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jared.plowman
04-17-2012, 01:53 PM
Hello Everyone,

I am running into a little problem. I have been adding lemon juice, for pH, and Blood Meal, for Iron, and I have a banana peel for potassium. Recently my ammonia has started to rise, steadily. It was at zero for a few months.

Ammonia: 1.0ppm
Nitrites: 0ppm
Nitrates: 30ppm (probably from blood meal)
pH: ~7.6

In a previous post Hello from Vancouver, British Columbia (http://www.diyaquaponics.com/forum/showthread.php?1384-Hello-from-Vancouver-British-Columbia) I have links to pictures of my system.

Keith noted that the lemon juice could be killing the bacteria, what else might cause a systems ammonia to rise. I recently removed my fish tank filter, I assumed that the GB's would have enough bacteria to process the ammonia, but I guess not.

Any ideas? Cheers, Jared

bsfman
04-17-2012, 03:00 PM
It may be pH related. The beneficial bacteria thrive best on a pH above 8. When the pH drops too fast, the bacteria can suffer and you see an ammonia spike.

urbanfarmer
04-17-2012, 03:01 PM
What form was the nitrogen in the blood meal before you put it in? Some are water insoluble, meaning, they stay suspended in the water breaking down readily to ammonia.

How old is your system? It could be due to pH, increased feed, change in feed, temp, DO, just to name a few.

If you create an environment that's good for one bacteria and not another, you can get a conversion of nitrate back into ammonia. Again, it could be any combination of a number of things. Sorry, just not enough info to even take a decent guess at it.

jared.plowman
04-17-2012, 03:39 PM
It's 90% water insoluble!!!! Damn :-( Does that mean I can't use it? Or just use it in very small doses? I guess I will be doing water changes for a while! Hahaha this has been a crazy learning process, thanks guys! I hope I didn't kill my fish, they are $$$. Eventually, when I get a yard (or a bigger apartment), I will get into Talapia or trout, but for now the FT is just an accessory and poop factory.

I have given up trying to drop the pH... I need to wash the Hydroton with a pH- solution. It can buffer out more lemon juice than was recommended for a larger 500G system. I only have a 40G system... Oh well...

I have another question (since I have your attention), do I need a biofilter? Or are those for the bigger systems? At the moment all I have is the GBs and the FT... I took the filter off my pump so the GBs get the solids.

urbanfarmer
04-17-2012, 04:10 PM
Well, biofilter refers to a system component people add to their system to allow biological filtration of toxic compounds to the aquatic species and allowing the biology (typically bacteria) to convert it to non-toxic compounds and, in the case of aquaponics, compounds that can serve as nutrients for another organism (typically plants) that removes it completely from the water.

So, with that said, do you need one? Well, it depends on quite a few things, but mainly we can look at your stocking density of fish and your feed schedule. If you don't stock fish heavily and you don't feed heavily then you may likely have enough available surface area and plants to serve the purpose adequately.

I answer like this because there's not enough information to tell you yes or no, but I'm hoping that rather than giving you a fish you can learn to fish... wait... umm... oh well, you get my drift.

jared.plowman
04-17-2012, 04:56 PM
Indeed now I can feed myself ;-)

jared.plowman
04-19-2012, 01:08 PM
Update! I have setup a treatment tank for my blood meal additions and have been checking the ammonia. So far it's up to 1ppm for half a tbsp of blood meal. I have put some substrate from my FT in the treatment tank and am running a filter without media for circulation. Fingers crossed that it will be converted to nitrate so I can still add blood meal to the system (for iron).

Thanks everyone for the information, oh and Keith you were right about the pH! I think my tap water was bringing it up for some reason, after letting it sit for a day before adding it the pH has steadily dropped to 7.3.

keith_r
04-19-2012, 01:11 PM
add some salt, to 3ppt to help the fish deal with the stress..

jared.plowman
04-19-2012, 01:16 PM
No more stress, both my Ammonia and Nitrites are 0ppm. The little bacteria were working overtime this week!! :-)

urbanfarmer
04-19-2012, 01:26 PM
add some salt, to 3ppt to help the fish deal with the stress..
If my memory serves me well, that is beyond the tolerance of some plants.

Do you mean 3 ppm? 3 ppt = 3000 ppm... the fish only need a few ppm to combat the nitrite in any case (if that's why you are suggesting it I assume).

If his nitrite is 5 ppm then he would need around 30 ppm chloride from the salt to prevent brown blood disease... again, not sure if that's why you are suggesting it, I'm just guessing...

http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/vm007

I don't recommend adding salt into your system willy nilly. Ask us first on here so we can make sure you won't kill everything!

keith_r
04-19-2012, 01:36 PM
yeah, 3ppt.. i hate when that happens (the ppm/ppt switchup)
yes, i was suggesting that if nitrites and ammonia were rising, treating with salt would help the fish deal with stress..
some fish don't appreciate salt that much though..
cukes and strawbs will not handle 3ppt, but they're the only two i can think of at the moment

Bioritize
04-19-2012, 06:34 PM
Hey Guys,

This may not belong here but it came to mind talking about ph adjustment. What about using vinegar (acetic acid) for ph down? What would that do to the chemistry? I have also heard of using baking soda to push it up. Any feedback on this crazy idea?

keith_r
04-19-2012, 07:00 PM
honestly.. i'd leave the ph be.. and when it drops, add a buffer like shell grit...
but if you want to experiment with bouncing it with different "treatments" and stressing your fish with each change... go for it!

jared.plowman
04-21-2012, 12:06 PM
OK here is an update on my Blood Meal additions. Attached are some images of the "treatment" tank I have setup.

As a refresher I only added ~1/2tbsp of Blood Meal to this 14L tank! and today I measured:
Ammonia: >8ppm (holy jumpin jesus!!)
Nitrite: 1ppm

So it looks like the Ammonia is converting, hurray! But, this should be sent out to the world, Blood Meal is dangerous for small systems. If I didn't do a massive water change I could have killed all my fish.

urbanfarmer
04-21-2012, 07:06 PM
Nice experimental evidence. :-)

So, the evidence does seem to support the hypothesis that the bloodmeal was raising the ammonia and subsequently all other products of the nitrogen cycle because of its low solubility and (likely) low surface area to volume ratio implying it has a slow reaction with the aqueous solution and nitrifying bacteria.

However, did we do a control group? I mean it's more than possible it's your tap water! :-)

jared.plowman
04-22-2012, 11:19 AM
Yeah if my tap water was creating 8ppm ammonia I don't think I would be typing to you right now!!! Hahahaha since we leave a big jug of tap water out to de-chlorinate for a few days before drinking it. :)

davidstcldfl
04-23-2012, 03:57 AM
jared, just wondering...do they use 'just' chlorine in Vancouver...or Chloromines, which remains in water for at least a month or so... :?

urbanfarmer
04-23-2012, 07:10 AM
Yeah if my tap water was creating 8ppm ammonia I don't think I would be typing to you right now!!! Hahahaha since we leave a big jug of tap water out to de-chlorinate for a few days before drinking it. :)
Chloromine with adequate biological activity can yield ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate in your water! Chloromine is basically 1 part ammonia and 1 part chlorine...

foodchain
04-23-2012, 08:45 AM
Curious. My dechlorinator states it takes out the chloramine too. BUT I have seen some that dont't too. Never paid much attention to this before.

jared.plowman
04-24-2012, 01:48 PM
I checked the Vancouver water treatment and they use UV for first stage and small amounts of chlorine for their second. The water here is pretty good, easy to drink out of the tap. I can see the valley where the reservoir sits from my apartment. My girlfriend mentioned something about chloromines occurring anywhere there is chlorine, is that true?

An update to the Blood Meal treatment tank. It started to smell really bad, even with aeration and a filter. I am going to try and keep the ammonia down below 5ppm this time, I heard this is the optimum ammonia level for cycling. What do you think would cause it to smell so bad before? I had a lot of really nasty slime when I cleaned the treatment tank... hmmmm very interesting!!

urbanfarmer
04-24-2012, 02:52 PM
It depends. What did it smell like?

jared.plowman
04-24-2012, 02:56 PM
Really dense ocean water... not the fresh smelling ocean water.

urbanfarmer
04-24-2012, 03:35 PM
Well, it's definitely due to an anaerobic condition. You probably have so much aerobic activity from the smorgasbord it is depleting the oxygen to fast. We refer to this and the BOD or biochemical oxygen demand. If you wait long enough, the anaerobic conversion of nitrogenous compounds will reduce the nitrogen to a level that is only sufficient for the aerobic conditions to be maintained. Remember, not all bacteria are only aerobic or anaerobic. They switch once they run out of oxygen but still have food present. Those sneaky chemotrophs, I tell you what...