Continued Progress

Hello all. Well after a week of lovely spring boating on the Salt River, I have returned to continued progress with the AP system. While I was gone Alison kindly stopped by every day to feed the fish. Unfortunately since I have last written I have had 4 fish die. 2 Goldfish the day I left, one Goldfish today and my algae eating fish yesterday. I think the pair that died the day I left may have been due to some salt which I put into the tank. Fish need a certain salinity level in order to ward off illness and to maintain other necessary life cycles. Unfortunately sometimes even small changes in the water quality can stress fish to the point of dying, and I think this is what happened. Next time I will add the salt even slower if need be.

Before I left, I added 5 earth worms (from the fishing department at Wal-mart). I was a little worried that they would have a hard time getting through the dense gravel bed, but I was wrong! They wriggled their way right in there and all were underground within 5 minutes. Haven't seen them since, but I assume they are doing well.



Another development is that my Nitrite levels are increasing. Now this is a natural thing, which eventually will be countered by Nitrite converting bacteria. But until they get established in my system, I need to keep a close eye on the nitrites. If they become to high, I will have to add more salt which helps the fish deal with high nitrite and ammonia levels. But hopefully I will start getting Nitrate readings indicating that my system has cycled. Since my Nitrite levels are on the rise, I have chosen not to introduce more fish into my tank until my system has cycled. As soon as I see Nitrates, more fish will be going back into the system.

Ok, now to some photos of progress!


Tomato plants!



Arugula (Lt) and Mixed Lettuce (Rt)



Cilantro



For some reason only 1 Cilantro seed has sprouted. They should only take 10 days to germinate, and its been 15, so today I planted 3 more seeds to see if I can get a couple of more plants.

As you can see, everything has made great strides since my last post!

Today I ordered a more advanced water quality testing kit and a digital salinity testing stick. I have a water quality test kit but it isn't very accurate and with this new kit, I will hopefully get more precise measurements.

Well that's it for now!