Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Two dead ones from transport, got squashed in the corners of the bags. The plants are loving it.

So, time for an update. The dry season just has kicked in 2 days ago and everything starts growing nicely. We still have 80 barramundi left from the initial 100, they were a little bit variating in size and the bigger ones started bullying the small ones and some of them unfortunately starved. We also lost some bigger one which caused us to throw out all the food from last year as a caution and it's better now.

Currently we have 2 types of eggplant (miniature black beauties and ping long thin, also a small variety), 4 types of tomatoes (Roma, cherry red, Principe Borghese, Scorpio), winged beans, Chinese broccoli, some birds eye chilli (self seeded), some unknown chilli, kang Kong and Ceylon spinach, borage, cape gooseberry, some Asian greens, rocket and cos lettuce growing.

There are also 8 hydroponics auto pots which are used with aquaponics water enriched with some fertilizer for coconut husk grow media with an unknown chilli, chilli jalapeño, mint, dill, sweet and dark opal basil, tomato money maker, another cape gooseberry (you need 2 for fruiting) and there is one empty pot, which I plan to plant parsley in.

The grow beds are all on constant flood with an additional air stone under the inlet. The dwc can hold up to 80 heads of lettuce. I am still not using a filter for the dwc because I am planning to switch it off for the wet and it gets cleaned at that time anyways.

Pictures 2

Pictures 3

Pictures 4

Ohh, I forgot the Suyo long cucumbers, they grow all year in my system.

AWESOME!!

thjakits

After a long time there is finally something happening again.

System is running good, I lost some fish due to overstocking but when the building project is finished I will add another 3 to 4 grow beds (have them already sitting here).

What kind of eggplant is that growing on vines??

They were a miniature version of black beauties. Bit tough on the skin for the skin to flesh ratio. The long ones in the post before were much better with very soft skin, I can look up the name when I am back home in the afternoon.

Cheers

Edit: they are ping long thin

We had a couple of unexplained fish deaths during the last weeks and I found out that my water testing kit was past its best before date and not accurate anymore.

So off to the shops and I bought a new set of fresh water test kit, gh, kh and iron.

The result was that over 12 degrees general hardness which is ok for barra but 0 degrees calcium hardness (kh) which is essential for buffering against pH swings.

Added 2 kg of sodium carbonate into the currently unused dwc bed to dissolve there and mix via the sump and the ft into all the gbs. To raise the kh to 5 degrees. I might order some potassium carbonate or calcium carbonate soon to keep the level up.

The other values are good, ammonia is at 0.25ppm but that can be related to the same issue as the good bacteria eat the calcium as well.

There is also an iron deficiency with I treated with foliar sprays before but i have ordered some iron chelate EDDHA to adjust the water instead. At a ph of 6 that should work fine.

With the upcoming season change I also cleaned two of the grow beds for re planting and changed the water inlets a bit too have better access to the air stones and filter.

Link to the water inlet video

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9K8FEabCXKBMXRTSFp4NkVBRkE/view?usp=drivesdk

The sodium carbonate worked well, level went actually from 0 degrees to 7 degrees on the scale... Ok, the pH level skyrocketed as well from 6 to 7.4 but the fish are eating happily, I will keep an eye on it now and try to maintain it at around 6.5. The barra are actually swimming in the middle of the tank today, before they were always at the bottom.

The cucumbers did a big shoot over night but that might have been the foliar spray.

The new pump has arrived, that's the preparation for the new beds which will go in when the green house is finished, bringing the hourly rate up from roughly 4000 to 8500 liter.

The pH might have been lower than 6 - that's as low as that kit will go, so it could have been anywhere under there. And since 7.6 is as high as the low range pH test will go, you might want to test again with the high range pH to see if it's actually higher than that now! If the pH was really low that was probably making the fish unhappy (and the plants too, because too low causes nutrient lockout just like too high does) but now that it's higher you'll need to watch it and your ammonia to make sure you don't hit toxic levels. If it was low enough to be affecting your bacteria that could also have caused the ammonia reading...

Thanks, Mel, I will keep an eye on it...

I see you have auto pots I love them
they don't do to well on fish water but given a hydro mix they are great