Making green water -Two bucket system
In this post I will try and explain the cheapest and easiest way to make green water. Depending on the volume of green water required you may need to scale up to some extra storage for extra green water but two buckets is probably the easiest way of dealing with making green water.
First find a very sunny position where you live, buy 2 buckets, as transparent as you can or as cheap as you want to spend.
You don’t have to cover them, but I do, mosquito larvae annoy me. The lids are just pot plant water catching bottoms you find in any Bunnings. In the picture above I have 1 painters bucket and one transparent bucket I found for washing cars. Any cheap bucket will do.
Getting the culture started is probably the hardest part, waiting for algae to grow is tedious.
The idea is simply to fill one bucket from the hose (I use the white painters bucket) and wait for it to get dechlorinated (water subjected to air will naturally dechlorinate over 2-3 days), then as I use the green water from the other bucket to feed the fish/cultures, you fill it up with dechlorinated water from the other bucket. Yeah it sounds too simple but that’s how it works.
The bucket being topped up contains the most algae, so you can use that water to MAKE other green water cultures. Essentially green water grows faster the more of it you have to start with. So any time I use a whole bucket of green water, you setup a bucket with half green water and then add half dechlorinated water and then just wait. In a few days it basically doubles and you’re good to go. The hard part is having the half bucket of green water to start with.
I store my extra capacity in a big tub (which you can see in the photo) which makes it easier to make the half buckets of active algae if/when I need to (often I fill fish tubs with a lot of green water as a starter).
Other things to consider is dumping a few bladder/ramshorn snails in the buckets to provide waste and eat any surface algae that forms.
If are you dealing with capacity issues and want faster green water, you can do a mix of NPK/Miracle Grow soluble fertilizer and fish emulsion (I use Charlie carp) in VERY small amounts in either the dechlorinated bucket or your extra capacity bucket. I normally chuck it in the extra capacity tub, don’t use it to feed the fish for 2-3 weeks when add it back in to the active culture bucket diluted with the dechlorinated water THEN use it as feed, as any fertilizer would be highly diluted and undetectable by fish/fry.
Good luck and happy green making.
