Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi,

Thanks. Seagro has Mn and Mg too, so should be cool.

Thanks
Rob

Yellowing on plants is mostly that their root system is getting to wet.
Reduce the flood cycle or increase the drain cycle time.
In winter I lower the flood level and increase the drain time by 25%

Thanks, but the dry period is already quite long, about 45mins. I'll check it out though.

Iron deficiency starts out on newer leaves and usually looks like the veins stay green and the leaves turn yellow between the leaves. If the condition continues, the leaves eventually go almost completely yellow and eventually can look almost white.

When you add iron to correct the problem, look at new growth since you added the iron because the older leaves will still look the same as before.

I suspect that the foliar spray with the seasol and adding some iron should help things. Be patient and don't overdoo since that can do more damage than doing nothing.

That Nitrite spike you mentioned before could have been caused by an upsurge in feeding, or stirring up solids somewhere in the system, or simply a temperature fluctuation or perhaps it was just a bit of cycling up. Since the nitrite went away and the nitrate came up, it all seems good now.

You mention that the product you used isn't actually seasol. Check carefully before adding such into your system (probably safe enough for foliar feeding though) make sure it doesn't have added nitrogen. I know seasol and maxigrow make different formulations meant for different things. We like to use the ones that have 0.1 or less nitrogen, 0 phosphorus and 1 or more potassium. They also have all the secondary and trace nutrients except we sometimes need to add extra iron depending on the media used and the source water.

Hi TC,

Thanks, I was wondering how soon I would see results. I'll check the new growth to see if the problem persists. I haven't added iron yet. From my reading I should get hold of some chelated iron.

The action I've taken thus far: In the first week, foliar spray with seagro (fish emulsion product). This week I tried a foliar spray with epsom salt mix 25g/litre water, and mixed the remainder(750ml) of the seagro in fish water. 750ml was mixed with 4000l of water, so its not a particularly high concentration.

Things are looking ok right now but I'll check the new growth.

A side note on Seagro, its a fish emulsion product (I actually thought it was seaweed based initially). I checked the label, woops, nitrogen is 5.5%. So its a bit high. More info here: http://www.seagro.co.za/agriculture.html. Fish are fine still:)

We have kelp based products here, like Kelpak, which I may need to use. Does Seasol or Maxicrop say anything about containing active ingredients? I'll get some seaweed this weekend, and put some in the beds, see how things go.

Thanks
Rob

Don't put any of the fish emulsion in your system water. (very dilute spray on the plants may be fine but dumping any into your system is likely to cause problems akin to gross overfeeding, test your ammonia and nitrite if you did this.)

maxicrop and seasol are seaweed extracts. Warning on kelp meal. Kelp meal is not the same as kelp extract. Kelp meal will probably cause an ammonia spike too. extract is fine. 0.1-0-1 is the NPK on the lable of maxicrop I'm not sure off the top of my head about "active ingredients".

Hi,

Thanks, I'll get some seaweed extract instead of fish emulsion.

Thanks
Rob

Hi, Thanks everyone,

The new growth is all very healthy.

Cheers
Rob

Gotta love that seaweed extract... magic stuff...