Saturday, February 11, 2012

balancing act

Began nitrification cycling this morning using this kit. 

Good instructions but one teaspoon of ammonia powder was too much at 8ppm.    Replaced 1/2 the water but it still read 8ppm. must have been off the chart 1st time, so I drained another 15 gallons and topped off again with fresh.   This got the ammonia to read 4ppm.   Goal is 2-4ppm so I'm going with it.  

Of course, adding in fresh water skyrocketed the PH back to 8.4.   Been slowly adding ph-down all day and last reading was 7.4.   Going to let it sit for a day and see what everything reads before adding the maxicrop and cycling bacteria.  Also added De-Clor.  Guy at the fish store said that there is a lot of chloramine in our water that does not evaporate like chlorine.  He also said that the city is adding more chloramine than normal this month.  I am starting to think I should have used an alternate water source.  Going to look into that.





Added some radish and spinach seeds.  I like these little spongy plugs in the seed starters.  I tried sowing directly into the medium but that didn't seem wise.  I can move these plugs around until the roots start popping out the bottom.





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