I got skunked tonight.  Not even a bite.

I did pick up some crayfish/crawfish.  There are hundreds upon hundreds of them all along the shoreline.  There are some very large ones but I stuck with these small ones.  They are good at cleaning up any uneaten food at the bottom and I have to admit I had forgotten about them until seeing them tonight.  I know the posters at Backyard Aquaponics talk about raising and eating them:



I transplanted my first Swiss Chard plant.  I'm thinning out the ones I have in the ground so I figure I'll just transplant the extras into the grow bed:



The grow bed has just enough pea gravel since the top of it stays dry and the water  rises to within 1" or so of the top.  



This is how I reinforced the sides of the grow bed. Yeah, it looks terrible, but it works very nicely.  I know, I know, I have to change out the tubing and deal better with the algea.  I actually raise Daphnia and I was thinking about putting them in the sump tank since they are very efficient at removing algea.



Completely unrelated, I've just started keeping chickens 2 weeks ago.  I'm really excited about them.  I got some free 1 year-old ones from an acquaintance who needed to get rid of them because they kept wandering too far.  I got 4 Single Comb Brown Leghorns, 1 rooster and 3 hens, and 2 Columbian Wyandottes, both hens for a total of 6 chickens.  I'm thinking of breeding some more Leghorns.

That 300 gallon grow bed is going to weigh a metric fuck ton when it's full.  Laying the 4x4's across some cinder blocks might be the best way to elevate it.  Other than that, keep us posted on how the crays work out.  I'm curious to know if the ones we have here in the US as are as cannibalistic as what the Aussies have.

Yeah, it's going to weigh a lot.  The guy building the stand is a contractor/carpenter that has done stuff for me for years and he knows what he is doing.  I explained to him in detail what is going into the grow bed and he said it will be no problem.  I thought about the cinder blocks also.  I will definitely post pictures when I have more of the set-up done.

The crays should be interesting.  The ones in the pond seem to behave with each other but can get into fights over food.  I'm wondering if they are well fed maybe they'll be OK.

are the crawfish going in the same tank with the catfish?  The catfish will eat them.

Both sump and fish tanks.  Material still gets through the grow bed so I'm hoping they pick it up and eat it.  I'm actually hoping the catfish eat them since I have a near endless supply and I think it will give the meat a good flavor.  I know it introduces the possibility of parasites.

I don't have any pictures, but I did some more reading and tomatoes are apparently "very heavy feeders".  So, on the left-hand side of the small grow bed I planted two 6" cherry tomato plants.  If all goes well, they should 'drape' over the fish tank side of the grow bed.  I moved the Swiss Chard to the right-hand side of the grow bed and there is a single row of them.  I changed my mind because it's safer to have 2 different plants in the grow bed to ensure that there is a smaller likelihood of ending up with no plants.  I have verticillium wilt fungus in my garden soil and I am unable to effectively grow tomatoes.  I know hydroponically grown tomatoes can still suffer from the fungus but hopefully it will not be an issue.  If they grow well then they could really take care of a lot of nitrate.  I'll post pictures when the plants start to (hopefully) get bigger.

I know that you are supposed to cycle your system without fish to begin with and use an outside nitrogen source (urea fertilizer, etc.) to get the bacteria and plants growing.  Then you add the fish.  So, a warning:  Don't try this at home!  I am going to check a pH and ammonia level and see where it's at, hopefully tonight.

I was doing some work around the garden and found some extra horseradish plants I had thrown out into the woods and added two small plants to the grow bed.  Horseradish grows fast and loves nitrogen so if it grows well it will suck a lot of nitrate out of the water.  If things get crowded in the grow bed I can always pull out some plants.  I'm not too worried at this point and I'd rather have a few in there in case one plant type doesn't want to grow.

I did some water testing tonight out of curiosity.  I was a little surprised by the results.  I took pictures but the colors really have to be viewed in person:

1) Temperature

Yes, I've actually managed not to measure temperature this whole time.  I measured it in the bell siphon while it was almost full so I think this is the best representation for how warm the bacteria are at this point.  It was 23C or 73.4F.  Wow, I know we've had some warm days but I thought for some reason that it would be cooler than that.  The results below make more sense if we presume that there is a decent amount of bacterial activity going on.  I did 'seed' the grow bed with water from an acquaintance's aquarium/aquarium filter as well as take some gravel from my trout stream bed.  But it's been only 10 days.

2) pH



I measure both the grow bed/bell siphon water and my untreated outdoor well water which is the water source I am using to fill the system (indoor water is treated with a water softener).  The pH came back both times to 8.0.  I'm a little surprised since I was told that my water was on the acidic side when I had it tested.


3) Ammonia



The ammonia level came back 0.5mg/L.  When corrected for a pH of 8.0, it comes back as 0.03mg/L which is in the 'harmful with long-term exposure' range.  I should buy the kit to correct the pH based on water hardness so I can fully interpret the values, but at this point I may skip a couple of days of feeding and do a 20% water exchange to reduce the ammonia.  Nothing drastic.  I do not want to get OCD about water testing and they warn about this on Backyard Aquaponics, but early on it is OK to do some testing until things are cycled well and stabilized.

4)  Nitrite/NO₂



The nitrite came back 1.0mg/L.  This is in the 'harmful' range and it suggests a water exchange or one of their water treatment chemicals.  I'll stick with the water exchange since I do plan on eating the plants.  Again, if I skip a couple of days of feedings and do a water change, hopefully it will come back down.

If the results are accurate, though, then the big news is that some of the ammonia is being converted by the bacteria into nitrite!

5) Nitrate/NO₃



The nitrate came back 10 mg/L.  There is no table for toxicity values, but it appears from a search that the level can get significantly higher than that without a danger to the fish.  So this is a safe concentration as far as I can tell.

Again, if the results are accurate, though, then the big news is that some of the nitrite is being converted by the bacteria into nitrate!  This is huge news because it would mean that there is some bacteria colonizing the grow bed.

I'd have to test the well water to be certain, of course.  I may do that tomorrow.  

I have had quite an algea bloom in both the fish tank and sump tank and the likely reason is all the ammonia/nitrite/nitrate + sunlight.  

Did you test your grow bed media with vinegar to see if it contains limestone or another soluble alkaline substance?

No, and that's a great point and I will test it.  I thought I was actually going to need to add limestone because my well water was supposedly acidic.  I don't see anything in it that looks like limestone and the pH of my  'raw' well water is the same as the grow bed (8.0).  This is odd because nitrification usually acidifies the water.  So if nitrite and nitrate are present, why is the grow bed not more acidic than the well water?  I know there are a lot of organic buffers created in this type of environment.

I did a water exchange this morning, probably around 30%.  I drained the water from the sump tank and filled it back in there.  Since the water enters the fish tank from the top and drains from the bottom, I'm hoping that it isn't too much of a cold shock for the grow bed.  The cold water will mix with the warmer water in the fish tank so it shouldn't be too much of a problem.  It's overcast now and probably for the next couple of days, but I still plan to cover the fish tank to see if I can control the algae a bit better.  I'm also going to hold on feeding the fish for a couple of days.

I planted 3 wild cucumber seeds in the grow bed.  They seem to do very well in moist soils around here, growing right next to streams.  So they may like the flood and drain environment.  The seeds look really cool.  Hopefully they will germinate and grow.  I can run a line down from the deck to the grow bed because they are climbers.  This is a picture I got of them on google:

The system is still pretty new right?  As long as nothing is buffering the pH up, I'm sure it will come down over time.

Yes, it's only 10 days old.  I will buy the hard water testing kit, more out of curiosity since I'm sure you're right that it will be fine.  If fish can tolerate highish levels of nitrate, and the production of nitrate acidifies the water, the pH should come down.  It's not super alkaline right now, but as you know free ammonia is more toxic than the NH₄+ ion, so the more acidic it is, the more  NH₃ is converted into NH₄+, and the better the fish can tolerate elevated ammonia levels.

I tested the water hardness from the grow bed and it came back fine at 5°dKH, and it shouldn't affect the pH reading from what I have read if it's between 5 and 10.

I picked out about a dozen representative stones and tried the vinegar test and got no bubbles at all.  So if there is limestone in there, it's very little and not significantly affecting pH.

The ammonia came back at 0.25mg/L which is fine.

The nitrite came back at 0.  

Since I did a 30% water exchange and have stopped feeding the fish, I'm not surprised the values have dropped this much.

Overall I'm happy with the results.  The plants are looking fine and the inner leaves of the Swiss Chard have actually gotten visibly larger, if only by a couple of millimeters.  

I think I'll start feeding the fish again tomorrow.

I have gone fishing twice with no luck both times in terms of fish.  I'm going to pick up some chicken livers as they're a lot more aromatic than worms.  I'll let some spoil overnight and head to the pond again tomorrow evening.  I'd like to get the goldfish out of the barrel and leave it as a dedicated brown bullhead catfish barrel.  While it will be difficult, I'll also get a total weight for the fish that I'll be keeping in there.

You have that backwards the higher the pH the higher the toxic NH3 level and lower the NH4 Level the ammonia is,  NH4 is much less toxic then NH3.  I  Have have seen systems with the ammonia (total) level at 5.0+ and have a pH of about 4.5 to 5  and the fish were fine,  now raise that pH without detoxifing that NH3 and you have dead fish.  You have to correct the NH3 issue before the pH issue if that occures.    
As for Ph  it will acisify over TIME, thats years, mabey Months of time not days.   Also your water if from a well is most likely from a limestone aquafer and that would give you a high pH.  But it could come up Low in PH due to CO2 levels being high and depressing the pH.   Take the well run it for several minutes then test that water immediatly,  also take some of the water and airate it for a couple hours and test again see if theres a differance.  
doing water changes if the pH is low comming out of the running water you need to let it set and stabolize before use, also with temp, if you change the temp to quick in the fish system, you can give you fish ick or some other assorted diseases/issues.   You do not want to be treating that system with meds.    
As a side note on innitial set up it take 6-8 weeks from steril enviroment to fully functioning bacteria bed,  Not full capacity but full active there is a differance.   You did "cheat" with the live bacteria additions from the creek bed etc, so you have all the types of bacteria, just not the quantity needed.    Have fun with it.

I should have written 'and' instead of 'but' so there would be no confusion.  I should understand the whole pH thing since I have a degree in chemistry.   No worries.  I will re-test the well water after it has been sitting for a while.  In fact, I will re-test several values tomorrow.

I haven't updated because I don't want to hog the first page, but everything seems to be going well.  I caught two more catfish and some more crayfish  two nights ago and added them to the small 55 gallon fish tank.  They are feeding well.  I couldn't resist the urge to add two English cucumber plants to the grow bed.  I've had terrible luck with verticillium wilt with tomatoes in the ground so I want to have some back-up plants in case they die since the fungus can apparently attack plants in aquaponics and hydroponics systems.

More soon, hopefully with pictures.

I'm going to start adding some 'plumbing' tomorrow to my 500 gallon system.  After that, I just need to get the gravel delivered.  I have someone who can do it sooner than my friend.  I've been busy with planting in the garden, including hot peppers I'm doing in pots.

I re-tested the water today and the ammonia came back at 0.25mg/L again.  I will step up the feedings a bit.  With the additional two brown bullhead from the other night (now up to 5 fish) plus the large goldfish the ammonia should start creeping up.

I started work on the 500 gallon fish tank.  The drain pipe was a pain to put in.  The 2" pipe was very difficult to push through the Uniseal.  The Uniseal required a 3" hole to be drilled and then I carefully removed a little more material on the inside of the hole in the fish tank when the pipe would not initially go through, then the 2" pipe would finally pass through.  I used the garden hose to simulate a sump pump filling the fish tank and the pipe drains well and the water level is about 4" from the top of the fish tank.  Since I'm not likely to keep trout or other jumping species, I'm not worried about any fish getting/jumping out of the tank.  I did take pictures and will continue to do so and will post a pictorial at some point.

I only ordered one 2" Uniseal so I have to get another one for the drain in the grow bed.  I'll order another one today.  I will also test out the fountain pump I bought.  It apparently uses a garden hose as tubing which will make the algae issue easy to deal with.

I was reading an article the other day that talked about this sort of thing. Just in case it may help:

Aquaponic Nitrogen Cycling

Thank you!  I want this thread to be as informative as possible.

I'll try to post some pictures later.  I removed the fish to see if I can weigh them.

ETA:  The 5 or so 1 1/2" crayfish/crawfish were all gone ie. eaten by the catfish.  Oops!  So much for eating any food that stays on the bottom.  I knew that it was a risk and another poster pointed it out.  There was a 2 1/2" one left in the barrel so it seems that one of that size will fare better.  I'd rather go with the smaller ones though since they are less likely to injure the fish and can act as a food source.

I know it's not realistic of me to keep all foreign bacteria/parasites out of the system.  Just a random thought as I was thinking of putting in more stream bed gravel.

I decided to clean out the 55 gallon fish tank this past weekend.  I think I'm going to keep only brown bullhead in it from now on.  I'll need to catch more of them.  The past 5+ days have seen a lot of rain and I also worked straight through the weekend so I haven't been able to get more than the 5 I have.  When I wasn't working I had to finish planting the rest of my garden and clean up a bit.

This is the grow bed.  I have a row of Swiss Chard on the bottom half.  There are 4 horseradish plants, two cherry tomato plants, two English cucumber plants in the top half of the photo.  They can't all be identified easily but they are there.  I also planted one Habanero pepper plant today but it's not in the photo.  I keep messing around with the grow bed.  The horseradish has taken off.  The tomato plants have grown 2" but have since slowed since it's been so overcast.



This is the fish tank empty.  I cleaned out all the algae from the sides and rinsed it.  I used water from the 500 gallon tank that has water in it that has warmed to the ambient temperature to refill the system.



These are the brown bullhead back in the fish tank.  I also added some rocks for cover since they really like them and I think they are less likely to fight with each other.



Close-up.  Comfy cozy.



This is the 300 gallon grow bed.  I just got the Uniseal fitting I needed in the mail today so I can start work on finishing the 500 gallon set-up.  This is a picture of goldfish and the blue channel catfish:





I'll post pictures when I finish putting the other set-up together.

Time for an update!  This is a picture of the new set-up.  It uses a 500 gallon fish tank, 300 gallon Rubbermaid stock tank for the grow bed and a > 500 gallon sump tank.  This is the whole set-up on the left:



The fish tank actually is filled to maybe 550 gallons.  You can see the pump hose on the left.  I'm going to use a different, shorter (15 foot) garden hose, drill a couple of holes and zip tie the hose to the top of the tank.  Water flows in the top and pushes water up the center 2" PVC pipe which then drains into the grow bed:





I'm very glad I put together the small 50 gallon fish tank set-up first.  I've learned a lot and have avoided some mistakes with the bigger set-up.  The 2" PVC stand pipe was a challenge to install because it was difficult to push it through the Uniseal.  I used a file and enlarged the hole at the bottom so the Uniseal wasn't as tight.  Even doing that and using soap to lubricate the hell out of everything it was still difficult to push it through.  Now, though, I don't have to worry about leaks as much.



Drain pipe installed:



Drain pipe with automatic bell siphon in the picture below.  I haven't completely finished with the bell siphon.  I still need to add a 1/2" pipe to the side to help break the siphon.  Tonight I glued the cap onto the 4" pipe that makes up the bell siphon.  It works fine as is but it's important to put the tubing on the side to help break the siphon once the water has drained out.  I still have to put the gravel guard together.  I'm going to use a 5 gallon bucket since I don't have easy access to 8"+ piping.



The 300 gallon grow bed has a separate drain.  It's good to have a back-up in case the bell siphon needs maintenance and you have to get the water out some other way.



This is the bottom of the grow bed.  This is the outlet of the stand pipe.  I'm not sure if I'm going to permanently glue the pipe together or not.  I was thinking of using some Teflon tape and keeping the 90 degree connector piece, essentially wedging it in place.  I used a hole saw to drill right through the wood stand.  The stand can hold up to 300 gallons of water.  I'm getting a yard or so of pea gravel (3/8") tomorrow to fill the grow bed.  The stand pipe empties into the sump tank.






The sump tank is pictured below.  I drilled the tank at a height of 17".  This give me a maximum water volume of 290 gallons.  When the grow bed is full of 1 yard/200gallons of gravel, the water it can contain will be about 100 gallons.  So the sump tank will always have around 190 gallons of water in it:





This is the fountain pump.  It should run around 1000 gallons an hour.  I really only need to run 550 gallons an hour, the volume of the fish tank.  This leaves room for resistance for a variety of reasons.



Random picture of asparagus on the right (just planted this year) and potatoes on the left.



I'll post more pictures when it's up and running.  Any suggestions/advice is greatly appreciated.

Cool.  You might want to replace the 90 in your SLO with a T-piece to provide an emergency overflow in case the bottom of the SLO clogs.

What are you using to power your pumps? Regular house electricity or something more exotic like a bike hooked up to a geny with the wife/kids peddling?

Yes, I should probably do that.  I remember reading several threads just on tubing design.  All it takes is a dead fish clogging the tube and the pump empties the sump tank.  The fish tank would stay full at least.

ETA:  The gravel came today.  I'm headed out the door right now to do some fishing.

An electrician was doing some other work for me so I had him wire an outdoor outlet for me.  I don't mess with electricity.  I have thought about using batteries and a solar panel.  It would make more sense in AZ or some other area of the country where there is a ton of sunny days.

I headed out to a local pond on Friday to do some fishing.  I caught a few small pickeral.  Obviously, they can't be kept easily in an aquaponics system since they don't adjust well to pellet type feeds.  I usually eat them but the ones in this pond are notoriously small.  They all went back into the pond.  ETA:  I was actually trying to get yellow perch but didn't get a single one!









My son and I both caught 3 Redear Sunfish each.  They were biting like crazy but he had a stomach virus and vomitted in the car on the way to the pond, and then went on to vomit in the canoe and on the car ride home so we couldn't stay too long.  I brought the sunfish home and put them in the system.  I'm not sure if I'll actually keep them or not.  I've looked into other options for fish.  They are on the small size.  I've caught some monsters out of there because people simply do not eat them and they are thrown back in.  I will try them like I said earlier to TRG.  I'll try a big one though to get good fillets.  Even my wife said 'those aren't good to eat' when she saw them in the sump tank.  There are some lily pads in there but the system has too much water movement for them to stay anywhere in them.  My son wanted them mostly.











I tried for some hornpout/brown bullhead last night and didn't get any.  I've actually started to re-visit the idea of keeping trout.  Brown trout can actually tolerate pretty warm water.  It's early June and the peak water temperatures I've been getting in the smaller 55 gallon system have been around 72F.  The highest temperature for brown trout, which are the most tolerant of the trout species in terms of temperature, is 80F.  I think with a much larger system, the temperatures can be kept well below that.  I have a spare water pump that I can use to keep a good current going.  If I have the tip of the tubing above the water then it will bring extra oxygen into the water, plus the pump return will do the same.  I can also get a bubbler in there if  need be.  Good oxygen levels will probably be the most critical factor for the trout.  One thing that really increases the oxygen is the water flowing from the grow bed to the sump tank via siphon action.  The 2" pipe literally gushes into the sump tank and I have no doubt that keeps the oxygen levels very high.  In fact, I'll probably put the trout in there in the beginning.

Sumner Brook Fish Farm is located 15 minutes from a town I work in once a week which is about a 40 minute drive from here.  I think I can bring a cooler + ice + a battery operated air bubbler and keep the fish alive until I get them home.  They have various sizes and I'm thinking of something around 8" so they won't have a problem eating the pellets I have.  It would also be awesome to supplement their diet with live crayfish/crawfish.  I will have to put a cover of some kind to prevent the fish from jumping out but that would be useful anyway to help keep sunlight to a minimum.  There is this 1/2" plastic fencing material that I used to make the gravel guard that would likely work well since the food pellets would pass through, the sunlight would be diminished, it won't rust and it will keep the fish from jumping out.

I'm also going to be aggressive about 'inoculating' the gravel with bacteria to help speed along the process of colonization.  I'd like to have everything completed by the end of next weekend.  Obviously I would use water exchanges until the system is up and running.

Anyway, just some thinking out loud.

tag for updates...I love this place precisely because you guys tinker with all of the stuff I would want to tinker with!

I wonder if anyone has ever toyed with the idea of putting up a Kickstarter thread? I would chip in a few bucks just to see where this goes!

I finally have the 500 gallon fish tank / 200gallon grow bed system up and running!  It has taken a lot of time and effort.  I started this project last summer and I've been reading up on it ever since.  

This is a picture of the entire system, left to right:  500 gallon fish tank covered with a camo netting, 200 gallon grow bed (it's a 300 gallon Rubbermaid stock tank but only filled with 200 gallons of mostly 3/8" gravel) and a ? 600 gallon sump tank but the PVC 2" tubing comes into the tank at 17" which gives about 275 gallons of water.



This is the fish tank.  I'm being extremely careful about algae.  I had a lot of problems with it in my small 55 gallon fish tank system and it completely robs the water of oxygen and clarity.  I had a mishap with my three channel catfish.  Long story but they died.  I have a tarp that I plan on using during sunny days to cover at least half of the top of the tank but the camo netting is going to stay up 24/7.  Algae can't grow without light.  I am going to keep a tarp over the sump tank 24/7.  The grow bed gravel will be kept a good 1/2" to 1" above the water level so no algae will come from there.  This means that light will be kept to an absolute minimum.  I am also using barley extract which supposedly helps but does not harm fish.  Don't get confused by some of the pictures.  Some have the grow bed filled with gravel and others don't depending on when the pictures were taken.











The grow bed is filled to about 16" with mostly 3/8" gravel.  I put 1/2" gravel around the gravel guard bucket because I wanted to avoid having smaller rock from getting through the screen.  I used a tall bucket, cut off the bottom, drilled some 3" holes in it, and wrapped it in plastic 1/2" screen.  I did also get some aquarium filter water and drippings from stream bed water to help with bacterial growth.  I have a question at the end about this.  I did plan to put gravel from the streambed directly into the grow bed but I'm not sure of the legality of that.  I plan on putting tomato, horseradish (it grows like crazy in the other system), corn and cucumber.  



This is the 'inlet' for the grow bed.  I was going to use this bucket as the gravel guard, but it wasn't tall enough.  Now I'm using it to control splash as the water comes in and it fits that role perfectly.



This is the gravel guard (blue bucket) with 3" holes up the sides and plastic screen, along with the bell siphon assembly.



This is the sump tank.  That's a 2" PVC pipe!  When the water drains from the grow bed, it really flows!  This is good because it really oxygenates the water, especially since it's a relatively large volume of water (? 80 to 100 gallons) flowing into probably 175 to 200 gallons of water that always remains in the sump tank.  

I ran into some problems with the pump that returns water to the fish tank.  It was waaaaaay too powerful.  So I ended up going with two smaller pumps that use garden hose attachments.  I don't have pictures of those attached, but that is what I'm using currently.



Close-up of water being automatically bell-siphoned in at maximum flow rate.



The reason I'm trying to keep the oxygen levels at maximum and why I'm going to do my best to keep the temperature down is because I've decided on using different fish in my system.













<Drum roll please>




















Rainbow trout!








In the system (ETA:  I changed two of the pictures to better ones I had.):








I have to keep one of those fruit nets (the ones to keep birds away) as the Rainbow Trout will jump out.  They are between 8" to 10", though most of them are closer to 8".  There are a total of 11.  I went to the Sumner Brook Fish Hatchery linked in one of my posts above.  I was going to go with Brown Trout, but the guy talked me into Rainbow Trout.  They have very similar water temperature and oxygenation requirements, but the Rainbows grow a lot faster, maybe even twice as fast as the Brown Trout.

If you have any questions or suggestions, please don't hesitate to post.

Now for my question:  Do any of you use nitrifying bacteria products in koi ponds?  I found this product and I'm very tempted to try it out.

Hell of an update my friend.



I cannot wait to do this.



I have a creek on my property full of small cats and bluegill, and I think I'll try growing them first.


 

Thank you, thank you.

bcauz3y, what kind of catfish are they?  Just curious because I know there are more varieties down south.

Just a few random thoughts/ideas:

1)  There are a lot of crayfish/crawfish in the ponds around here.  One plan I have is to put out some traps for them and feed the smaller ones to the trout.  The bigger ones could be used to clean up the bottom if there is any uneaten food.  The filtration should be pretty good, but it doesn't hurt to have them crawling around on the bottom.

2)  I have toyed with the idea of getting a bug zapper and set up a plastic sheet below it.  Run it for a few hours after dusk and collect the dead bugs for feeding the trout in the morning.  I've put insects in the tank and they love to take them off the surface.  Same with the pellet feed.

3)  Once the system is more mature, I could probably increase the number of fish.  By my calculations according to the Backyardaquaponics.com recommendations, you can have about 6 pounds of fish per 25 gallons of grow bed volume.  Since my grow bed is 200 gallons, I could have a maximum of 48 pounds of fish in my tank.  That, of course, is if the bacteria are working at full capacity.  For now I will have to work on water changes to keep the ammonia levels down.  

The relationship between length and weight is as follows from Wiki:




Even my 10" Rainbow is only 1/2 pound according to the chart.  My hope is that as my bacterial system matures, I could add more fish.

4)  If all goes well, I'm hoping to smoke some of these trout in late fall.  That's if I manage not to kill them all first!

Although I cannot see myself having the patience or the ingenuity to do this, I applaud your efforts sir, It's a fine looking system you have there...

Thank you.  I came close to giving up a couple of times  There are so many little problems to be aware of and when you solve those more crop up.

For the safety conscious, I fixed the one cross bar in the sump tank and I zip tied two layers of plastic fencing to the cross bars.  It will hold a good amount of weight.  No need to have children falling into the sump tank.  The gravel bed water level is always below the gravel so you'd have to dig down and put your face in it to drown.  I tried to have my oldest son find a way to climb into the fish tank and he simply can't do it.  I intentionally made the outflow pipe long so a child can't use the grow bed to climb into the fish tank.  The outflow pipe dips down if you try to climb across it.  There are no small children in the immediate neighborhood, but I have tried to make it as foolproof as possible.  

Then again, there is a trout stream out back that's at least 3+ feet even at the low water mark.  Nothing I can do about that.

Hey every,

Just " Sharing " my researched info  !!

This thread has me jazzed up ..

I located a place nearby my home ,that specialize's in ; Pond Plants / Live Fish / Pumps & Filters / Aquaponics Grow Beds ; Planting Trays / Grow bed Media / & most inportantly .. ADVICE


They had " Talapia " inside of this tank.
( 5 ' x 8 ' x 3 ft D ? / Concrete & Cinder Block ; with a plastic Pond liner)





Sunland Water Gardens
http://www.sunlandwatergardens.com/

Here's another informational link for those of you in " CA "
http://www.thegrowing.org/wiki/index.php/Farmable_Fish

PAPI

You're very fortunate.  I can't get Hydroton/expanded clay around here for a grow bed media.  I would have to order it online and it would be ridiculously expensive.  But the expanded clay would definitely be my number one choice for grow media.  It's nice that you can buy it locally.

Tilapia will be great too.  I simply can't do them because of the cold temperatures here.  They taste great and you will definitely have more flexibility in feeding them.  You have more sunny days so that's going to be a huge plus.

I think they are channel cats. They have grey skin with black spots.



None of them are larger than probably 10" due to the small size of the creek.
 

Hey,

To be perfectly honest.. I was reading " Your Thread ".. with great interest .. I had checked around ( Online ) for local vendors.  
However, ... everything was toooo far & toooo expensive, for shipping; IBC Containers / Grow Beds Trays / Supplies etc,,
My wife wants a " Garden ",  to tend fresh Veggies & Herbs . I wanted a fish pond ( I've had 75 gallon indoor fish Tank 15 + years )

So, I took the wife down to Sunland Gardens on " Saturday; 6/30/2012 " , to convince her , that we could both be happy, investing $$$, in a project.

I'm going to try & do as much hands on as possible. I've had some experience in my last home.  

PAPI

Just hang the bug zapper over the tank, the bugs will fall in it or see the light reflection off the water and land in the water

I thought of that as well because one of the state fish hatcheries has exactly that set-up.  As long as it's set up in a sturdy fashion, I don't see why it wouldn't work.

ETA:  I wonder wonder how badly the zapper 'fries' the bugs.  I think the bigger bugs would still stay moist enough.

some stick and get crispy some just fall right off and they are fine

From my readings and having kept blue channel catfish (recently and managed to kill them) it's likely that is what they are.  The spots are pretty unique to them.

The pet store called me and have some they can order for tomorrow.  She was selling 3" fish for $4 each.  It's retarded expensive but I broke down today and bought/ordered some for tomorrow.  I may keep them in the sump tank in the small system until they get bigger, assuming I can get them to grow.  Since it's a more mature system, maybe it will work better.

I measured the ammonia in the small system and it's low.  But, the nitrate is sky high.  I've been doing water changes since last night.  I also moved over some of the Swiss Chard and added a good sized tomato plant.  It looked great today and apparently tomatoes are real nitrogen hogs.  The two tomato plants in there already are growing like crazy.  They look like they've easily doubled in size and they now have small cherry tomatoes on them.  The third plant in there is a bigger tomato variety.  I carefully wash off all the soil in a bucket of water then try to spread the roots and cover with gravel.

Good.  I saw one at Lowes for $50.  I'll look around but I really think it is a good idea.  There are tons of insects that hit the lights out back.

Definitely post pictures if you start getting things together.

Yes they are. I'm a tard with aquaponics, but I know about crops.



 

I dont know what the "Blue Channel Cats" the pet store is selling you.  Channel Cats are sliverish gray in color and are speckled with Black freckles.   Blue cats are Silverish Blue in color, deeper in body and have no speckles.

Just from reading on the internet, Blue Channel Catfish = Channel Catfish.  It actually took me a while to figure this out.  I do not know why they name them that when it does seem like it would lead to an obvious confusion with Blue Catfish.  Channel Catfish are kept by people as pets and for some reason are preferred over Blue Catfish.  For some reason, pet stores call them Blue Channel Catfish.  The ones I've gotten definitely are silverish gray with black freckles.  As they age, the freckles can get less and less apparent from what I noticed in mine.  To add to possible confusion, Channel Catfish can hybridize with Blue Catfish and other catfish though I have no idea what they look like.

Fish Feed .. !

PAPI

Sadly, I had an extremely busy week at work and didn't spend enough time with the aquaponics system.  The fish were feeding less and less each day.  The ammonia level was in the low range (0.5mg/L) and I thought the problem was not enough oxygenation.  I still think that was an issue but when the first fish died, I checked nitrite and it was high.  I did use a lot of tricks to get the bacterial count up, but I didn't think it would get up this fast.  The nitrate was on the lower end (10 mg/L) so I think that there was essentially a bottle-necking of the nitrite because there isn't as much bacteria converting nitrite to nitrate as there is converting ammonia to nitrite.

I tried water changes but I think it was too little too late and the rest of the fish died.  

I also think that oxygenation was an issue.  I have a pump that is too strong and one that is too weak.  So I bought another one of the weaker pumps and the two weaker ones together still didn't get the flow that I wanted, and the larger pump is too fast.  So I spliced a ball valve in the tubing and now I can adjust the flow very nicely.  I will get some pictures up tomorrow because it is a very slick job for someone like me that is not really 'handy' with putting things together.

The good news, at least, is that there is both nitrite and nitrate!  That means the grow bed is getting colonized with bacteria!  

So to recap the causes of the fish kill (all 11 of them):

1) Toxic nitrite levels

2) Poor oxygenation

3) ? other cause(s)

I think I can do better this next go around:

1) I plan on waiting to put fish in the system (which is what is highly recommended by Backyardaquaponics in the first place!) and also going with much smaller and fewer fish.  I may try 6 of the 6" Rainbow Trout.  While only 2" shorter than the 8" fish, they are much lighter in weight.

2) Monitor ammonia, nitrite and nitrate levels more closely.

3) Aggressive water changes at the first sign of trouble.

4) Use the new ball valve to adjust the water flow better.  Also use one of the smaller pumps to pump water from the bottom of the fish  
    tank to the top and create more oxygenation and uniformity.

5) Right now I am cycling the large sump tank with the grow bed only until the levels come down on the nitrite and then I'll add the large
    fish tank into the system again.

The other good news is that the ammonia and nitrite in the small 55 gallon fish tank are low and the nitrates are high.  I have been doing water changes for that and the fish are happy.  

I also bought a dozen 2" blue channel catfish and they are in the sump tank of the small system.  They look great and the grow bed is growing like crazy.

More tomorrow hopefully along with some pictures.

Still planning on a couple of pictures later.  A few thoughts on the fish deaths:

I did not add salt to my system.  This is a good thread on Backyardaquaponics on the topic.  Two reasons why this would have been important to do are:

1) Salt helps fish tolerate higher nitrite levels because the chloride ion helps to displace some nitrite ions physiologically.  Since Rainbow Trout can migrate to the ocean (Steelhead Trout) they will have no problem tolerating the salt.  Plants may be more of an issue but I was planning on 1ppt after my readings.

2) A couple of the fish did seem to have a very light 'frosting' of white which may have been fungus.  Salting the water helps prevent fungal spores from germinating.

I'm not saying this would have saved the day, but I think that salting may be a good prophylactic measure.  I have to research a little more about the effects on plants.  Currently, I have the following in the 500 gallon fish tank system:

1) Tomatoes
2) Corn
3) Horseradish
4) English Cucumber

I think at 1ppt or even 2ppt it really shouldn't be an issue for the plants.  I've also looked at other nutrients and my water is naturally high in iron so I don't think that needs to be added to my system.

Again, just some additional thoughts.

FWIW, we have a large water garden with koi and assorted water plants. The pond gets salted to help the fish with their stress but this affects the plants negatively as the salt concentration goes up. Right now the concentration is .1% and knock on wood all is well. When you talk about water changes are you using dechlor to remove the chlorine in the water? Last but not least have you thought about the water temperature and potentially shocking the fish? You have a great thread here and I applaud you perseverance.

I always appreciate input from koi pond owners since koi pond = aquaponics, although the goal is not to eat the fish.

I use well water so I don't have to worry about chlorine at all in my system.  We have a water softener but only the indoor water gets treated.  The benefit is that I have crystalline salt on hand.

The temperature is an issue with fish, probably more so with trout.  I think that one advantage of having the sump tank which currently holds about 275 gallons of water is that I can shut off the pump, remove about half the water in the sump tank, and replace the half taken out with fresh well water.   Once I turn the pump back on, that half new/half old water gets pumped into the 500 gallon fish tank.  So while the temperature drops, it doesn't drop precipitously because the volume of new water to old water isn't too drastic, and it could be done every 24 hours if need be for high ammonia, nitrite or nitrate levels.  My well water is ice cold though and I don't think I could get away with changing all the water in the sump tank at once.  I would actually be more concerned about the bacteria in the grow bed being killed with such a large drop in water temperature, more so than I would worry about the trout.

In terms of higher temperatures, the Rainbow Trout seem to be able to tolerate it up to 75F without any ill effects from what I've read and we had a very warm spell for one week and the temperature went up to 74F and they were still eating well.  I think that the biggest point to remember is that combining warmer temperatures which results in less dissolved oxygen plus high nitrites which inhibits the fish's ability to carry oxygen in the blood can be a real killer.  Throw in a fungal infection and you may as well be trying to grow fish in chlorinated water, you'll be just as successful!  So if you are going to have temperatures on the higher end of the range, you better make damn certain that you have optimized everything else.

[ETA:  I have had the luxury of not worrying about temperature too much either way in my small system since both goldfish and catfish are very tolerant of medium to low oxygen levels, high or low temperatures, and high-ish ammonia/nitrite/nitrate levels when compared to trout.  Goldfish can tolerate temperature ranges as wide as 40F to 105F, though at that upper range you would really need to make sure there is no algae eating up the oxygen and they would not survive very long at that temperature.  Catfish can tolerate similar temperature ranges.]  

.1% salt would be 1 ppt (one part per thousand) and from the heavy reading I've done this morning is a good number to keep both the fish and the plants happy.  You need higher levels to actually treat sick, fungus-infected fish, but I would like to use the salt in more of a prophylactic manner.  

The tomatoes, from what I've read here and the related links, should do fine with that.  Corn may not grow as robustly but should be OK.  Cucumber seems to be the least  tolerant of the plants I have in the system.  I haven't found any information on horseradish.  I know asparagus loves salt but it's not an annual crop and my system will essentially be shut down in the winter.

I may add the salt in two steps:  0.5 ppt now and then add another 0.5 ppt when the fish go in.

If tomatoes are Nitrogen hogs, would it make sense to maybe plant a couple beans in with them, since beans add nitrogen?

In a garden, yes.  In this system, no, since there are better ways to increase your nitrogen.

If you have a good amount of bacteria growing on the gravel in the grow bed, then all the ammonia waste coming out of the fish and any decomposing uneaten food quickly gets chemically transformed to nitrate by said bacteria.  It's therefore hard for an aquaponics system to suffer from too little nitrate since the remedy would be to add more fish and feed, or feed the fish you have more food.  Obviously there is a limit as to how much food the fish will eat and if you reach that limit and still don't have enough nitrate then you need to add more fish to the system.  The opposite problem is far more common, that is, there being too much nitrate.  So the last thing I would want is to plant anything that would symbiotically with bacteria produce more nitrogen.

In fact, in my small 55 gallon fish tank (barrel) and 20 gallon grow bed set-up, I had two tomato plus other plants and my nitrate was still on the high side so I added another tomato plant recently.  It will take a while for the roots to really take hold and for the effects of the added plant to show on the nitrate level.  In the meantime, I am doing some water changes, maybe 10% a day (ETA:  I'm using this nitrate laden water in my regular soil garden).  I'm not really panicking since the ammonia and nitrite levels are low and those two are the real killers.  

Why do I have other plants in the system if tomatoes grow fast and chug down nitrogen in the form of nitrate so well?  I mentioned it before:  I have verticillium fungus in my garden soil.  I've had a difficult time growing tomatoes as a result, even with verticillium-resistant tomato varieties.  They grow slower and don't produce as much.  Verticillium can grow in an aquaponics system so I did want to have other plants to pick up the slack if the fungal spores wind up in my aquaponics system.  Some of the tomatoes I bought are VFN (Verticillium, Fusarium and Nematode) resistant.  

I absolutely love tomatoes so it would be nice if they end up producing well.