Could you chek my results?

[Fabrizio Borrello]

Hello everyone, I just set up my indoor aquaponics system.

Today I saw for the first time Nitrites to appear and almost in the same time the Nitrates go up to 20 ppm. This must be the sign that the system is 100% working, the Nitro-cycle is started.

As you can see in the link I posted above, I'm using LED lamps to provide almost 24 hours of continue light to my seeds, sprouts and little plants.

I'm feeding my gold fishes three times a day.

I added a CO2 supplier made with a glass container, where yeasts produce Carbon Dioxide, from here the gas is send to the venturi aerator.

My next step will be to produce compost tea, in this way I hope to be able providing all the elements necessaries to feed properly all my veggies.

I use lava rocks as growing media and I still have some issue to keep the Ph in the good range (6.8-7.0). In fact it tends to rise to 7.5.

The system started to cycle almost 2 weeks ago.

Do you know if this is normal?

I can see trace of mould around the tiny roots of my plants, what's wrong with them?

This is my last water analysis result:

Ph 6.8

NH4 1ppm

NO2 5ppm

NO3 20ppm

Fe 0.5ppm

PO4 1ppm

I'm using water supplied by my home osmosis system.

Could you please tell me if all is going well?

Thank you for your kind attention and your help and any further comment.

[Harold Sukhbir]

Hi Fabrizio,

Yes all is normal with your AP you'll be cycled very soon. You don't have to try to control the PH......as the bacteria establish themselves these values will decline on its own............and then you'll have to start buffering with a carbonate to maintain a desired level, but that's another story. As you may know, when you get a zero nitrite reading you have cycled. Using RO as source water means you'll have to be more vigilant with the monitoring of your PH levels as compared to the normal carbonate infused tap water. The mould may be due to excessive water/humidity or lack of air flow ( you can post some pics ) BTW what are your water temps?

[Tom OBrien]

You say you are feeding the fish three times a day? Goldfish are pretty hardy, but be careful not to feed them too much. I've had a fish get swim bladder problems from feeding too much.

Also, I'm not sure nearly 24 hours of light is desirable.

[Fabrizio Borrello]

Thanks Harold for your reply.

Well, I'm using 9 pots as grow beds with a capacity of almost 10 liters each. I filled them with lava rocks and every 25/30 minutes the discharge the water directly in the aquarium located under the grow beds.

Each grow bed has its discharge pipe connected to the others, in this way I satisfied the request of my wife, she ate to see to much pipes.

Here you can see a video that shows the system full working:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2i3uZvknOQ

I'm worried about the nitrite levels, they are above 5 ppm at moment, even though my gold fishes look great despite all this poison nitrite concentration in the water. I tried to change half of the aquarium water with fresh OR water, but the nitrite levels continue to stay above 5 ppm and out of the measurable range of my test water kit.

Stated what I see in my very short experience, the only thing I can do is to cross my fingers and hold on to the hope that my fishes will survive to this challenge.

I have almost 40 little fishes in my aquarium and they eat like crocodiles :D

Following some good advice, I reduced the feeding frequency from three time per day to only once and with half portion.

I just saw the ammonium/ammonia drop down to almost zero.

I have to say that in the mean time I have activated my new home made CO2 generator and it is keeping my Ph from 6.8 to 7.0, I am very proud of this tiny simply device.

I also saw increase the Nitrate value today, from 5ppm to 40ppm, this must means the nitrospira is finally activated, God bless this little creature :)

Harold Sukhbir said:

Hi Fabrizio,

Yes all is normal with your AP you'll be cycled very soon. You don't have to try to control the PH......as the bacteria establish themselves these values will decline on its own............and then you'll have to start buffering with a carbonate to maintain a desired level, but that's another story. As you may know, when you get a zero nitrite reading you have cycled. Using RO as source water means you'll have to be more vigilant with the monitoring of your PH levels as compared to the normal carbonate infused tap water. The mould may be due to excessive water/humidity or lack of air flow ( you can post some pics ) BTW what are your water temps?

[Fabrizio Borrello]

Hello aquaponics people, here my last update :D

I started to be an aquaponics gardener a few months ago, this is my first indoor application:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bsUAZClWw4
This system is located inside my kitchen, and it is working from almost 3 weeks. I have an aquarium that holds 120 liter of water connected to 10 pots of 10 liters each of capacity.
Almost 40 gold fishes are feeds only once a day, because I'm in the cycling fase and I'm trying to keep the nitrite level under treshold aceptable to my little hungry creatures.
I'm usind lava rocks a growing media, it is my first time with it, it is more heavy respect to the expanded clay I used in a previous application, but the Ph this time isn't driving me nut.
To maintein the Ph in a range from 6.8 to 7.0 I'm using a bioreactor feed by brewer's yeast, sugar and oxygen. It provides enough CO2 and thus Carbonic acid to lower the Ph of my water that otherwise it tends to rise above 7.4.
I'm also use 10 growing led laps of 10Watts each as source of light, they are switched on every nigth from 7 pm until the morning at 7 am.
Each pots is equipped with a peace of pipe and an IKEA glass as bell siphon, I conncted all the outled of each sipnoh togheter, to reduce the overall pipe quantities and to improve the looks of this system.
At the and of the mai discarging line I put an home made silencer to reduce almost to zero the noise during the discharging fase.
This is the reading of my water's chemical values:
ph 6.8
ammonium/ammonia 0ppm
nitrite 10ppm
nitrate 40ppm
Fe+ 5ppm
PO4 2ppm
gh 9 French degrees
kh 6 French degrees
I haven't DO meter but so I don't know its concentration, but I seted up the system to have a huge inlet of oxygen. Infact I'm using the 90% of the pump's water flow connected to a Venturi effect areator, that is connected to my CO2 bioreactor. Even every discarge line has a tiny hole that it exploits the venturi effect, to suck in air in the pipe and mix it with water. You can see the water contiusly full of water bubbles. I estimed that every hours the air flux puped in the water is approximately 200/300 liters. I never saw my fishes gasp on the water surface, so I believe that the oxygen flow plus the chemical values of the water (gh/kh) guarantee a good rate of Dissolved Oxygen.
Each pot or grow bed, as you prefer to call it, hold red worms.
I just inserted a new element inside my ecosystem: a compost tea unit. It provides a wide range of elements to feed my plants, preventing a lack of some nutrient.
It is made of a plastic conteiner that holds expanded clay, compost and red worms, a little aquarium, an air stone and a water pump.
Here the red worms heat the compost producing worm casting, the pump pumps water in the ponteiner once a day and drain the casting out in the aquarium, here the air stone, connectd to the electric main areator, injects air inside the water to maintein an high treshold of DO and to allow bacterias and other little living forms to decompose this organic mater in elementary elements for the plants. It is just a reply of what happend in nature, but with a little bust and help.
Thank you for your priceless attention, please fell free to ask or comment, I will appreciate it a lot.
Greeting from Italy.

[TCLynx]

The only real danger to your system is with the high levels of feeding you were giving early on that you caused a really high nitrite level.  High nitrite can be very bad for the fish and it can damage their gills and give them brown blood disease.  While it might not be strictly accurate, I like to compare nitrite poisoning in fish to carbon monoxide poisoning in air breathers like us.  See the nitrite hooks up with the blood depriving the fish of oxygen and can cause death.

During initial system cycle up it is generally wise to limit the amount of fish and how much you feed them if you want to be assured of keeping them alive long term.  To cycle up completely is generally a 6 week process.  You might get past the initial ammonia and nitrite spikes in about 3-4 weeks though.

I see your Iron level is up over 5 ppm.  If you are adding any Iron supplement, you can probably stop or ease off since an Iron level of 2-3 ppm should be adequate.

I don't understand your units for kh and gh.  kh of 40 ppm is good for aquaponics.

Try to resist turning your aquaponics system into a chemistry experiment by adding too many things.  Remember you are trying to encourage a natural ecosystem in your containers.  Aquaponics is very different from hydroponics since in aquaponics we have fish and bacteria in addition to our plants to worry about.  I worry a little about supplementing CO2 into the system water since bubbling CO2 in is going to displace some of the oxygen and if you are only bubbling in CO2 and not atmosphere then bubbling the CO2 into your water may turn into something like shutting a person into a sealed room with dry ice.  The plants may want the CO2 but they would prefer it in the air around the leaves during daylight hours rather than in the water.  Plants like lots of dissolved oxygen in their water (plants can thrive at even higher levels of dissolved oxygen in the water than the fish can.  Super oxygen saturation of the water can kill fish but plants seem to be able to handle it up to a point.  FYI you can't super saturate oxygen into the water just by bubbling atmosphere into the water at normal atmosphere and fish tank pressures.)

[Fabrizio Borrello]

Hi, thank you very much for your priceless advices.

This is my second attempt with aquaponics and my first time with indoor application.

Water chemical values now are fine, nitrite drop to 0ppm, so the cycle time is ended.... I guess.

I receive some notice about the lighting, who saw my last video told me that plants look not so good, because the lack of light.

At present moment the system is running with 10 LED lamps (red and blue spectrum) of 10Watts each, I use them as supplement because they can reach the light directly from the sun.

Which signs I can see on my plants that it show they are suffering the lack of light?

I'm adding Iron to the system and I am keeping its threshold about 1 ppm, if I go above the value the water became "foggy".

I'm planning to build 4 meters squares of heliostats, to supply more light to my indoor ecosystem. What do you thing about?

TCLynx said:

The only real danger to your system is with the high levels of feeding you were giving early on that you caused a really high nitrite level.  High nitrite can be very bad for the fish and it can damage their gills and give them brown blood disease.  While it might not be strictly accurate, I like to compare nitrite poisoning in fish to carbon monoxide poisoning in air breathers like us.  See the nitrite hooks up with the blood depriving the fish of oxygen and can cause death.

During initial system cycle up it is generally wise to limit the amount of fish and how much you feed them if you want to be assured of keeping them alive long term.  To cycle up completely is generally a 6 week process.  You might get past the initial ammonia and nitrite spikes in about 3-4 weeks though.

I see your Iron level is up over 5 ppm.  If you are adding any Iron supplement, you can probably stop or ease off since an Iron level of 2-3 ppm should be adequate.

I don't understand your units for kh and gh.  kh of 40 ppm is good for aquaponics.

Try to resist turning your aquaponics system into a chemistry experiment by adding too many things.  Remember you are trying to encourage a natural ecosystem in your containers.  Aquaponics is very different from hydroponics since in aquaponics we have fish and bacteria in addition to our plants to worry about.  I worry a little about supplementing CO2 into the system water since bubbling CO2 in is going to displace some of the oxygen and if you are only bubbling in CO2 and not atmosphere then bubbling the CO2 into your water may turn into something like shutting a person into a sealed room with dry ice.  The plants may want the CO2 but they would prefer it in the air around the leaves during daylight hours rather than in the water.  Plants like lots of dissolved oxygen in their water (plants can thrive at even higher levels of dissolved oxygen in the water than the fish can.  Super oxygen saturation of the water can kill fish but plants seem to be able to handle it up to a point.  FYI you can't super saturate oxygen into the water just by bubbling atmosphere into the water at normal atmosphere and fish tank pressures.)

[TCLynx]

to recognize that plants are not getting enough light.  Look for leggy plants that seem to be getting tall with not many leaves like they are stretching looking for the sun.  They tend to flop over too.  Reds or purples will be pail or non existent with lack of light.  for instance in my greenhouse that doesn't get enough light, the red lettuce is pretty much green and the plants tend to be floppy and pail.

I'm planning to build 4 meters squares of heliostats, to supply more light to my indoor ecosystem. What do you thing about?

I don't know much about lighting since I use the sun here in Florida.

If your iron is clouding the water..... Hum what type of iron is it?  If system pH is too high, the plants have trouble taking up iron and chelated iron should be used to make it more plant available.

[Fabrizio Borrello]

ok, now I understand which signs can show me the lack of lighting, thank you so much.

Here you can see some heliostat working.

Do you have any good advice for indoor lighting? I think that I waste my money buying those LED lamps.

I'm using liquid chelated iron 5% , I give it to my plants once a day, until I reach the threshold of 2ppm (about 8 ml for 120 liters of water). My Ph is stable between 6.8 and 7.0, thank to my yeast bioreactor.

I think I made a mistake, I added some red worm in the grow beds, now I'm seeing some plants dying. Their roots seem to be ate. I have to remove those monsters before they will destroy my plants.

I followed the book's instruction

TCLynx said:

to recognize that plants are not getting enough light.  Look for leggy plants that seem to be getting tall with not many leaves like they are stretching looking for the sun.  They tend to flop over too.  Reds or purples will be pail or non existent with lack of light.  for instance in my greenhouse that doesn't get enough light, the red lettuce is pretty much green and the plants tend to be floppy and pail.

I'm planning to build 4 meters squares of heliostats, to supply more light to my indoor ecosystem. What do you thing about?

I don't know much about lighting since I use the sun here in Florida.

If your iron is clouding the water..... Hum what type of iron is it?  If system pH is too high, the plants have trouble taking up iron and chelated iron should be used to make it more plant available.

[TCLynx]

It is highly unlikely that the red worms are causing the problem for your plants.  Composting worms don't actually eat plant roots, at least not living ones.  Worms actually slurp up the goop that things turn into as they decompose.  It is bacteria that actually breaks down the roots so the worms can slurp them up.

If something is eating off the roots, you might look into other possible pests, like fungus gnat larva.  Have you noticed any fungus gnats around the system?

As to lighting, go to the artificial lighting group and ask some people who actually know their stuff.  LED lighting hasn't quite caught up to the curve yet and so far from most experts I know, they are not functional on their own, you still need additional bright fuller spectrum of light to really get the plants to thrive.  Some form of high intensity discharge (HD) light is gonna be needed if you are growing any taller plants.  Something like Metal halide or high pressure sodium or combination thereof depending on what you want to grow.  If only growing lettuce, then you might get away with lots of florescent tubes placed really close to the plants but then that blocks all natural light and you have to replace the tubes every 6 months to get good growth.

[Fabrizio Borrello]

I think the worms cause the dying of my plants just because after their introduction into the system, I saw plants fall down without life. I still see my plants dying.
My theory is that they are eating roots due to the lack of food, the system is not so mature, it started run 5 weeks ago, so it doesn't produce enough fish poop to feed worms.

I will try with natural light reflected to my plans with mirrors mounted on an heliostat, I hope it will work.

For the moment thank you very much for your interesting advices.

TCLynx said:

It is highly unlikely that the red worms are causing the problem for your plants.  Composting worms don't actually eat plant roots, at least not living ones.  Worms actually slurp up the goop that things turn into as they decompose.  It is bacteria that actually breaks down the roots so the worms can slurp them up.

If something is eating off the roots, you might look into other possible pests, like fungus gnat larva.  Have you noticed any fungus gnats around the system?

As to lighting, go to the artificial lighting group and ask some people who actually know their stuff.  LED lighting hasn't quite caught up to the curve yet and so far from most experts I know, they are not functional on their own, you still need additional bright fuller spectrum of light to really get the plants to thrive.  Some form of high intensity discharge (HD) light is gonna be needed if you are growing any taller plants.  Something like Metal halide or high pressure sodium or combination thereof depending on what you want to grow.  If only growing lettuce, then you might get away with lots of florescent tubes placed really close to the plants but then that blocks all natural light and you have to replace the tubes every 6 months to get good growth.

[TCLynx]

I've heard that mirrors are not good for getting more usable light to the plants.  If you can do a reflective film like mylar that might be more effective.

Perhaps you introduced something else with the worms that affected the plants.  If you want to feed the worms, you can,  bury a washed banana peal in the media so the worms will get something to eat and the system will get some extra potassium.

[Fabrizio Borrello]

Thanks, I will look what is the cause of this problem

TCLynx said:

I've heard that mirrors are not good for getting more usable light to the plants.  If you can do a reflective film like mylar that might be more effective.

Perhaps you introduced something else with the worms that affected the plants.  If you want to feed the worms, you can,  bury a washed banana peal in the media so the worms will get something to eat and the system will get some extra potassium.