Hello from Orlando Florida!

[NeverResting]

I recently got into aquaponics. The thought started with using Earth Buckets and some other self water planter containers for a small veggy garden. I came across aquaponics and was intrigued at first but then just couldn't stop reading (this forum and any site I could find)

I started by building a trial 4 foot x 8 foot Deep water culture bed at my job. I have a warehouse with some unused space. The bed has not grown anything yet but I wanted to get it to cycle first. The water capacity of my bed, filter (small bio filter about 1L of ceramic bioballs), and fish holding tank is about 150 gallons. I had 20 goldfish in there for over a month and once I saw Nitrates go up and ammonia go down to a safe level, I decided to plant some lettuce. I have my lettuce on day 3 as I type this, in Oasis horticubes with no real sign of green yet but definitely sprouting action. I purchased 4 light fixtures. There are 4 bulbs in each fixture and it's 4' long. The lights are roughly 1 foot away from the water and at waterline they shine about 200-240 FC in all parts of the bed.

With my cycle complete I decided to get tilapia to stock the tank. I purchased 200 fingerlings locally thinking the bio mass would be small. Well the fingerlings ranged in size from 1-4" maybe even 5" in length. So needless to say I overstocked my tank thinking I was going to have a bunch of little babies not bigger fish haha.

I put the fingerlings in Friday during the day.

Friday water readings were.
1ppm Ammonia
3-4ppm Nitrite
20ppm Nitrate

Saturday was
2ppm Ammonia
3-4ppm Nitrite
20ppm Nitrate

Saturday I decided to enlarge their filter. I got some bulkheads, a 16 gallon tote, 3 cubic foot bags of polyester filter fiber, some arcylic panels to silicone in as water dividers, and 4 gallons of SeaChem Matrix on order to add when it comes in.

So far the filter is running with the 3 cubic foot bags of polyester fiber. I scattered the fiber into the tote and placed the acrylic panels so the water enters on the top of one side, is forced up and over a divider, and then into the polyester and ceramic media before exiting out the bottom of the other side of the tote.

I hope the bacteria on the ceramic media starts to reproduce fast and spread to the now much larger filter.

It's Sunday now and I checked my levels again and I'm now at.

4-8ppm Ammonia (test jumps to 8ppm after 4ppm and it's in between in color)
5+ppm Nitrites
20ppm Nitrates

I just hope the tilapia don't die from the ammonia before the filter increases in biological size.

I have a 55 gallon tank sitting that I was going to set up as a breeder tank for future stocks. I might start it up and spread the load out a little bit on the main system.

Does anyone have any suggestions to what I should do?

My thoughts are spread out some of the larger fish into the 55 gallon now and let nature take it's course on the other tank. If a couple must die let it be. I just don't want them all to die lol.

Ever since I got into this I just want to do more. My warehouse has a lot of space but problem is there's no natural light besides 4-5 FC through the small skylights. It would be nice to have long grow beds run through the whole place and big tanks of fish. Maybe that's what the future holds for me. We'll just have to see.

Thanks for providing a great place for a newbie to learn!

Walter

[urbanfarmer]

The ammonia and/or nitrite can definitely kill your fish.

What's your pH? How's the water look and smell?

[NeverResting]

PH was 6.8 down from the initial 7.8-8.0 during startup and before cycle started. I did not mention but I plan on getting crushed coral to buffer the PH from the nitrification process. The water on Saturday morning was cloudy and reddish (I fed them on Friday an hour after acclimating them but not on Saturday at all since I wanted to slow the ammonia production down). I think it turned cloudy because of the food and fish poop that wasn't being filtered properly. Once the polyester was added in the new bigger filter, the polyester is reddish brown (like a clay color almost). And the water is back to being nearly crystal clear. The water does not appear to smell. I didn't particularly put my nose to it. But I did not notice anything either while I was at the shop tonight checking up on them. There were 2 dead fish but 2 out of 200 in 2 days didn't seem too bad. I fed them tonight. After I fed them I took the tests and realized ammonia was between 4-8ppm. Otherwise I wouldn't have fed them tonight either.

Oh yea water temp is at 82F. I have 2 300w heaters running in the filter. With the goldfish I ran the system at around 60-65 degrees depending on the outside temp. My warehouse is not insulated. Since this is trials right now I'm not worried about insulating the tanks, etc. I'm learning from my mistakes now so when I expand the system I do it once and right.

[urbanfarmer]

Your pH is good. Do not let it go any higher until you get the ammonia under control. If the pH drops lower, that's fine for now until you get it under control. The pH is keeping your fish alive, so to speak.

[davidstcldfl]

Hi Walter, welcome to the forum.. :)

You mentioned a deep water cultuer bed....how deep is it ?
A 'typical' DWC bed is 1 ft deep. One your size, would have aprox 240 gallons just by it's self.
The reason I'm asking about the water volume is because...I was going to mention adding salt to your system. You need to have a pretty good idea of the volume of water to get the ratio correct.

Salt will help the fish in a few ways. For a good read about salt and it's use, and it's just one page...search for an article titled...Salt for fish health. When you also see the words 'aquaponic' and 'lynx', you'll know you found the one I'm refering to.

Sorry, The rules say...I can't give a direct link to it, since it's at another aquaponic site.

Walter, I hope to hear about 'how well' the system and fish are doing next time... 8-)

[keith_r]

+1 david.. with those readings though, i'd do 25% water change, then salt to 3ppt
your new filter will take a while to cycle, don't feed anything until your levels get lower

[NeverResting]

Thanks guys. I'll do a water change today. I didn't do it yesterday because I have to lug water from the sink on the other end of the warehouse in 5 gallon buckets so today I was going to purchased a 100 foot hose to make it easier. As for the salt, I added salt when I started the system. I believe, I added 1 Tablespoon per 10 gallons or whatever the salt container said was the correct dosage. I bought it at Petsmart down the road in the milk like carton container.

My DWC is about 5" deep currently. I have some room to add water still to the system. I used 2x10 wood for the sides and poly sheeting for my trial bed. Bigger beds I was going to use EDPM rolls, but did not want to spend the money on a big roll right now. My fish are held in a hard plastic pond. The ones you dig a hole in the ground and place the rigid liner into. It's approximately 3 feet wide and 1.5 foot deep. It's about 1 foot deep in water line. It has some "shelves" built in so I'm guessing it's about 40-50 gallons only.

I will post up some pictures of my setup shortly. I was trying to get them off my phone last night but it wasn't cooperating.

I will keep the thread updated and it's very nice to see some locals around me too. I hope to not only be a newbie here but a contributor as my system matures.

*btw found the article and will try to salt the system to 3ppt. I did read multiple pages on his site a couple weeks back but did not see that one.

[davidstcldfl]

I did read multiple pages on his site
:D 'Her' site ...TcLynx is a fiesty little 'lady'.

[NeverResting]

I got the photos to email when I tried again so here they are.

Oops about this his comment, I simply did not know but of course this passion is equally followed by both sexes.

My wife is the only one that hates this whole thing. Partially because she says it's taken my time from her away. She shows no interest in the fish or the growing part as I tried to get her involved.

[JCO]

Welcome and keep those photos coming :mrgreen:

[NeverResting]

I came in and got to work.

Initial readings on ammonia were 8ppm or higher since it was the last color on API test kit.

I drained about 40 gallons of water and replaced it with tap. I don't have a RO right now but I put some Stress coat in the bucket as I'm carrying it. I also moved my tank a little to allow for a higher water level in the grow bed. So in addition to the 40 gallons I replaced I fit another 40 gallons in there. My back is killing me lol. I skipped on the hose for today because I just need the money elsewhere.

Did another ammonia reading and I'm still between 4-8ppm now but it's better than a strong 8ppm. I won't feed the fish for a couple days and see where it goes. No deaths since last night so that's good. Fish are swimming in what appears to be a healthy manner.

So I used the formula to figure out the amount of salt in the system. Guesstimating that I'm around 1.5ppt now after I dumped the rest of the salt I had on hand. I only had 2lbs of salt to start and some was already in the system and guessing 180 gallons of water or so would weigh 1400lbs. 2lbs to 1400lbs gets you 1.42PPT unless my math is off.

My Nitrates were at 10ppm today before water changes which is probably an off reading. I might have not shook the bottle enough or something. I can't see it going down at all right now since there is nothing growing in there. My lettuce is still in a propagation tray.

I'll update the thread tomorrow or the day after with more readings and hopefully I'll see some decline in the numbers.

[NeverResting]

Wells seems like there's a little progress.

Ammonia 4ppm instead of 4-8ppm
Nitrite 5+ppm
Nitrate 10-20ppm instead of 10ppm.

I'll keep watching daily until it's at 1ppm to start feeding them.

[keith_r]

i'd up the salt.. you ph is probably a little high, which is saving you for now.. personally, i avoid aquarium products like stresscoat, as most aren't intended for fish for the table

[bcotton]

Its probably too late at this point but i figured i would mention it while i am thinking about it... if you know someone with a cycled system it could help to ask to have or barrow a few lbs of substrate from their system to speed up your cycling.

brian

[NeverResting]

i'd up the salt.. you ph is probably a little high, which is saving you for now.. personally, i avoid aquarium products like stresscoat, as most aren't intended for fish for the table

I'll get some more salt today. I didn't know that about stresscoat. I'll stop using it. I do plan on getting an RO system setup here.



Its probably too late at this point but i figured i would mention it while i am thinking about it... if you know someone with a cycled system it could help to ask to have or barrow a few lbs of substrate from their system to speed up your cycling.

brian

I actually don't know anyone around here with fish. I actually have tanks with no substrate for breeding and holding some guppies. The guppy tanks are all at zero ammonia, zero nitrates, with very little nitrate. I do a daily vaccuum of the bottom of those tanks and that takes out about 5% of the water daily. They are very stable right now. The media in them is over a month old at this point so I might just give them fresh media and put the old media in the tilapia tank. I was holding out because I ordered some sponge filters for them last week and I was going to give the sponge filters a week to establish before changing the current filter media. Probably have about half a cubic foot of established media amongst all tanks.


Thank you for all the suggestions everyone. It really helps!

[NeverResting]

Well things are improving.

PH 7.6
Ammonia 2PPM (did the reading twice to make sure)
Nitrites 5+PPM still
Nitrates 20PPM

Yesterday I got a big bag of water softener salt at Home Depot and added 2lbs more making the total 4lbs in my system.

I hope when I check Monday it will be near 0 ammonia and I'll start feeding them again. These guys are going to be hungry!


I have another question. I did get some adult tilapia that I bought separately. I put them in a 90 gallon tank 2 days ago. They have African Chiclid sand as a substrate and 4" PVC pipes and fittings to hide in. They aren't really eating. I tried feeding them today and yesterday and they are just scared hiding in the pipes. The largest one has to be about 7-8" long and the rest are about 3-6" long. There are 8 of them in the tank. 6 females and 2 males. Is that pretty normal for them to get scared during shipping and have a longer time adjusting? My fingerlings were local these weren't. This tank has 0 Ammonia, 0 Nitrite, 0 Nitrate. Filters are over 1 month old on this tank. I switched them from some other tanks I had different fish in. I don't expect a problem with cycling.

Hope everyone has a good weekend!

[davidstcldfl]

I tried feeding them today and yesterday and they are just scared hiding in the pipes

They'll eat in a few days...depending on the warmth of the water.
Give them a week or two, they'll calm down.
In about about 3 or 4 weeks, they'll be looking at you when your near and following you as you walk by... :D

[NeverResting]

I tried feeding them today and yesterday and they are just scared hiding in the pipes

They'll eat in a few days...depending on the warmth of the water.
Give them a week or two, they'll calm down.
In about about 3 or 4 weeks, they'll be looking at you when your near and following you as you walk by... :D


Thanks. Yea they ate overnight what was fed to them. I fed them today a tiny bit because the water was a little cloudy. I'll give them time. Water temp is at 85 in that tank with 2 300w heaters which seem like they are running non-stop. This month's electricity bill will be interesting between the heaters and lights.

Main tilapia tank had .5ppm Ammonia today so gave them some food. Not much to not over do it. Nitrites still need to fall before I start power feeding them. My lettuce is a bit over a week old and showing 4 leaves. Going to transplant into the rafts next week. Still haven't made the rafts yet lol.

Enjoy the weekend guys. I'll post up pics of the lettuce once I get it transplanted.

[bcotton]

This sounds normal. The ammonia spikes and drops several days before the nitrites spike and drop.

If you havent checked on the fish over the weekend and they are alive today, you are probably through the woods. I would expect nitrites to start coming down if not already today or tomorrow.

85 degrees is a good temperature for tilapia, but considering this is indoors you should be ok not paying to heat the tank. They may eat less and grow slower but to me there's a tradeoff and the cost of heat isnt going to give you a very good ROY in terms of extra fish growth.

For my mozambique tilapia here in texas... I prefer the water above 70 but i dont panic or start to manipulate water temperature until it gets below 60.


brian

[NeverResting]

Hey Brian! Thanks for your info. I'm not worried about the cost atm because the system is small and it's not meant to provide ROY or ROI yet. When I scale it to a larger system I'll probably go heatless for the stock tanks and just offer heat for the breeding tank. I'm in a learning phase and with everything costs are always high during that phase so I allow for it. Fish are doing fine this morning, I saw them an hour ago, haven't fed them yet as I'm always wanting to test water before. Need to get some work squared away before I can go tend to my warehouse farm.