Cycled and Silent

Much has happened since my last AP post! Everything is doing very well and noticeably growing by the day. The Arugula is the most prosperous, though the tomatoes are looking pretty fine as well. I have been having new cilantro growth and the lettuce keeps plugging along. The basil still is stunted, and has not grown much at all since it sprouted. They are at the other end of the grow bed from the input pipes and I am wondering if they are not getting enough nutrients, though they may just be storing up energy for a HUGE growth spurt here soon (fingers crossed)!

Arugula and Lettuce



Lettuce and Tomatoes



Cilantro



I decided to plant another row of Arugula and I literally watched them sprout over the course of the day today. Just 4 days after I planted them!

The other big news is that my system cycled! Meaning that I have all the proper bacteria to convert ammonia to nitrites to nitrates, giving my plants fertilizer and the fish clean water! This is very exciting because now I do not have to worry about my fish getting brown blood disease or other illnesses due to too many Nitrites. Below is a photo of my test tubes showing no ammonia, no nitrites and no nitrates and a graph showing my systems levels cycling through.




You may ask, why are the Nitrates at zero as well, and isn't that bad? No actually it isn't. All that this means is that the plants are able to absorb all of the Nitrates that my system is producing! This means that I can feed my fish more so they produce more waste, and I can add more fish into the system. I will start feeding my fish twice a day and see how my levels do. I will likely add more fish next weekend when I can get to Durango and purchase more. I would like my system to be able to produce a more Nitrates than the plants can handle, this way I know that they are getting the maximum amount of nutrients.

Since I live in the Tiny Mansion and my AP system is in my living area, it has taken some getting used to the sound of dripping water 24 hrs a day. Today, I finally got around to making the system a little quieter by decreasing the distance that the water has to fall both getting into the grow bed and draining out. To do this I added a PVC coupling and elbow to the input and 2 more elbows to the drain. My what a difference it has made!

Input piping



Drain pipe



After I put the worms in, which I wrote about a while back, I learned that I had used the incorrect worm... I used Night Crawlers instead of Red Wrigglers...Not that the worms aren't doing their job, its just that the Red Wrigglers do it more efficiently and quickly. Ohh well, live and learn. This morning before I turned the aerator on, and it was quiet I could hear a worm moving through the gravel and I looked on the front of the grow bed and sure enough I could see him up against the clear plastic. So I know at least one of them is alive and well.



This worm was seen below where the water is pumped into the tank. The worms like to be close to the input because of a higher concentration of solid fish waste (ie more food) at the beginning of the bio-filter.

Anyway, lots of progress around here. I am really wishing I was able to give these plants sunlight instead of artificial light, as I think that they would be doing even better but that will have to wait. Hopefully within the next couple of days I will be seeing continued growth of the existing plants, and maybe a couple more new sprouts! Stay tuned.