Any advice for a newbie about to assemble his first system?

[mmchupp]

Hello. I've been researching for a couple months, and slowly been purchasing components. I'm eager to get my system assembled, and am open to advice.


Grow Bed:
1' deep Water Trough I purchased at TSC. It's about 6' long and 1.5' wide.
I've got plenty of pea gravel which I have washed.
I bought some parts for a bell siphon and tested it with a five gallon bucket - it worked great. It's very cool.

Plants:
My wife has about a dozen plants, tomato and green pepper, which we've grown to about 4" tall in those little peat starter plug things.

Fish:
Picking up a 50 gallon tank this weekend being given to us for free.
Going to get some perch for free from a friend's pond. I thought I'd start with free fish to begin with. I would love to grow walleye later. I thought about Tilapia, but then I'd have to heat the water, right?

We have a submersible sump pump we bought at Lowes which will pump 1500 gallons an hour. That's way too much obviously, so I'm going to put it on a timer and just run it a few minutes a couple times a day.

Lighting:
We live in Northern Indiana and our goal is to have fresh vegetables in December. The system will be in our basement. I've got two 4' flourescent light fixtures for now. Should I add Sodium or Halide lights and how soon do I need them?

Any thoughts, suggestions, council or warnings?

Thanks.

[Ravnis]

Welcome to aquaponics.

My first advise is start small, and start slow. Don't expect too much from your system at first it will take time to mature.


I can't tell from your post about whether you have experience at aquarium keeping. If you do, then you are well ahead of the curve. If not, you would do well to look up aquarium cycling and fishless cycling.

WHat temperature range does your basement run? Tilapia need 80F water to grow and struggle to survive below 70F. As far as heat they love 90F water. But heating that in a basement will not be cost effective in a small system and the humidity will be very high.

Free perch sounds like an excellent way to start and "get your feet wet". They are fairly tolerant of poor water conditions that you will experience the first month to two months.

Flourescent bulbs will work for growth. Watch out for long spindly plants as it indicates either poor light or low nutrient in the water.

If your running your pump so infrequently, then you will need to get an air pump. I would advise a good quality air pump and not the el cheapo sold at walmart. Those will work for starters, but you will eventually need a better one and why buy twice (like I did ;) )

As far as your oversized pump, tee it off so that you can split the flow into the tank and to the growbed. You will fill that small of a growbed quickly with that much pump, you could use ball valves to put the amount of flow you need to your growbed and the rest could splash in your fish tank for aeration.

Best of luck,

Ed

[mmchupp]

Thank you Ravnis. I bought a T-connection for the pump, and that seems to be working great. Bell-siphon is working fine and water volume seems good. I was worried about having too much water flushing from the bed into the tank and overflowing, but it seems to be okay. (kinda hard to calculate as I didn't know how much to subtract to account for the gravel.)

Getting the free perch later this week!

[bart]

if you dont have natural light then lighting is critical you need the right itensity and spectrum see indoor hydro set ups as for dope growing iu would use metal hy or soteagro or triphospher fluro

[mmchupp]

So...
I got my 50 gal tank filled and cycled it through the grow bed a few times to make sure everything was okay. The tank was a gift from a friend, who provided it on the condition that we take care of the frog that came with it. So we got it all ready and the frog settled in and let it go for a few days.

Then we went to our friends pond and scooped up 10 blue gill and brought them back. They seemed fine, but the next morning all 10 were dead.

I took a sample of the water into the pet store and had it analyzed. The guy there said our water pH levels were a tad high, but all water in this area is a little high in pH. Nitrogen was a tad high too, but not dangerous. He suggested that we introduced too many at once.

They boys have about 8 Cichlids in a 30 gallon tank that they were sick of taking care of, so we dumped those into the water. They have been fine for a week now.
What are your thoughts on why the Blue Gill died?

[Ravnis]

I'm sorry to hear about your loss.

For them to die that rapidly, I would look at oxygenation issues or not acclimating them properly.

What type of air pump are you using?

What are the size of the cichlids versus bluegill?

Did you dechlorinate the water before introducing the bluegill?

Did you introduce the fish slowly and acclimate them? Could there have been a temperature shock or ph shock? Might need to check the ph of the water vs the ph of the pond? A shift from like 6-7 on the ph scale is actually a 100 times higher.



The water has to cycle. It generally takes a few weeks to a few months for the bacteria that breakdown the fishwaste to grow in numbers to support a large amount of fish. Everytime I start an aquarium and start testing the ammonia and nitrite levels don't show up on tests for a day or 2. The first stage of bacteria have to break the urea the fish give off to ammonia, then the ammonia breaks into nitrite.

[LFCummins]

Almost a month now. Was wondering how the 8 Cichlids were doing ?

[evan]

I would also be interested in an update. My system will be almost the same size. Any photos would be nice too. :)

[nwestwood]

If your cichlids are still alive, try the bluegill again. They are usually indestructible.