As many people who have already encountered me online and in person know, I’m fairly quick to try and help out where I can. I also share information quite openly. Please feel free to ask questions of me, I regularly stop by the Aquaponic Gardening Community site as well as the BYAP Forum
There is also a forum on my web site as well but it has never been very well attended, though if you show up there, I’ll answer questions provided they are related to aquaponics or one of the other topics. And of course you can comment or ask questions on the blog posts or use the comment form to reach me.
I just need to warn everyone, if you ask a questions about why your own system is having difficulty, be ready for many questions to come back at you since it is rarely possible to diagnose an aquaponic problem from a sentence like,”why did my fish die?”
Here are some of the likely questions one should be ready to answer when seeking assistance with an aquaponics system.
What do the water tests say? Ammonia, Nitrite, Nitrate, pH and water temperature all play an important role in aquaponics system functioning by indicating the state of the bio-filter and the toxicity of the water for the fish. The test tube and dropper kits tend to be more accurate than test strips
How old is the system?
Has the system cycled up yet?
What type of system?
How big is the system? fish tank size and often more importantly grow bed or bio-filter size.
How many fish? what type and how big as well.
Location of system and special circumstances?
What about the source water? treated, untreated, well water or rain water? If rain water what type of roof and tank?
What type of fish feed?
What type of gravel?
How often are you pumping and at what rate?
Is there supplemental aeration and how much?
And there are probably several other questions that could come up but this is what I’ve got to start. So, when starting a thread looking for assistance troubleshooting a problem with an aquaponics system, be ready to answer these questions up front in order to get the most help quickly.