GrahamC

Anyway, the question is, is it safe in the long term to feed a food which is suitable for marine fish being very high in sodium to freshwater fishes. Or, whether you will overwhelm the fish's homeostatic mechanisms to maintain cellular osmotic pressures. You can take the chance and see if their lives are shortened or not, or, you could just eat the stuff yourself. I do .. wife makes sushi at least once a week, and I have to swallow blood pressure tablets most days when i remember! In comparison, the Cadbury dairy milk coconut rough that was sitting infront of me ... of which only the packet now remains, has 100 mg of sodium per 100 g i.e. about 1/20th of the nori. Oh yeah, hypertension is a common problem in Japan.

It means that the fish might get hypertension from eating too much salt!

In aquaponics you just leave the rock wool there to support the roots. I can't see why it would be different for planting into some gravel. Wouldn't you also take the risk of damaging the root structure?

Don't eat the wool! Rock wool is also one of the main media used for planting in aquaponics, and it is purchased in a dry state. The main users online at least seem to be americans growing marijuana for home use in hydroponic setups. I was going to purchase some as well for seeding my plants in my hydroton, but in the end I used cotton wool which seems to work too.

A very very rough calculation puts this as 17x the amount of sodium recommended when adding tonic salt to a fresh water aquarium.

yeah, I read they can cannibalize each other when they've just moulted and are vulnerable. I presume that they could be separated using dividers. But they're also escape artists. The trouble with aquaponics in NZ is that the choices are limited in raising anything eventually edible. I've got 750 sq m of land that is likely too soft to build on ... so wondering what I can do with it. Currently it is overgrown with native bush. And I have a "stream" running thru it that has been turned into a storm water drain.

The Yaki Nori I have in my cupboard says 1,700 mg of sodium per 100 g of serving.

I used a handful of the K1 media today. Put it into a Sprite bottle after I first drank the contents. Cleaned off all the glue and then drilled holes everywhere to allow water to circulate. Cut off the top so I could fill with media and put the inside part of a magnetic glass cleaner inside. Drilled a hole in the cap to put in an airline, and joined it to a air stone on the inside . Squeezed the lid back on again and put into "new" trademe tank upside down. The outside part of the magnetic cleaner allows me to move the filter around. The K1 media is circulating but the bubbles are making significant noise. I have another sponge filter there to help clear some solids and the bubbling from this is adding to the noise. Going to see now how long it takes for the media to turn brown with bacterial slime. Since it is circulating satisfactorily, I could add more media now. And obviously if I turn up the air pressure on the air pump, the media does circulate faster but also is noisier. Bubble, bubble, toil and (hopefully no wife) trouble ...

Does this 2002 response also answer your question? There may well be newer explanations though that supercede this.

How much waste do Koura create ... since I see they seem to be miniature mobile waste disposal units. I was wondering if I could use some to populate an outdoor tank as a nitrate source for an aquaponics experiment. I have a spare bath as a result of a bathroom renovation, and two shubs.

There has been some concern that man made vitreous fibres such as rock wool might be carcinogenic (like asbestos ) and so people are warned to avoiding breathing in the fibres when in a dry state. However, the current conclusion is that rock wool is safe with no excess lung cancers amongst end users.

Ammolock data says it turns ammonia into ammonium, and Prime says it does this as well as detoxifying nitrites. So on paper it appears that Prime does more. What are your nitrite levels at present?

I thought unclaimed $$ get taken by the govt to fund air travel for ex cabinet ministers.

Stability looks to be some nitrifying bacteria. You could use both. Or, if you get the old media, then just ammolock.

Why don't you post how you've set it up now with some annnotations on which is which.

That is contrary to the product information for the liquid Ammolock Alan might be referring to chips that sequesters ammonia, and in that instance your ammonia is not available for nitrification.

You've got lots of new friends here. I'm sure someone here who lives in Pakuranga will offer you some filter material populated with bacteria. Just ask ... in the private trade section post a message asking for free live filter material. In the meantime I would suggest restarting ammolock as it will turn the ammonia into ammonium which is non toxic.

Maybe they want to sell you more fish? :slfg:

Well, as long as you keep using Ammolock, your fish are safe. What's happening to nitrite levels? If they're high, you may need to do 20% water changes daily to get it down ... as the ammonium is still available for nitrification. And you need to get the ammonia levels down much further as well with more water changes. Is there anyone nearby who can gift you some old filter material??

Any active volcanoes around there to grab the heating from? Are huge heated aquaria more common in regions like Rotorua where there may be free year round heat?

Based on the above, Phil was doing 20% water changes daily, but his ammonia levels were dropping twice as fast than expected from water dilution only indicating that nitrification was taking place. After a 90% water change, levels dropped to 0.25 ppm (possibly), and then after another day with no water change, it has dropped to 0. Nitrites are also 0, and he has plants consuming nitrates. Sounds like it is working fine. A huge water change is very unlikely to affect the filter bacteria unless it were chlorinated water. Still, since this hasn't been going as expected, perhaps only stock it with a few fish and watch carefully to see what happens to the parameters.

It's a planted tank with a previous algal bloom.

My intank seachem alert has the following: <0.02, .05, 0.2 and 0.5 ppm. I have never seen it budge from the lowest reading so hope it actually works!

My API test kit goes down to 0. And it does read 0 on bottled water.

That's curious ... if you started with 0.5 ppm, and did a 90% water change, it should have dropped to 0.05 ppm. Could there be something like some decaying thing in your tank raising the ammonia.