On Friday, August 7th our chlorine level had reached zero so I started to make preparations for us to go get the tilapia that we’d need to get the system started. 
I lashed a garbage can into the front corner of the truck bed. I borrowed an electric and battery air pump, from my brother that he usually uses in his minnow buckets to keep the fish alive. He had a nice sized air stone that worked great in the bottom of the garbage can. On Sunday
we drove to Allenwood (about 75 minutes away) and met Rob, who has an indoor aquaponic system and LOTS of tilapia. His system is a little different in that he has a solids filtration system to take out a good majority of the waste so it doesn’t overwhelm his system with ammonia. The Friendly style systems don’t use a solids tank so it requires a more precise calculation on how much fish you need to keep your system in balance. Our system doesn’t require dumping or changing our water ever (unless you had a system start-up failure) where he needs to change his water out periodically (he was in the process of doing it when we were there).
Not knowing if our can might have a tiny crack or hole in it, we lined it with a 
garbage liner (the kind with the flaps). We filled it about 3/4 full with water from his well plus a bucket of his system water and then tied the flaps to keep the whole ball of water intact so it couldn’t slosh around. The sloshing is one of the biggest stressors to the fish. We ran the air line in through the tied bag and turned on the air pump and inverter, that was inside 
the cab of the truck. We drove home and gently transferred the fish to the tanks. When he scooped them out of his tank and put them into a bucket, we weren’t sure how many fish he had gotten (hard to count with lots of flapping fish in a bucket). Turns out we have 21 of assorted sizes, ranging from 2” to probably 5”. Remember that “precise” calculation of fish that our type of system requires? Well for start-up we needed 10-20% of what the mature system would need or 2.6 pounds of fish. He just looked at me when I told him I needed an amount not to exceed 2.6#. Since fish excrete ammonia through their gills and their waste, keeping the ammonia levels low is one of the big things to getting off on the right foot. Too high of ammonia and the nitrifying bacteria won’t start. We need to keep it less than 3 in order for everything to get off to a good start. So far we’re at zero so that is good. Yesterday our nitrates (the plant fertilizer) were at 1 so I started putting plants over into the rafts, from the sprouting table. Since we have a lot of plants that were started in early July and we’re starting to lose them, due to lack of nutrients, we have nothing to lose at this point by moving them over. If anything the roots of the plants provide space for the nitrifying bacteria to attach themselves to, which is a good thing. We’re testing and charting all of our numbers and comparing it to what our training manual says and so far everything looks good. It will take several weeks to get through start-up.
Elsewhere on the farm the blueberry plants are doing great.
(Here are the plants when we picked them up. They looked like sticks with a couple of leaves on them).
(Here they are 3 months later….)
My brother bought a new ATV for his place so we purchased his old one, the bush hog and snow plow. Most of our land is in a government conservation program called CREP. It provides a habitat for wildlife and only allows you to mow 30% of the field in the month of August. That bush hog has sure come in handy. The August mowing is intended to let you get a handle on invasive species and get the grass to a manageable length but not mow the whole plot down. We wanted to get rid of the thorny bushes that seem to have taken over the hillside so we’ve done a“strategic extraction” on these bushes. As my daughter described it, “It looks like a drunken person mowed the side hill”
We wanted to use our 30% to try and eliminate as many of these bushes as we could.
Here’s what they look like when the bush hog gets done with them. The side hill is pretty steep so we have to be really careful. It’s looking so much better though. The picture above is the after shot. I forgot to take a picture before we started giving it a haircut. 
Life is busy on the farm. We got 1” of rain the other night, which we desperately needed. We could still use a bunch more, as the ground is cracked open in some places. We’ll keep you posted on the system start-up. Oh, here’s a picture of some of the fish in their new home (it’s hard to get them to hold still for a picture).
LiveJournal Tags:
tilapia,
chorine,
nitrites,
nitrates,
aquaponics,
ammonia,
system start-up,
fish,
troughs,
rafts,
CREP
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