Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Not quantity, quality

We are growing buckets of basil in our NFT, but in the l;ast week they are showing some deficiency... Iron is what it looks like but we are running .5 ppm so that should be okay. Nitrates are no worries, got plenty of feed going into the fish
Ph is 6.8, water temp 23 approx... salt- zero apart from the natural salts in the bore water... gotta get off the bore and get a big rain tank...
Was thinking it could be potassium, have added some seasol after reading the potassium thread and some sulphate of potash , did anyone ever end up finding a potassium test kit? I have searched but can't seem to find one in Aus.
Any other ideas on what is going on here. Growth is exceptional, just patches of yellow, other plants, lettuces, silverbeet seem fine. grrr can't locate the pic on my damn puter

Hummm... sounds unusual... basil doesn't normally seem to suffer deficiencies...

Find that pic Stu....

P.S. ... how are those artemia going...

I had a lot of yellowish basil earlier in the year. I started adding 2tsp ( I have about 2000L of water) once a week and they greened up. At the same time, my greenhouse started getting really not and stayed that way all summer. As soon as the daytime highs got below 30C I started getting yellow leaves again. I've continued with the iron but they haven't lost their yellow. I'm sure others have good luck at cooler temps but not me.....

here it is

Looks like my basil. Thought mine was too much water or too hot.

I am wondering if the water level is getting too high in the nft... and getting a bit O2 deficient inhibiting the uptake of nutrients like potassium. I am going to add airstones to the nft sump and see if that helps.

by are you +1 to that C1?

Intervainal yellowing... makes me think its a Magnesium Def.

Might want to run some micro's or foliar feed with some epsom salt (magnesium sulfate) at the does of 1 teaspoon per gallon (5 ml per 3.78 liters).

Think Kogane could be right Stu... try adding a bit of Epsom salts....

okay will do, we are not recircing the sump today as it will warm up the tanks too much so I will get dan to add some today.

cheers

My dosing instructions for epsom's is for foilar feeding. I don't know what will happen to fish if that much epsom's salt is added to the actual nutrient water. I hope you don't add 5 ml to 3.78 liters of your fish's water...

Nope ... like anything... you add a small amount, test to measure the affect... and evaluate your course of action....

We're trying to correct a micro trace element difficiency.... not have a soothing bath...

yeah, haven't added anything yet. The OLD plants are showing a new symptom... sharper patches of yellow. These have been in the chanels since the end of october from memory, so we are going to do one final harvest from them and then ditch them. The fresher plants are not showing any of that symptom and nor are the ones we didn't harvest off last week, so I am thinking the old ones we harvested off are simply worn out, and the channel is not flowing free enough and their root balls are just too big.

Have you got a pic of the oldest plants Monya?

Chatty