Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Charlie loves implants. Are they silicone?

They are ouchicone! But beauty always comes at a price...

Lol.

Gotta do my clear cut but now the tomatoes are really putting on some fruit! This is going to hurt me more than it hurts any of you! Here's what their doing right now! Oh well, there will be a demo tonight or first thing tomorrow. One last pic of them tonight . See the little tomatoes hiding up there? I can't believe how prolific this plant is, even covered in spider mites...

Went to check on the fish before the weekend at my sons school. Someone had tampered with it and broke part of the filter system by sliding the tank around.... I'm pretty sure it was an accident but still irritating. After about 5 minuets of buggering around with it I got everything sorted out and fixed. I geuss I'll have to keep an eye on it. One set of parents were taking pictures of it, I believe they are now infected with the idea...

Yeah, if it's at a school it's probably always at risk.

You should create business cards with the BYAP forum address on it and hand them out to people that are interested.

Lately been overhauling my system. As part of my clear cut the sweet potato got the chop. I found this in the pot when i dumped it out! I guess you can grow sweet potatoes in AP after all! Now I'm trying to devise a way to make this really productive for sweet potatoes!

Anyone know which mediums for sweet potatoes are touted as the best to use?

Aquarium leaking! Oiy! I've spent all day trying to clean up and shopping for materials for a new waterproof FT. I just got back with lumber from home Depo and luckily I already had a pond liner the right size. This is my build plan basically: The only differences will be that the plywood will be 23/32 thick and there are 4 vertical supports, not 5 per side.

So I'll be up late tonight putting this thing together and yanking the old tank out. Oh the fun...

Okay, so I filled up the tank last night while the main circulator was running water to the grow trays. That pump should be off while filling... Went to sleep before system cycled off... Oops! I don't think there's a leak... And the new tank is almost built at this point!

Update time:
The school system is coming along nicely, the teachers are impressed at how fast everything is developing, but I will say that there are a good number of 'no-shows' for germination. Mainly the spinach isn't up yet and I planted few different varieties. If I don't see any action from the no show seeds by next Monday, then those spots will be re planted with something else probably. Maybe a sweet potato cutting and some other proven performers. Here's how it's looking a of today: And here's a close up of the right side: Everything that did come up seems quite happy ATM. The little guys I put into the tank have pudged up some already as well, so that's good too.

The home system: I cleaned the trays out on the top shelf and began cleaning the middle trays as well. At this point I can see some minor changes I want to make to the system, we will see if that happens... Also I have seen that tomato vines dipped in pure neem oil end up with some severely mutates leaves for a bit before normal ones start coming on again. Here's the new growth starting that's finally not mutated: I've got plans to try to save my strawberry plants, but it's probably going to kill them since I'll be doing a super concentrated dip into the neem oil after cutting back almost all foliage and removing all the dirt. After a good wash and dip I'll replant them into fresh medium and isolate them for a few days while the neem is adsorbed by the plants. I'm hoping a mutated layer of foliage is then followed by healthy, bug free, disease free foliage... If it works then yay! If not, the plants were doomed anyways.

It's out.

That is very cool.

My experience of spiniach is that it takes 1-2 weeks germination and has about 50% success rate for older seed.