Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I think there may be a couple of reasons for my limited success on the plants.

1. My system is flood and drain and the media (lava)seems to have settled so now the water level gets higher than the rock in one of my beds. That is where I noticed most of the damping on the tommies. Does that sound reasonable?
2. Since the water is visible to passing birds, and it is the dry season here, many birds stop in to splash in the water before it drains. While they are fun to watch, they tend to stomp all over my young sprouts.
3. I need more direct sun.

How are your nitrates?

My basil just sat there for the longest time, and then took off all of a sudden. Peas were among the earliest success for me, too. Try bok choy and beans.

With the volcanic rock that you are using for substrate, your trace elements should be good. My current working theory is that things just take some time to establish and then get going gang busters.

Ooooh yeah, add a little more gravel to get about an inch of gravel above high tide.

Add 1 grade A Indiana scarecrow. Or a small dachshund.

I have a second story balcony on the house that is rather large. I am having a metal frame with legs made for one of my growbeds. I have also ordred a liner for the bed since the original liner has some minor leaks and it will be on top of the house.

The advantage of the balcony is that it gets full sun all day. The disadvantage is that it is 5 meters higher than my fish tank so to see how things go, I am going to put 4 150 (600 liters total)liter tubs With about 30 fish) on the balcony under a small grow bed and see how things go. If I like that, I will also test running a pipe from my current tank all the way to the balcony to see if my pump will handle the head. Ideally I will use the same fish tank I have and pump up there. of ciourse I will add some media to make sure I have about 4-5 cm from top of media to top water level.

Does any of this make sense? Any advice. This is a lot of work if I am off base.

Thanks Janet. Actually one of my concerns is the nitrates. I am running over 100 sometimes so I have done a few very light water changes. I think I should just about be at the taking off stage with the weather we have, the age of the system, and the media.

From time to time I just throw a handfull of maizes eed in to try to suck up some of the nitrates.

Weird thing is that a system I set up for someone else, is doing well and not having any of the problems I am having and it is a younger system. It does have more sun and water level to media level is greater.

DT, I say your in need of more sunshine as you already believe. Just an extra bit of sun for my peas and they went crazy. Everything I have tried to grow with minimal sun inside was just that ...minimal growth.

Yeah, coming to that conclusion. It will be major work toting all that gravel to the top of the house before it dries and kills all the bacteria and I have to cycle the growbed again. But... where there is a will there is a way.

Could the lava rock be too hard on tender shoots? Has anyone else used lava for media successfully?

I know AA and others have used scoria without problems.....

Think you need to lower the flood level or increase the gravel level... might solve the bird problem as well....

Some plants definitely don't do well in shaded or low light as opposed to full light... sometimes the difference is quiet dramatic.

Sounds like I am on the right track then.

If your plants are healthy and getting any light, you should be OK with nitrates over 100 -- as long as they don't get over 200ppm. I'd check your test kit or meter with another system. I found huge differences between different brands of tests. One showed 160ppm nitrates on my system and the other showed sub 30.

sub 30 in <30ppm? Thats too much of a difference (130ppm) to just put down to different brands!

I know that with ammonia test sometimes you can get ones that measure just the nitrogen component versus the ones that measure ammonia as awhole.......confused the shit outta me when i was doing research on it.

Maybe the same with the t5wo nitrate tests?

[quote}
sub 30 in <30ppm? Thats too much of a difference (130ppm) to just put down to different brands!

I know that with ammonia test sometimes you can get ones that measure just the nitrogen component versus the ones that measure ammonia as awhole.......confused the shit outta me when i was doing research on it.

Maybe the same with the t5wo nitrate tests?[/quote]

One was the 5 in 1 dip strip and the other was the test tube with 8 drops of this and 8 drops of that, shake and wait 5 minutes....

I'm guessing the more inconvenient test is more accurate.

do you shake the second bottle for 30 secs and then add it and then shake for a minte? Apparently that is critical (in similar test kit I have)

yep, that's the same test.