HELP!!!! No Nitrates

[Christine]

We have had our aquaponics system for about 8 months and everything was running beautifully...

until I forgot to turn the water off the sump tank and threw everything off. We are in a greenhouse with 3 tanks and about 40 fish between them that feed into 4 4x8 media beds. The beds had several tomato plants flourishing along with cucumbers, kale, swiss chard, lettuce and celery at the time along with one HUGE cherry tomato plant/tree! Well, it has been well over a month now and I cannot get our nitrates up.....they are literally at zero!!! I have added seaweed etc and still nothing. Now we have lost a couple fish and it appears that their poop and stuff is not leaving their tanks so I am wondering if that is possible and what should I do to remedy this. This weekend I am planning on cleaning out tanks but I should be getting some nitrate reading not zero and I should not be seeing all of the crap in their tanks.....Anyone have any advise????? it would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,

Christine

[Rob Tolette]

Hi Christine,

What are your ammonia, nitrite, pH, and temperature readings at?  Did you recently change out a large volume of your water?  This could have damaged your bacteria if the water was untreated.