Cycling, Please Help!

[rfeiller]

remember you pH will start coming down it does take awhile, but there are a lot of plants that will do ok with that pH

[urbanfarmer]

remember you pH will start coming down it does take awhile, but there are a lot of plants that will do ok with that pH

The lower it gets the longer it takes to get even lower. Remember a pH change from 8 to 7 indicates a hydronium ion concentration decrease that is 10 fold whereas a change from 8 to 6 indicates a decrease that's 100 fold, so on and so forth.

It also depends how often and how much you feed. It also depends on how often you change/add the water and how much water you change/add.

[jackalope]

Good, so a ph of 8.2 is ok for my tilapia? What about the plants? From what I hear, they like a ph to be much lower.

From the research that I've done, plants like the PH to be round 6 or 6.5, but Tilapia can thrive in the 8's, there are some cichlids that like it to be up to 9.5, if you can imagine that!

Actually, AP with warm water fish isn't the absolute ideal ....... the fish have to have warm water, but the plants will grow better in cold water (that's where Hydroponics has it one-up on us ..... no heaters)! If you were able to use a cold-water fish, like perch or bass (or some other), it would be more like an ideal, but for some of us, that's not going to work, because of the State F&G laws.

For instance, in Montana, I can keep tropical fish in an aquarium in a residence or an office, but not anywhere else, and when it comes to cold water fish, they MUST be under F&G (FWP here) supervision

I'm not too partial to having some state FWP drone invading my privacy without a warrant, so I prefer to stick to Tropical fish (read tilapia) in my 'office' (my unheated saloon), but that limits me to about 3 or 4 months of AP, because of the weather here. Just one of those things!

Just my 2 centavos ...... YMMV

[urbanfarmer]

I keep stumbling on research that indicates plants do funny things at higher pH and can do just fine. I think the problem is we try to care for the plants at a pH of 8 the same as a pH of 5.5, and therein lies the fundamental problem. However, I need more science to back this up! Give me about a month because I have to take my focus back off aquaponics again and study for my graduate exam... I will keep y'all posted, I promise!

[chrisfoerst]

Ok, at a certain point I'll have to just add my seedlings and see how it goes. My ph has only gone down from 8.3 to 8.1 The ammonia on the other hand has dropped substantially. But, now my nitrites are through the roof and my nitrates got up to 20ppm and just today seem to have dropped back to 5ppm.

When can I add my seedlings?

No cold water fish for me, we get up into the 100s in El Paso! But, if I ever move north...

[urbanfarmer]

You can add the plants immediately. You only have to wait to add the fish not the plants.

[chrisfoerst]

Great, done!

[urbanfarmer]

The plants will actually absorb ammonium and urea directly from the water. Ammonium uptake by plants kicks in at pH levels over 7 like you have, but don't worry about any of that for now. Consider it "advanced topics in aquaponics" and wait until you get the basics down.

[urbanfarmer]

Any updates?

[chrisfoerst]

I started planting my seedlings but then I realized I had the siphon problem which I am hoping to figure out today. (Between teaching and my small girls, I don't get to play with my aquaponics system as much as I would like.)

As for the cycling, I am concerned about my nitrites. They have been in the 5ppm range for the last week and don't appear to want to budge. The ammonium is at .25ppm and nitrates fluctuate between 10-20ppm.

Should I continue to be patient or should I be worried about my fish?