Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I have a 3'X8' growbed, gravel for a medium. I have 6 dill, 5 jalapino peppers, 1 sweet pepper, 6 begonias, 4 beens, and 5 cucumbers.

My pool is approximately 1000 gallons. I have 4 4" koi, a couple minnows and about 5 small goldfish.

The plants aren't growing much and leaves are drying out from the bottom. I don't think the fish to water ratio is high enough. Any advice would be appreciated.

Welcome Brent

Sounds like you need more fish. Also is the water flooding the gravel to high enough? You want the water to reach about 2-3cm below the surface of the gravel.

If you do get more fish, introduce them slowly to the system so the bacteria has time to catch up with the increased load. Go slowly with the feed for a few days too. You might also want to quarantine new fish for two weeks before adding them.

This is very important - a fellow AP addict I know added $60 worth of Barra to his system in one hit and lost all but 5 - he later got jade perch and introduced them 1 by one and all is well

yep, grab some more fish slowly brent and you should see the nutes rise and the plants pick up.

How about adding limited amounts of Seasol as a supplement.

That would definitely work derekh, but it is in no way a long term solution.

Buy about 5 goldies (3" a week) and you should be right.

What area are you in Brent. Here in Perth the temp today is 17 degrees and it is too early for cucumbers and capsicum as they do better in warmer weather. Try lettuce, celery, bok choi, silverbeet or spinach, they will do much better until the weather warms up.

If you really need to Golden fertilizer is always an option. Thats if your not squimish

Think he might be from USA Faye (gallons..4" bit of a clue)
welcome Brent, the cures for the basic problem has been covered....give that a try and let us know how you fair

Brent, is your grow bed continuous flow or flood and drain? Many people have had issues with continuous flow due to lack of DO and "dead" spots in the water causing root rot

So many responses so quickly, I love it. It is always good to see an active board.

I am from Saskatchewan Canada. This was my first attempt at aquaponics and will take what I learn and impliment it next season. It is too late to bring the system around since it will start freezing here in a month or so.

Jaymie..."2-3cm from surface", is that a minimum or maximum?

My growbed is 3"deep and I continuous flow from about 8 am till 8pm, then turn off for the night.

My future plans are for a greenhouse 30'X50' with a koi pond. I hope to have the bugs worked out befor then.

What mediums work the best?

Brent, convert over to a flood and drain. Two options are

1) standpipe with hole(s) drilled in it and top lower than gravel (or media). You can accomplish this by having a longer outer pipe. Run the pump for the amount of time to flood the bed (via timer) and then turn it off for a length of time required to drain the bed.

2) use loop or bell autosyphons

Option one is the easiest to implement and get working.

Flood and drain provides great root oxygenation and eliminates water "tracking"

2 - 3cm is an ideal. More than that and the roots have to go further making germinating insitu harder. Shorter than that and the top layer will be wet, adding to evaporation and growing algae.

Maximum Brent.... enough to wet the seeds/plants but not so much as to saturate them.... also cuts down on evaporative loss of water....



Preferred and proven best depth for flood and drain is 30cm Brent ... about 12".....

Old style flood and drain hydro trays are about 15cm - 6".... but have proved to be problematical with continous flow.....

With gravel I'd suggest trying to get a deeper bed... for the interim I'd certainly suggest that if you want to keep running your pump continuously you incorporate an autosiphon into your system to initiate a rapid drain cycle.....

You need to allow the plant roots to "dry" periodically and more importantly allow them to uptake oxygen.....

If you have to stay with what you've got for the moment then I think you need to incorporate a means of oxygenation into the nutrient flow just before or in the growbed, and setup a timer cycle for the pump to allow a drain cycle for reasons above....

Ultimately there's a very high probablitiy you'll end up with root rot.

too slow, rope

Yeah Brent like Steve says..... have to type faster....

That's two of us with the same advise