Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

The green in my hand is a bean plant. The nice dark green on the right was when it was a seedling, with the youngest of the plant on my left. There are some short stubby leaves next to the big green leaves with a bunch of necrotic spots. (this is the bottom photo, others are tomatoes plant)Please help.

PH is 7.2-7.4, ammonia 0, nitrites 0 and nitrates 60-80. I have added magnesium, and calcium to my aquaponic system.

Iron,

Depending on how old the system is might be just not yet available in the system.
You can supplement it with chelated iron or add some seaweed extract (seasol)

Forgot to mention I have added chelated iron to my system

Iron might be available to the system, but maybe the plants can't take it up.
Look at the chart above, anything higher then 7.0 has a hard chance of accessing the Iron that is available in the water.
So instead of adding more iron or any 'consumables' for the plants.
Try getting your water in check and lower your PH values to 6.6/6.8


You can either add, PH-down, Sulphuric or phoshoric acid (with patience and small amounts over course of days/weeks) or wait for the nitrifying bacteria to do it's work and naturally lower the PH value (this can take a while)

Personally, i add Phosphoric acid, 1 cap full or 2 a day (depends on your system size) and do this for a couple of days (weeks) towards the desired effect takes in. (testing the PH value daily)

Magnesium, calcium, chelated iron have been added.

Many of the nutrients compete for uptake by the plant so by adding too much of one you are restricting the uptake of another. Have you been adding Potassium or anything else you haven't mentioned? The deficiency is showing up in the new leaves which means the nutrient is not a mobile nutrient.

Immobile Nutrients
Iron, Copper, Manganese, Chlorine, Cobalt, Boron, Calcium, Sulfur

Sometimes it's worth changing the pH but I don't think this is one of those times. It will come down on it's own and it's not that high as it is. The type of chelated iron might be important, what type of chelated iron are you using? How much you've added, how often and how big your system is might also tell us something.

I'm not sure what's going on at this point.

I added dtpa chelated iron, calcium carbonate, magnesium sulfate, a bunch of potassium bicarbonate to increase buffer capacity of water from 3.5 to 7.5. Yesterday I added 1-2nl of phosphoric acid to lower pH for iron, need to recheck the ph today. I have added seaweed extract 3x, once being yesterday worrying about the plants. Thoughts based off the above?

Here is a image of my basal plant and what's going on with it

I think you have either an Iron deficiency or a manganese deficiency or a combination going on. Probably iron.

Are you seeing any small dead spots on the bean leaves?

The pH would not have caused all the Fe-DTPA to become unavailable but some would have been. Try using a foliar application of the Fe-DTPA (hopefully the iron came with instructions for this on the container). Whether foliar or in the tank - Fe-DTPA is photosensitive and breaks down under certain wavelengths. For best effect apply just before nightfall.

The basil I would clip the stems just above the highest set of normal leaves and see how the new leaves grow back from the nodes there.

So do I need to lower my pH for it to be effective? The iron. 7.4 currently

Most of the Iron will be available at the current pH. It just takes time to see the results of the iron additions. Putting the iron directly on the leaves by spraying usually requires less iron and seems to work a bit faster and better than putting it into the tank water. Spraying the iron on also takes care of the possibility that the iron will get used by something else or bound in an unusable state before the plant can get it.

Thanks for the reply, I'll post the results:)

bump

Any results on this NavyAP?