Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

ash yes, but something to counter the ph increase, unless your ph is already low.

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Why, is the peal going to raise the PH? If so I will need to run a test. I don't want any changes on the ph side

ash will make water more alkaline, yes.

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You will always be playing catchup.... you have your thinking reversed to where it should be.

if anything.... run AQ system, add a bed for plants later when there is nute buid up.....

dont you have a shovel?

any worm is better than no worm.....

Yes, I went out and bought one and still no worms. We will continue the hunt. Just huge colonies of biting ants. When you hit an ant tunnel, run or be ant food. With worms the ground is always nice and soft to dig up. Our local dirt is not dirt it is some type of clay. Even if I watch a backhoe dig up the ground, Nothing. Just ants and other dirt bugs. Still looking. With all of the water here and the soil being so fertile it is hard to reason AP as an alternative to some farmers. Why spend money when the dirt gives them what they need. And most of them could care less if you eat the chemicals they put on them. Buyer be ware.

Injecting pigs to get big is illegal but they get caught all the time. They now give the pig a blood test before slaughter. If it passes it gets stamped. If not they get finned. So the ones that inject go black market until they get caught. All pigs have a sheet in their pen with government agent stamps. If you plan on selling it. You get it registered like a car. It gets a pig number clipped to its ear as a baby. Every cow farm has ear clips so I guess they do this all over the world. Since it costs money, people will find away around it. That pig ends up on our plate and we don't know it.

Why would you want to wait months for a bed to collect nutes if you could just add them and plant. This time delay is one dirt does not have. So how long do you have to wait for a new bed to get ready. 3 months? 6 months? Nobody will want to wait that long. Need a better way. Like lay in a layer of old lettuce and let the worms eat it. Something where a week is tops. Just say that the fish are ready and all the poo you need is flowing to the GBS now. It still is not enough to grow even lettuce in less then 60 days like some people do. Something is missing and the growth I get is too little to slow.

you joined late feb, if you just made an IBC system without all this stuffing around worrying about "perfect water', it wouldbe working by now.

running an AQ system first and adding a bed for plants when nutes are up is not "adding a bed then waiting'....
there is no faster way mate, not without chemicals.

you need to do a lot more reading.

there is roughly a 3 month delay in AP, there is no getting around that.... solids need time to break down.


it sounds like you just want to run hydro.

why bother with fish if the plants are all you want?


if you have a sytem running and its not working and you cant grow lettuce, its not the delay that is the problem, you are probably under stocked, using the wrong fish food, feeding too little, etc, etc.

Yavimaya: I have not been waiting around for this water post. It is just a question put fourth. Most of the good stuff seems to be kept a secret by those who know and went thru the pain to get the info. I have read a lot, viewed a lot and most is worthless info that stops dead of really saying what they use. My tank is over stocked at the moment and it is not hooked to any GBs as of yet. The main fish tank will never be. So in the mean time I am using this water as best I can to grow plants. It does not circulate yet. Just fill and refill for now.

Still working on a final design and collecting parts. When I get there, I get there. Until then learning is obtained. I have very little room and need to get the most bang out of the setup. And I don't want a 3 month delay in waiting to grow. There has to be a better way then that. You would miss an entire growing season. Who is going to do that? If this is a 100% defiant, then AP has a problem over dirt farmers every spring. They are already picking food and we are waiting for a cycle to finish? Outside in the cold this would happen every year. Once the beds are frozen the bacteria should die off also. We can always mineralize the solids or blend them into a liquid. So I don't think it is this time, It should be the time to make bacteria we wait for. So how do we grow that faster. If I have to wait 3 moths to plant I might as well use dirt. Load a bed and grow the same day.

So far I am not seeing or really reading any great advantages of AP except you might be able to turn off the filter if all is well in the beds. I am thinking of just getting a larger fish tank for the monsters and that is where the AP would have gone and simply go back to dirt for now. Some day if I have room try it again.

Can I quote you, when I buy NewZealand vegetables.that have been lovingly grown in CHINA




So that accounts for why there is flavor overload on.Chinese Vegetables ...
they have. Yet to he identified .. ummmmm. NUTRIENTS, banned in most parts of the world..

Jokes aside... I can't imagine how one lives with such water and food..
..

Do you a high stocking density of fish? AP FTs tend to do best when crowded.

The cycle doesn't have to take 3 months. when you start with clean water, clean GBs, and a clean biofilter it can take that long. if it's a big system you also have to watch out for the ammonia spike. the bacteria in the fishes gut needs time to become established in the system. the key is to introduce them yourself.


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In my system I had rapid leaf growth in 4 days after adding fish, 3 days after adding transplant that was started with plain city water, no dirt.

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So your filter is on? filtering ammonia? You may want to turn it off at night or completely loose it to do AP.


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[quote="BuiDoi
Can I quote you, when I buy NewZealand vegetables.that have been lovingly grown in CHINA



So that accounts for why there is flavor overload on.Chinese Vegetables ...
they have. Yet to he identified .. ummmmm. NUTRIENTS, banned in most parts of the world..

"A lot of that could be human poo also. Chinese flavored just for you. Most pig stalls all drain into the fields for Nutrients. It is the easy way of getting fertilizer and pork. I don't know if anything is banned here except beef from the USA. Something about mad cow years ago. Really it was the pig farmers who got worried no one would eat pig. We have pig all the time here. Almost everyday in something. Adds flavor to the veggies."

Jokes aside... I can't imagine how one lives with such water and food..
..[/quote]

We need to buy water, that's how. The food is always in question. Although I did find a farm I can buy from direct and he is on mountain water. The last bunch of veggies we got there tasted great. At the market who knows where they come from. When ever we ask and find out it is mostly from the river farms. The veggies are cheaper then the mountain farms. A lot less work to do for water. If you see tiny little specs inside the veggies, pass on them. Look for the nice green stems that are clean and clear of garbage. Wash everything in a good veggie soap first to remove pesticides. We use one that cleans the outsides so well the taste changes a lot. All fruits and veggies now get washed well. I'm sure you can find some down under. It is the same stuff we use to wash dishes. Cuts grease and pesticides clean off. My wife sells it here. Grapes come out sparkling and ready to munch on. Before they always had a film on them. So everyday we have a stainless bowl full of veggies to soak prior to eating but that does not take out the crap on the inside. Only a strict AP or HP would do that. Next would be the mountain veggies and then the Organic farmers. Besides all of that, let the buyer beware!

It would be nice to actually know where all of our food comes from and track it back to how it is screwed with. But then nobody would eat it.

Bill the tank is the family tank and not hooked up to anything except the filter. So yeah it is filtering everything in the tank and I doubt it takes out any ammonia. I do water changes for that and I am overdue now so thanks for the nudge. I only have a filter floss filter. Nothing special. When the water gets yellowish I change a lot of it. With that many fish in the tank they are making me work a lot. The 200+ minnows were going to get put into the AP but now that is on hold. Maybe we will just eat them. The minnow jugs never came in either. No luck lately.