Preparing for Plants and Fish

After building the system and adding gravel, I purchased a tank cycling kit and a start-up test kit. 

It's important to cycle the tank before adding fish, otherwise your fish may be in a lot of distress, and might even die, due to high levels of ammonia.  I won't go into a lot of detail about that, since you can find plenty of information elsewhere, but it's an important consideration before you get your fish - especially if you have to travel several hours to get your fishies.

The Aquaponic Source has a good overview of the cycling process.  This is also where I purchased my kit for $15.  I suppose I could have tried using regular liquid ammonia, but I figured this would be safer and faster.  I also purchased a test kit from Aquaponic Source.

I'll post some of my readings and dates in a later post - maybe when I get my fishes. 

Lessons learned - I should have tested the pH of my water BEFORE I added the gravel.  I think there is a lot of limestone or something in our rock, because adding the rock raised the pH level in our tap water from about 6.4 to about 7.6.  Luckily, although the 7.6 is a little more alkaline than recommended, I don't think it's dangerously high.  However, since I had to carry in several hundred pounds of gravel one bucket at a time, I would have been pretty upset if I had to find another media source, empty the grow beds and haul in more of whatever I ended up using.