Cycling

I've had the system running for about two and a half weeks now, and the bacteria seem to be showing up. If you're new to aquaponics, the bacteria act as the middle-man between the fish waste and plants. Plants cannot eat the ammonia that the fish produce. They can, however, eat Nitrates.

Nitrosonomas appear and convert ammonia into nitrites. Nitrites will then attract another kind of bacteria, Nitrospira, which finally convert the nitrites into nitrates.Once cycling is done, all the bacteria continue to live in the gravel and will keep doing their job without much monitoring.

I ended up adding one big dose of ammonia (well over 8 ppm), as opposed to adding small amounts daily. This was not my intent, but there were some "user-errors" when testing how much was going in. Now that I have it figured out, testing the water for ammonia, nitrites, and nitrates has been my lense for watching the cycling process. It seems to be working beautifully: Ammonia levels are finally dropping, nitrites have appeared, and nitrates are on the rise. This indicates the bacteria is present, and now just needs to reproduce. When ammonia and nitrites are down to 0 ppm, it's safe to add fish.

Most of my research comes from scouring internet forums built by thousands of other aquaponics enthusiasts around the world. I've also been reading Sylvia Bernstein's instructional book "Aquaponic Gardening," which could really walk somebody through the entire process. While I'm giving my research props, I should mention that my original inspiration for this project came from this Murray Hallam video:

Bloguaponics

I have decided to try growing all my own food. There are plenty of reasons why I'm doing this, but what follows is the documentation of how I do it (or how I almost do it... or how I completely fail to do it).

Aquaponics is a combination of aquaculture and hydroponics. Water will flow from the 275 gallon fish tank to three grow beds. The grow beds will contain plants growing in 3/4" gravel. Naturally occurring bacteria will inhabit the gravel, turning ammonia from the fish into nitrites and nitrates which are edible for the plants (ammonia is not). As the plants absorb these nutrients, they are also cleaning the water for the fish. The only input into a balanced aquaponics system is whatever you feed the fish.

It uses 90% less water than traditional farming, and you end up with organic fish and vegetables.

Below are pictures of the greenhouse and aquaponics system coming together:

Greenhouse frame going up. I used 3/4" pvc for the hoops.

Janky door frame seems stable enough.

9'x15'

I had to cut these containers up to make the grow beds. Me cutting through metal. You know, manly stuff.

And suddenly... grow beds. The tank on the ground is a sump (water hangs out here before it is pumped back to fish tank).

Painted, to prevent algae.

I'm never hauling gravel again.

Oops, didn't get enough gravel. Had to go back to the gravel store. Also, look! There's plants in there!

I bought a bunch of starts from around the corner: chard, kale, a few varieties of lettuce, broccoli, bok choi, sorrel, and lavender.

There are no fish in the system yet because I have to attract beneficial bacteria before it's safe for them by adding ammonia periodically. Fish, and pictures of the fish, coming in the next couple weeks.