Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I think it would be easier to just use good kitchen and garden scraps in your worm bin and then worms for the fish. Castings tea is a 'softer' risk than compost tea as it contains many beneficial bacteria and fungi etc to thwart any bad bacterial efforts. It will actually add genetic diversity to your bio-film.

Sea shells as chook grit will make for some nice micro replenishment in your soil...

I've read somewhere that Kelpmeal is an excellent source for AP, as it is natural plant matter to the fish and all around excellent for the plants. I'd be curious to hear what you folks think.

Well, I just about poisoned my fish with a kelp meal tea this week. I brewed up a pretty strong batch, let it cool, and poured it in. Fish just kinda lay at the bottom of the tank gulping. After a fast 50% water change they recovered. I also believe that kelp is highly nutritious, I think I just over-did it. I will be using kelp again as it really greened up the plants, practically overnight. The trick is that I will be much more judicious! A little tiny bit will do it. Next time, I think I will use about a teaspoon (instead of several handfuls) to make the tea, let it cool, and then dilute it out quite a bit before adding the liquid to the growbeds. I think the boiled teaspoon kelp meal will be an experimental feed for the fish.

yeah, wowzers. I have done the same sorta thing when I first started using Kelpmeal in my organic garden [soil] and the kelp meal that I use says about a teaspoon/tablespoon per square foot, so yeah, handfulls would be a bunch. It's great though, plants love it and it has all the Macro and some micro nutrients in it. With ferts, it's better to underuse them than to over do it and burn the plants any. Glad to hear that your fish recovered.

Various poos are used in aquaculture systems in China and SE Asia.

The ash from burning wood is rich in various trace elements. (I used to mix wood ash with cow and sheep manure and dilute down to an acceptable level to get a good EC reading when I was experimenting with growing "organic" hydroponic tomatoes.) Indeed they were the best testing tmatoes I have ever grown.

In fact a very near "perfect" hydroponic nutrient solution for tomatoes could be derived from doing an analysis of elements in the ash of a tomato plant.

It would be a matter of mixing up various salts to get the same percentages. Not forgetting that requirements during seedling, middle and fruiting phases would require separate analysis and therefore nutrients with varying compositions.

ash is good for potassium too

Careful with ash--just use a little bit. I messed up the pH in some of my dirt garden with too much ash. Remember, ash + water = lye.

Hence you check pH and other water condition perameters.

yep, potash should have clarified abit thanks janet.............Mmmmmm fish oil soap

Hi,

Non-recirculating run-to-waste beds have a distinct advantage in that they can be fed with packaged nutrients (seasol, worm tea, hydro stuff) independently of the aquaponics system if it's not producing sufficient nutrients (not a problem that I've had so far) and, in the event that they get infested with something, you can even apply an organic (on non-organic if you prefer) remedy without affecting your fish.

To ensure that I still get bacterial colonisation, I run one small gravel grow bed. Even that's not necessary if your run a bio-filter or two (and I have those, too).

It's an important point that, just because something is grown organically, doesn't mean that it's not deficient in something or the other.

Gary

Does anyone know of this products equivalent in Australia that Dave D was talking about?



I know that rocks/gravel are an important part of nutrients in the soil from the unhappy experiences of a couple of local farmers. They got sick of the volcanic rock that was in the fields where they grew spuds so they decided to remove all the rocks (which were roughly potatoe size and larger) from the soil. Anyway short story is that their productivity crashed and they had to buy in rock and spread it on their paddocks. Havn't heard if this remediation has worked yet ot not.

yep, i posted a few links ages ago, maybe do a search (make sure to tick the "display as posts" button) for trace elements...........

if feeding worm farm worms to the fish, do the worms need to be purged or prepared in any way, or do I just wash them and throw them in?

I don't even wash them, gently knock most of the dirt off, and dangle them above the water and wait for the fish to jump up and take it out of your hand

Did a search for "trace elements" and didn't find one that refered to teh soluble rock dust here in Australia. Found some references to stuff I'd all ready read about marine salts, sea weeds and such.

Could you suggest a different search?

Stuart