I've been cycling my aquaponics system for two weeks now. I had every intention to do "fish-less" cycling techniques to establish the bacteria in my grow beds before adding fish to the system.
I don't have access to well water or spring water where I live, so I used tap water to fill my fish tank. I let it sit for 3 weeks and circulated it for a couple of hours daily. Three weeks should have been plenty of time to dissipate the chlorine in my tap water, but my water utility also uses chloramine (3 ppm actually).
Then I added 3 TBSP of fish emulsion to the 200 gallon fish tank. I then started testing for an ammonia spike, but the ammonia spike never arrived. :-( It took a few days, but after doing some digging around in various aquaponics discussion boards and aquaculture vendor websites, I figured out why.
Although my water testing kit did detect a small amount of nitrites in the system, it registered zero for ammonia. I am new to aquaponics, but from what I've learned so far it's unlikely to have nitrites without ammonia. So the issue had to be some type of issue with my water testing.
Tip: Before you treat your tap water for chloramines, do some research and make sure you have a reliable method of testing the ammonia in your system. Certain types of bonding agents and treatments that remove the chloramine, do not register well on the well-known water testing kits.
I have identified a water testing kit that should allow my treated water to be reliably tested, but untiil it arrives I definitely won't be adding anymore fish to my system.
Build an Aquaponic System
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