Cycled System Ammonia Rising

[jared.plowman]

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 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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

Indeed now I can feed myself

[jared.plowman]

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]

add some salt, to 3ppt to help the fish deal with the stress..

[jared.plowman]

No more stress, both my Ammonia and Nitrites are 0ppm. The little bacteria were working overtime this week!!

[urbanfarmer]

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!