Cycling A System Should You Go Fish

1:10 AM in a, Aqua, cycling, fish, go, should, system, you

Aquaponic systems are closed loop systems that replicate the naturally occurring symbiotic relationship between plants and fish.  Fish provide nutrients for the plants and the plants clean the water for the fish.  Like all relationships, this one takes time to develop as well.

Whether you are designing your own system or looking to purchase a prefabricated system you should be aware that it will take some time for your system to function so that fish and plants are both healthy and growing.  The process of establishing this symbiotic relationship is referred to as "cycling".

You can cycle with fish or without fish.  The choice is yours.  Whether you cycle with fish or without fish, you will need to keep an eye on the water chemistry so go ahead and invest in a good water quality test kit.  These kits will allow you to test for pH, ammonia, nitrites, and nitrates.

I have cycled systems both ways and I prefer fishless cycling.  I will admit it:  I am a mushmellow.  It bothers me when fish die.  I feel like I am their steward and when they die I have failed them.  The truth is when you cycle with fish some fish are going to die.  During cycling there will be ammonia and nitrite spikes that will kill fish.  It is a natural part of establishing the system.  Even if they are just the cheap little feeder goldfish from the pet store, it hurts me when they die.  So I like to cycle without the fish.

In fishless cycling you add ammonia to the fish holding tank (that has no fish in it) in an amount sufficient to bring it up to 0.5 ppm.  You then test the water daily until levels fall back below 0.5.  You add ammonia again to bring it up to 0.5 and wait for it to drop.  After a week or two of this you will start to see some nitrites show up.  These are the nitrosomona bacteria that are establishing themselves in the system and will start to convert that ammonia to nitrites.   You should see a big spike in nitrites before the nitrates show up.  Once the nitrates show up that means you have nitro bacters growing in the system. These guys will take nitrite and convert it into nitrate.  Once this cycle is established you can safely add fish to the system. 

The amount of time it takes to cycle a system without fish can vary from 3 to 6 weeks.  Things that affect the cycle time period are water temperature and pH. Keep your water temperatures on the warm side and the pH in the neutral zone. Also, if you start cycling with water straight from the tap, it will have chlorine in it.  This chlorine is there to kill the unsafe bacteria in your drinking water.  It will also kill your nitrifying bacteria.  That means anytime you use straight tap water you are setting yourself back.  Luckily chlorine readily off-gasses and if you let your water stand for 24 hours the chlorine/chloramine will dissipate and you can safely use it in your aquaponic system.  This is especially true when you need to top off an existing system.

Cycling takes patience.  In the mean time, enjoy the plants that you put in your system.  You have to have plants for the cycle to be established, so plant some water loving plants.  Things like basil, mint, and tomato will do well in a system that is not cycled.  This is because they like water and the lack of nitrogen doesnt really bother them.  In fact, if nitrogen levels get too high, tomato plants will grow but not bloom!  Onions are also great plants for cycling. Ive even cycled with petunias!

There is another method of fishless cycling that is mostly promoted by men. It is called "pee-ponics" and instead of adding pure ammonia from the store into the system, human urine (referred to as "hummonia") is added to the system.  Dont really understand why men want to pee into their aquaponic systems, but to each their own.

You can speed up cycling by inoculating your system with bacteria from a healthy system that is already established.  This can be done by taking water from the filter of a healthy system or simply taking water from a healthy system.  Be very careful when doing this.  If the system from which you take your water is not healthy, then you have just spread its disease to your system.  If you have one already cycled and well operating aquaponic system, then by all means harvest the bacteria from your existing system to jump-start your new system.

Lastly, you can go to a pet store that deals in aquariums and purchase bacteria in a bottle.  I am not a fan of this because it is pricey and honestly, how long can those bacteria live in a bottle?

How do you cycle?  Id love to hear your experiences.

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A One Year Meal Plan Or What Should We Grow This Year

12:31 AM in a, Aqua, grow, meal, one, or, plan, should, this, we, what, year

This time of year is prime time for garden planning around these parts.  As we were thinking about what we might want to grow this year, we came around to the question of, "Well, what did we eat last year?"  We have a partial record of what we made right here on the blog, so that was a good place to start.  From there, we just had to fill in the things we normally eat for breakfast, lunch, and supper that we dont blog about. There is always a lot of variability depending on whats available (or on sale), the time of the year, how much time were at home, how much snacking on high-sugar dried fruits we do while waiting for the other to come home so we can explosively greet them when they walk in the door (like Hobbes greets Calvin), etc., but as a ballpark figure, could we make an estimate for food intake, assuming three servings per person per day?

The answer is yes!  And the estimate is fascinating. [...says Jake as Katie snores...]  If youve been following this blog for any amount of time, you probably know that a spreadsheet is about to appear.  And so we begin, with three sets of columns: one each for supper, breakfast, and lunch.

Into each set of columns, we enter recipes (copied and pasted from memory or the internet), specify the number of times per year were going to prepare them, and make sure units and ingredient names are consistent (e.g., that we dont say tomato in one recipe and tomatoes in another).

Then we use a pivot table (one each for supper, breakfast, and lunch) to count everything up.  Its a bummer we dont know how to make a pivot table from more than one range at a time (theres probably a way), but thats ok.  The workaround isnt too hard. From each individual pivot table, we create a master pivot table.  From the master pivot table, we can estimate how much of everything we need to acquire during the course of the year.  For example, we learn that we need about 54 dozen eggs, 49 gallons of milk, and 110 loaves of bread (assuming 12 slices per loaf).  If youve been in our kitchen, you know that works out to a surprisingly accurate figure of roughly one dozen eggs, one gallon of milk, and two loaves of bread per week.  And also 23 pounds of mushrooms, which sounds delicious.  Model validated!

More importantly (and to the point), we can estimate how many pounds of vegetables well have to grow and how many pounds of meat well have to catch to be self-sufficient.

Clearly, if we want to keep taking carrots to work for lunch, well need to grow a ton. (Or, a one-fourteenth of a ton, rather).  Similarly, we can see that we ought to devote a lot of our remaining garden space to tomatoes, potatoes, onions, garlic, and greens.  Of course, were going to grow a larger variety of veggies than that, but the quantities we tend to eat (and would need to find storage space for) are instructive.  And honestly, well probably try to grow more winter squash, green beans, and peppers than the chart suggests.

On a similar note, if we want to keep on our current diet, well need to grow another batch of chickens and catch one large deer and a quarter of a pig. (Or raise one deer and catch a flock of wild chickens.  But we dont have space to raise both!)

All things considered, its a pretty balanced diet, not too far from Harvards Healthy Eating Plate.  Were a little heavier on the veggies, but hey!  Maybe well end up being a very localized blue zone.

Its important to keep in mind that these numbers are just guidelines; were not locking ourselves into a whole year of rigidly following recipes.  We substitute veggies and meats in and out of a recipe like a Wall Street bankster swaps stocks (although we hope none of our meals would be considered subprime or toxic assets).  But its nice to have a set of go-to dishes we can pick from and toss together from stuff in the fridge or pantry if weve already spent our creative energy for the day and still need to make supper.  Whatchagotamology at its finest!

We wont vouch for the user friendliness of the spreadsheet, but if you want to play around with it, you can download it here.  Suggestions welcome!


Do you make meal plans?  Whats your planning strategy?  Let us know in the comments section below!

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