New fish

Well I have been sick for the last couple of days, but I made a lot of food with ginger and garlic and loaded up on vitamin C and feel better. Today my friend Jason, of North Texas Aquaponics, and I went and picked up some Tilapia. I bought 6 full size fish. On the drive home Jason and I discussed ways to heat the tanks. Jason has a very clever idea, and if your interested please comment and I will give you his info. Right now I have aquarium heaters in my systems, and the temps thus far have stayed above 65 degrees. I am starting to worry though that the falling temps here in DFW are going to possibly kill the fish. I have thrown around the idea of making a solar recirculating heating system, but have my doubts. I may just put one more aquarium heater in each system, but would love a way to lower energy use. I am open to any and all ideas. I look forward to hearing from you. I will have more photos and videos up soon.

My outdoor system

I am very happy to announce that my outdoor system has finally stopped cycling. I was able to tell that my system was done cycling because my nitrates were high, while my ammonia and nitrites were 0 ppm. This took exactly 30 days, and quite a few dead fish later. As I stated in a previous post, from now on I will give all of my fish salt water baths, in order to protect them against a new system cycling, as well as clean them of parasites. I will post a how to on the exact measurements and time required to give fish a salt bath. I would also like to note that salt baths will help sick fish, as they shock the fish into an autoimmune response. While the shock will not kill the fish, it will kill the parasites.

My indoor system is in a testing phase whereas I added a bacteria, completely organic, to see if it would start and finish the cycling process earlier. The only additive to the outdoor system was the seasol I added, initially daily, then twice a week, it took that system exactly 30 days to cycle. I am hoping that the nitrifying bacteria I added to the indoor system will produce great results. I have my fingers crossed. One system down many to go.

Salt water bath

The last few days I have been reading through as much information as humanly possible on the subject of adding salt to an aquaponics system or giving your fresh water fish a salt bath.It is my understanding from the material I have read that the reason for the salt bath is to help sickly, or new fish within a system. The salt shocks the fish, but does not kill them, it does however kill parasites and certain fungi. This is kind of like a spa day for fish, when done they are placed back into their old tank, with rejuvenated gills, and hopefully no parasites. I like the idea of salt baths as a way to heal fish as it does not add salt to the system. From now on any new fish, or sick will get this treatment. What are some of your thoughts on salt baths? Any concerns, I would love to hear your comments.

 

The second form of salting I have researched involves adding salt directly to your system. Most everything I read said to add around 3 grams per liter. My first thought was great, now I have to convert everything to metric. Well that is ok, with all of the wonderful, free programs on the internet I can easily find one and convert away. I have also read that adding salt to the system is not bad for the plants, and is actually kind of good, in that it adds different forms of sodium for the plants. I like that. But I want first hand accounts of what people did, used and their outcome, did it work as planned? is this the best thing since canned beer? Let me know, I will continue the research and possibly salt my system this week.

New system

I finished the new indoor system yesterday. You can see it on you tube, my channel is sage aquaponics. The system is made from three 26 gallon black trays, each tray has a bell siphon. Instead of using pvc pipe, I ran 3/4″ marine hose, with quick connect adapters. The fish tank is a black 75 gallon tub, with a heater, and aerator. I transplanted all of our  seedlings into our tubs, which contain hydroton. The use of Hydroton and Oasis grow cubes makes the process quick and simple. I then added some seaweed extract, which I will continue to add for the next week or so.

Today I bought 10 goldfish for the new system, to help it cycle. The reason for the gold fish is that they produce a lot of waste, meaning ammonia, and if I do not have adequate bacteria then the fish will die due to the ammonia levels. I stocked the tank with less then half of the maximum stocking density in order to get things moving along. Once my system starts cycling, which will be evident when we have Nitrates and nitrites present I may add more fish. I am also going to give the system a salt bath, in that the salt helps protect the fish from Nitrites, which are just as harmful to fish as ammonia. I am also going to add salt to my outdoor system to help those fish, as that system has not yet finished cycling.

 

I found some organic bacteria in a bottle that I tried out in the new system, it should help the bacteria colonize faster, in turn cutting down my cycle time. WIth this new development, I will compare the two systems, my outdoor one with bacteria from an established system i.e. log from fish tank, against my indoor system with the bacteria in a bottle. I will let you all know how it turns out. Have a great day.

Patience and aquaponics

I have found that I want my system to finish cycling so bad that I am looking for any way to speed it up. I do know that since aquaponics is small eco-system I need to utilize patients while waiting for mother nature to work her magic. To remedy this I went down to the local pet shop, and asked them for a piece of wood from one of there fresh water tanks. My reasoning for this is that it will contain enough of the necessary bacteria to help my system cycle a bit faster. I threw the chunk in and am hoping for the best. Meanwhile, I built a nice indoor, blue barrel unit, had everything working great and decided I wanted something different, maybe it was my patience wearying thin, so I built a completely new system, where the old one was. I will admit that the new system looks great, and I am currently working all of the bugs out of it. Hopefully when this new system is done I will be able to use some water from my established system to help my new one cycle faster. I will post pictures and videos when it is done. In the mean time please send me some video requests in regards to aquaponics and I will try and make one.  Wish me luck, I have a long weekend in front of me. 

New videos

I bought the rest of my parts today to finish my indoor unit. With this recent development I will start making how to videos and posting them here. I plan on also making some self reliance videos, and other videos related to aquaponics and self reliance. I have some friends and family members that are starting to or have been,living a self reliant lifestyle and with their help I plan on making videos of our progress. If there is a certain type of video you would like to see, just ask.  This video shows how easy it is to use Oasis grow cubes and Hydroton. 

The Pluco’s are happy

Yesterday I bought some Pluco’s (sucker fish) for the tank. I bought these in order to combat the new algae growth. My good friend Jason, informed me that the algae growth was probably a result of overfeeding, or not enough plants in the grow bed. This is just one example of how quickly the ecosystem within a aquaponics system can fall out of balance. Another way I plan to combat this is to add more plants to the grow beds.