Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hello everyone,

I am brand new to Aquaponics and I need some help with my set up. I am a teacher and I received a grant to start a small Aquaponics set up in my classroom. I am more of an animal then plants person, so of course I’m having trouble with the plant side of things. I started off by setting up my aquarium and placed 8 neon tetras with all fake plants at first. I keep the temp at about 70-71 degrees, I don’t have a tank heater but it’s in an area of my home that stays fairly warm so it’s pretty easy to regulate. I lost three fish over the first two weeks and once everything leveled out I added another eight tetras to the mix.

I have electronic equipment for measuring all of the water nurptrient levels at my school, however where I live all education facilities were shut down due to coronavirus. I brought my Aquaponics set up home with me and everything has been going well, but since I had some time on my hands I thought I would add some plants to the mix just to mess around, as the few Aquaponics people in the know that I had spoken to told me that I would fail the first few times I tried. I have a UV light on the plants and they’ve gotten really leggy and haven’t produced anything over the past six weeks or so, but this is also without me managing any nutrient levels at all.

I was wondering what my next steps should be. I was close to purchasing a pH up and down kit, but I wasn’t sure if I should be focused more on the pH level in the tank or if there was something else that I should see to first. I’m trying to build my knowledge without killing the fish or throwing the aquatic system completely out of whack, which I seem to be managing OK so far. I’ve attached a photo of my set up. The UV light run red/blue spectrum. Again, I know I should be measuring the nutrient levels in the tank… But I have an expensive labquest machine at school that I would prefer to be using, so I am trying to learn as much as I can from home without sinking hundreds of dollars into monitoring equipment when I have a very nice machine that I will eventually be able to use once I’m back at work.

Thanks in advance!

Bump

I can't really tell how your system works. I have never seen a setup like that. Looks complicated. Maybe a better discription of how it works and I can help further.

I use 40 gallon breader tanks and home made grow lights to grow herbs outside my main system. I just use foam to float the plants. They have sponge filters to filter the water. Total cost about 160 bucks.

If your plants are leggy then your light isn't strong enough and/or too far away. I use full spectrum LEDs. Your grow lights look red. You might have better luck with full spectrum white LED or Blue. Red spectrum is to induce flowering and is supposed to be used in conjunction with white or blue lights. Sonif you are just doing greens there is no need for red spectrum. I use these 300w eqavalents 56k white LEd lights for like 30 bucks each. Some companies slap a grow light label on things and double the price but if you know what to look for you can get grow lights cheaper. You just need the light in 56k color temp or higher full sun is like 65k ( I am shooting from the hip here so actuallality may be off a few thousand).

Neon tretras are a warm water fish and really need a heater, gold fish would be better but quickly out grow their tank. There are smaller varieties of gold fish but hard to find. Stay away from Commit Goldie's they grow huge. Any hardy wide water quality fish. If you want pretty fish I think White Cloud Minnows or Rosie Reds would be a better choice over Goldfish for an unheated tank. If you wanted a heated tank maybe a Female Beta Sorority. Go for about an inch of fish per gallon of water. Remember how big your baby fish are going to get and stock the babies as if they were full grown.

Did you cycle the system? What are your current water quality parameters? How much water does the FT hold? Ho much water does the entire system hold? What kind of filtration does it have?

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