My first attempt

[commander]

UPDATE! I started cycling my system a couple of weeks ago and things are looking pretty good. The down side is that the temperature keeps dropping to low during the night to allow me to add fish and plants. Hopefully in a week or so that will change. Meanwhile, I got bored today so I built a swirl bio-filter and added to my little two barrel system. It is a 35 gallon blue barrel with the top cut out. The water enters through the side of the barrel about 3 inches from the bottom and is designed so that the flow creates the swirl. The water exits at the top through a standpipe arrangement in the center of the barrel. The top of the barrel that I cut out was used as a baffle. I drilled a hole in the center of the top and threaded a female pvc coupling through the hole. The baffle sits on the standpite about 10 inches from the bottom. Sitting on top of the baffle is all the polyester quilt batting scraps from my wife's quilting projects. Lots of surface area for bacteria to grow. I may add some air stones to the bottom of the swirl filter to increase the DO. I don't have any way to check the DO right now so I guess best to err on the side of caution. We will see how this design works.

[Jeff]

Pics! Must.....see......pics!

[commander]

Pics really don't do justice to the project. Here are some really crude drawings of what I did. I will try to answer any questions.

[commander]

Put 2 dozen one inch gold fish in the tank last night. Lost three this morning. Will be monitoring the water closely. Wife is getting anxious to put plants in the beds.

[keith_r]

you can put plants in the beds now - i had seeds in my system (water was flowing with fishless cycling) before the fish,, no issues that i could see.. (except for some seeds getting washed away)

[commander]

That is the plan for tonight. We already have some lettuce, kale and broccoli sprouts started. We are gling to move them to net posts with coir and then transplant them into the system. I have also arranged a set of hoops over the system so that we can put it under plastic while the nights are still pretty cool.

[commander]

Three more dead fish this afternoon. The others are looking healthy, moving around and eating. A few plants went in tonight. Leaf Lettuce, Kholrabi, and broccolli.

[commander]

No dead fish this morning so that is good. Ammonia has climbed a bit, but nitrites and nitrates have dropped to close to 0. No sure that is causing this unless it was me disturbing the grow media to plant last night. I will test again this evening and see what is happening.

[commander]

No dead fish last night. I did notice that the fish seemed to be coming to the surface and trying to gulp air so I added an airstone to the fish tank. It occurred to me later that this might be why the bacteria growth has been slow as well.

No dead fish this morning and with the air stone in place over night, everyone seems to be much more perky. The numbers are beginning to come around to a more normal stable set so that is a pleasing find. The few plants are looking good, standing tall and reaching up. Tonight we add some more plants. I am thinking some basil, dill and some different types of lettuce.

[keith_r]

yup, the nitrification process requires oxygen as well as the fish!