good bacteria starting to grow on my hydroten will die each night because i let it dry out.

 My ph was 8 something and my nitrites where so dark purple they where off the scale. So, i went out and bought a regular fish tank to start again. 

I still used the tetra safestart. stuck in a few goldfish until i got some ammonia. I then pulled the goldfish out. I'm trying to let that few days of ammonia cycle. I now have nitrites and even some nitrates. I'm assuming that is good. 

I'm tearing down my old system and starting it again once i have some bacteria to use as a jump start. 

The good part in all this is that I changed my mind about PVC and i'm now building a PVCless system with fish tanks, and what appears to be safer, poly. It's a hybrid of NTF and DW with a upward spray in a series of poly satellites connected with more poly. very limited PVC usage. I know people are saying UV resistant PVC is safe, but I have my suspicions for long term intensely exposed to UV.