Cycling is definitly over No Ammonia no nitrites And Compost Tea

Cycling is definitely over ammonia and nitrites are undetectable.  Nitrates have been decreasing progressively. Nitrites peaked and totally disappeared very quickly. Also, the intresting thinkg is how the pH decreased until the nitrite peak was over, and then started to increase again. I think it is because there are pieces of eggshells trapped in polyester is the tower.

Last weekend, I did the first of the monthly maintenance check up. I took the system apart to rinse the pump, I removed the profiler that was in it, there was a worm cocoon and a fat worm in it, they both were returned to the tower. The water has an interesting reddish tint, but didnt have any distinctive smell to it. Not sure where that color is from, but  could be natural coloration occurring because of the vermiwash and compost tea. It also could be that the wood I leaching out something. When I built the tower, I remember that the wood was giving away some lightly coloured water. maybe the plastic wrap I have put on the walls has gaps and some of what is in the wood is leaching out. I may need to rethink the cover of the wood, maybe using a double layer of plastic wrap would be better. 

 

The tee, with old socks to filter particles

After cleaning up the pump, I also decided to mess with the water pipe. It is a flexible poly tubing, and was pinched at the level of the tower. Also, the green onion getting soft may be due to over-watering, so I needed to reduce the flow from the pump. I had a couple of tees and a small valve. I used one of the tee and the valve to divert some of the flow from the pump and return it to the reservoir, the other one to play the role of an elbow and avoid the pipe to kink. I covered the ends with nylon sock to play a filters role, and added a short length of tubing on the "top end" to avoid splashing things around. In the process I kind of messed up the 3 pepper seedlings. It seem that maybe one will survive, the other will definitely not.

Compost tea version 2.0

After that, I added 2 cups of compost tea, brewed for 24h. Oxygenated using the aquarium pump. The tea was "brewed" using worm casting (1.5 teaspoon), seaweed (1/8 teaspoon) and same of brown sugar. After 24h there was no foam on the top (Internet tends to say there should be a lot). I filtered the "tea" measure the nitrate and ammonia (traces) and sprayed some on the leaves (according to compost tea aficionados it is great to fight diseases and so-on), and dumped the rest in the reservoir. I also added 2mL of this house plant fertilizer that we have laying around. I keep checking ammonia and nitrate on a daily basis and the compost tea does not seem to change much of these. There seem to have a slight increase of ammonia, but the plant fertilizer contains both ammonia and nitrate (ammonium nitrate and other nitrate source). I kept adding 2 ml of fertilizer everyday since. I decided that I will add much more  of all the ingredients and get molasses ( instead of brown sugar) the next batch, which I prepared yesterday: 1 hipping table spoon of worm compost, one teaspoon of seaweed, and one teaspoon of molasses.  This version has some foam on the top, indicating that there is life in it. Last night I added another teaspoon of molasses, as tonight the foaming has greatly reduced. It "brewed" for 48h, the colour is yellow-brown, its smells good (like the molasses, with some earthy smell mixed to it) has a little bit of foam on the top, but does not have a significant amount of ammonia or nitrates. I also sprayed some on the leaves and dumped the remaining in the tank. To avoid risk of overflow, I removed about 2 cups from the reservoir. The water is still brown-redish, and still does not have any particular smell to it.

The "growlight"

 I also made a "growlight" out of a power strip, a couple on plug-light-bulb-sockets and 2 23W CFL (5000k "bright daylight"), since the days are seriously shortening. On Tuesday night however, some of the parley looked strange : a few leaves were wilted, and theses leaves, where the closest to the lights. I decided to use only one light, and to put it on the timer with the pump. The wilted leaves did not recover, but no more of these appeared.

some wilted leaves on the lower parley plant.

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Cycling is well on its way !

Amonia (undiluted left)

Nitrite (1/50 center)

Nitrate(1/20 right)

The farm is cycling ! since the 16th nitrites have appeared and since the 22nd, nitrates have made their appearance, and are seriously increasing since yesterday! This means that in less than 2 weeks, beneficial bacteria became able to start the process of nitrification, and the pH is starting to drop, wich is another sign that the nitrification is happening. Ammonia by the way, have disappeared since the 27th ! Today, there is still a great deal of nitrite. which mean that the water would not be safe yet to introduce fish.











The kit I am using to measure the different nitrogen forms is color coded, and as i explained in my previous post, i wanted to find a way that would be more reliable than eyes to evaluate the concentration (corresponding color on the chart). The website I have use to try to achieve that does not work as well as I hoped. This may be due to the fact that I am not able to produce standards of known concentration to input into the on-line free-ware  (but if I could do that I may feel confident of using my eyes to judge the color). This is still a quit cool attempt to replace a tool like a spectrophotometer.

Green onion, bok choy and the rosemary (in dirt)

Anyway my all point here is that the numbers dont add up, I have not added any ammonia to the system (past the day I removed the egg shells - realizing that they released a lot of it) and while the ammonia measurement did not seem to go over 20 ppm (I have diluted these 1:10), the color suggest that there is now 160 ppm of nitrate. Also, I have diluted the sample from the system when the colors develop in the darker range of the chart, so I do not over estimate the concentrations.
It is also possible that eggshells that may have fallen through the netting of the sock have kept releasing protein - hence ammonia- into the system.

More green onion, parsley and on top, the bell pepper

On the actual plants side: the parsley is doing well (better that the one potted in poting mix), the "saved" green onions are growing away and the bok choy as well. I also transplanted some bell pepper that grew in the my avocado pot (not exactly sure where theyre coming from - but most likely from the worm compost). The only thing that does not do well (as is pretty much dead) is the basil and the 2 roquettes that i planted (probably 2 early). I am wondering if the nitrite is responsible for that or if i damaged the roots of the basil too much...

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Cycling the vertical farm

It has been a week that the "farm" is up and running. The "system" is for now in the phase of "cycling". Thats how the pros call it. It means that when a new aquaponic system is started up, beneficial micro-organisms need to set their homes in the "System". This process occurs naturally as microbes from the air settle in the system and process ammonia produced by the fish and the food leftover. Alternatively, the  system can be seeded by a mixture of nitrifying bacteria. I hope that adding "vermiwash" and a few worm cocoons and babies will accelerate this start-up of the system by bringing the beneficial micro-organisms from day one, and nutrients for the plants in the system. Basically, to cycle ones system, one just needs to wait, and see if ammonia gets converted into nitrate, using a kit of reagents that change color depending on concentration.

Overall the micro-organisms that we want are the ones that will take up ammonia to oxidize it into nitrate in 2 steps (NH3 -> NO2->NO3). In order to verify that these microorganisms are doing their job, one needs to check that the nitrogen that had been introduced gets transformed into NO3. NO3 or nitrate is the most plant available form of nitrogen that plants can use, and it also is the least toxic form of inorganic nitrogen for the fish. Ammonia is toxic to fish at low concentration (above 0.06 ppm). The intermediary of the the transformation from ammonia to nitrate is nitrite (read again, nitr-i-te) which is the most toxic of the 3 forms of nitrogen. Overall, plants can use both ammonia and nitrate for their needs, but use nitrate more efficiently overall, witch is the reason why the system needs to be enriched in the beneficial bacterium. Once the system is "cycled"  ammonia can be detoxified by the bacteria and used by the plants to maintain a good environment for the fish. Ammonia use by plants varies depending on what type of plant and the soil conditions. Also, higher range of ammonia may be toxic to some plants. For instance in this study, barley show toxicity signs at 170 ppm of ammonia.

A quick Internet search will teach you that there are 2 ways of cycling either by using sacrificial fish - as ammonia may reach toxic levels before the system reaches the equilibrium, or without fish, using some other source of nitrogen (store bought pure ammonia, fish food ...). Some would advise to plant right away, some do not mention it. As I do not feel ready to sacrifice fishies,  I decided to go for "fishless cycling", where a source of nitrogen is added. I also decided to plant some things (3 green onions, parley, basil) as roots support nitification by providing a favorable environment for the bacteria.
The source of nitrogen : my compost (has the advantage to be free, to bring a lot of plant nutrients, and should contain a lot of beneficial bacteria.The problem of compost, is that it it not a liquid. people who are compost "fans" often talk and write about compost tea, but it is a somewhat involved process, and need the addition of store bought things (molasses, seaweed extract ect..). another way to extract soluble nutrients and some beneficial micro-organisms from compost is to steep the compost briefly and filter the solids out (or pouring a large quantity of water over the compost and recover the liquid that pools at the bottom): some call that a "compost wash" or "vermiwhash" if the compost is worm compost. Ive done my version of vermiwash by taking a handfull of the compost form the bottom of my worm bin, adding about half a liter of water to it, shaking it for a bit, and staining it. I then added that liquid in the "system".
2 of the green onion did not make it though the week, but i think it has more to do with the "help" of the cat who chewed the tips of the leaves, and only the biggest of the green onion survived the "pruning". The basil has now a few new leaves, and the parsley too.  The basil and parsley where split from the scrawny ones growing in a small pot. They had yellowed leaves and do not grow well in the pot. Ive seeded there last fall, in storebought poting soil that became exhausted of nutrients rather quickly I think. I added also 2 aragula seeds that already germinated (a couple of days ago) and the roots and lower stem of a few green onion to see if the revive (the 3 planted at first was an experiment where Ive put them in wetted shredded paper, and they all started to grow).
To come back to cycling, the goal, it to have a "system" that will be able to process ammonia very quickly so the fish do not intoxicate themselves in their own ammonia. The tell tell signs of a system that is ready to accommodate fish is that the nitrogen introduced is being transformed in nitrate, and is accompanied with a decrease of the pH (nitrification produces protons, hence decreasing pH). This requires to be able to measure ammonia and nitrate. So i got my hands on a fish testing kit. The one I found (thank you craigslist again) contain 2 types of pH indicators, and a set of chemicals to evaluate the amount of ammonia, nitrite and nitrate. By comparing the color of the reaction with the water from the system to a chart, one can estimate how much there is.
I got very surprised when my first ammonium test came back very dark (10) so i diluted 1/2 and then 1/5 the water from the system, to have a color that was somewhat in the middle of the range. (these kind of tests are more precise in the middle of the range rather than at the top as it may "saturate"). I ended up estimating that there could be something like 20 to 40 ppm of ammonium in the water from my system. I did not really expect that, as ammonia is toxic to worms, I was expecting a low amount of ammonia in the vermiwash (that i did not test yet) - or rather in my system. And then I remembered that i added eggshells to increase the very acidic pH of my tap water. I probably introduced quite a bit of protein this way, that had - and maybe will- released ammonia. While all aquaponics website recommend an ammonia concentration below 2ppm during cycling, I am not too worried about it, as long as my plant grow (and they do) they will use the available nitrogen and slowly reduce the concentration of ammonia. Also, it seems that nitrifying bacteria can leave and do thier job at these concentrations, or at least in compost.
One problem with evaluating the concentration, i that id need to trust that my eyes judge the color intensity reliably and repeatably every day since i dont have a spectrophotometer at home ... After a bit of thinking, i though that since my phone has a camera, it probably could be use in some way as an approximation of a spectrophotometer more reliable than my eyes. I have found that there are apps that give the RGB value of colors in images, and this website : http://www.ourresearch.net/api-test-kit-values.html . Basically, when you enter the RGB value of the given test, it can assign the closest standard from the test kit to it. So now this is how I proceed : I take a picture

, crop the image to have a portion of the tube,

 use the app to get the RGB value and go to the website.

 The app gives the "dominant" color and a list of other colors present in lower "quantity". I decided to use the 4 most present colors to get a better estimate to the value, and I average it. Sometimes, the website assigns a value that makes no sense to the eye, so I ignore these values. I also made a "device" from a couple of pieces of wood, a desk light, a piece of cardboard and some white paint, to try to control for differences in lighting that most likely would affect the reading.
 The device

I set the telephone on the black line.

Its been a few days (4) that i am checking ammonia, nitrite and nitrate (as well as pH). The pH has now stabilized just below 8, the eggsheld have been removed last week. The NH3 seems to progressively increase (most likely, protein from the egg that where disolved gets degraded) from 12 ppm to 18 ppm - but this might be due that my "approximation" of a spectrophotometer is not good enough and that the variation corresponds to lighting differences or that RGB values are not god surrogates for optical densities, or else ... aI will try to see if I could use imageJ, a free software develloped for image analysis and used by countless scientists. Nitrite has made its apparition yesterday, and seem to have increased today. Nitrate are absent.
Aquaponics websites usually say that it take 4 to 6 weeks (or more) before the system is cycled, during this time, nitrite will appear and increase as the first set of bacteria start to work, but then will go back to a low level as the bacteria responsible for the second step (nitrite to nitrate) bloom. They call that the nitrite spike. Then the nitrate level will steadily increase. Once the nitrite is back down to a not detectable level, it is possible to introduce the fish without danger of killing it (or much less).
In conclsion, it seem that my "system" may be starting to cycle, as nitrite has appeared.

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Cycling is almost over !!!!

Left: NO3 1:50 Right NO2 1/10

NO2 1:50 and undiluted

Youhouuuuuuuuuuuuuu!

The cycling is over! Today, when I measured the different forms of nitrogen, I happily saw that the nitrites have dived down to 1ppm or less. That is great news!



Once the nitrite is below 0 ppm, I could add fish, but I think i am going to wait a bit more, and add some "vermiwash" to see what it does to the nutrients concentrations and pH.


Also, I have not decided what fish to put in, I have about 3.5 gallons of  water and recommendations from aquarium websites say 1 gallon per inch of fish, but I have found in other forum people putting 7 dozen minnows in a 22 gallon tote, which is 3 fish per gallons... Of course the number of fishes must be considered with the number size that the fish could reach at maturity, and fishes like minnows are quite small. I could buy feeder fish, that are either gold fish or minnows and sold for a 1$ per 5 fish, or a 2$ betta sold in the store around the corner. Bettas have the advantage of not needing as much water as other fishes. The problem is, I am not sure if these fishes would be healthy or not. Online reviews are mixed on these. But buying "safer" fish would increase the budget, and there is always the risk that it wont survive in the system.
Anyway I still have sometimes to figure it out, and i can always keep feeding the system using vermiwash (compost tea - nonbrewed).

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