Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

small update. our small system is up and running. we are thinking about going to a local organic nursery at a university to get some veggie plants. I threw some seeds in for the heck of it. added some dirty fish water, maybe 5 gallons from a water change. we used the local city water. the siphon works flawless which is a huge shocker! I have it right above the sump tank to keep it out of the growbeds. they are small enough as it is xD. we haven't glued much of any pipes and we might not. I don't think I will buy a test kit either I am gonna try going without testing the water haha.

Well, I am happy to report that the bell siphon has been working flawlessly! the leaks from the fittings are just about all sealed (on their own)

Nothing is ever done by itself and especially on its own, just wait till it un-seals on its own.

woo hoo!! I had thrown in some old seeds that I had zero hope for on Monday night...

*WARNING!* if you do not wish to waste several minutes of your life reading a bunch of nonsense... skip to the bottom of this post!! (cant say i didnt warn ya!)

these pics were taken 2 days ago. the seeds i dropped in.... WOW! amazing growth really fast. the cucumber seeds had a very high germination ratio, so many of them popped up. i was not expecting anything like this. the romaine lettuce seeds must have just slipped through the gravel because ZERO of them have done anything yet. the seeds were all old and i didnt expect much from them so i just threw in a bunch. now i know i have too many growing all at once and i wont do that again! xD so i am thinking about transplanting them to pots to give away but i am not sure if they would survive.

i have 7 green bean plants that popped up and are not in the pics (need to take newer pics) but i am really happy about that and would like to keep as many of them in the system as i can.

i am talking my bro in law into expanding the system we need more grow beds!

we purchased 11 juvenile/adult tilapia, they are in the FT barrel. they are "golden Mozambique" which is cool. not sure how many male/female we got i am on the market for a good fish feed that has iron if possible, so i dont have to buy chelated iron.

we also bought some plants from a university nursery that grows "organic". we picked out a few things... moringa tree, serrano peppers, tepin peppers, red jalapeno pepper, scorpion peppers!! a papaya plant/tree? some orange mint, blueberry, .... yeah some peppers and some random stuff to see what happens... hehe. we figure we will find out what works and what doesnt when stuff dies or it doesnt.

the water really cleared up in the fish tank, i was able to see straight to the bottom. it was milky from the unwashed gravel at first. i am sure there is residue/sand in the pipes. the way i had it running, my fish tank was probably working like a swirl filter as i did not have the SLO (Solids Lifting Overflow) installed. it was running like that for a week before the fish. i siphoned out the bottom and installed the SLO and it cleared up really nice. i am wanting to install a filter to replace my walmart fish net at growbed inlet/fist tank outlet "filter" hehe the problem is i am cheap and dont want to buy any more pipe and fittings. haha i will do it when it needs to be done.



to summarize:

i need cheap, awesome, fully balanced nutrition feed (with iron!?), cheap, and for 4 to 7 inch tilapia or larger, oh and it needs to be CHEAP! (like me) if you know of anything, if it even exists... i would appreciate your help

can i transplant my cucumbers OUT of AP into dirt? or will they not survive/do well?

any and all help is appreciated. thanks for reading!

oh yeah! i forgot to mention that i didnt take the plants from the nursery out of their pots yet. too scared to kill em.
right now the water comes up to the bottom of their pots and keeps the soil saturated. anyone see a problem with this? i know if it was too wet there would be an issue with root rot so i didnt sink them in deep. but if there is any other problem u guys see that i dont, please share. thanks.

Watering from the bottom is a common practice for high end floral crops, where getting the leaves wet is detrimental to the growth.

African Violets, Gloxinas to name a few. The only problem with this type of watering system is the slope need to drain the beds completely after the flood watering.

took new pics this morning.

today after work i went and checked on everything like i do everyday now and i found the heat got to some of the plants. this is the first day with the opposite of awesomeness! hehe. up until today everything has been all good. not that it was a total disaster either.

i found some of the leaves on the mint plant had been getting munched up. after tearing off the chewed up leaves and setting them aside, i found the culprit. SUPER TINY green caterpillar! he became tilapia food real quick!

i also found some small white-ish balls in the walmart fish net "filter" and i am curious... could they be tilapia eggs!? now i have a bunch of questions:

how to determine male from female?
how big do these guys gotta be before they start that kind of business?
are they able to breed in the environment they are currently in?

only root rot that you note - get around that quite simply by putting rock/media on the bottom of pot to the intended water level and soil/potting medium on top out of water. Basically a wicking pot. can put tissues or shade cloth in between if you like to keep soil and media separate - some roots will go through as required..

also similar principle are root pouches using shopping bags and custom bags...
http://www.bitsouttheback.net/p/growing ... uches.html
there are also some using shopping bags on youtube from the US
try googling 'grow bags' 'grow pouches' and also interesting are gutter grow systems that can be mod'ed to suit AP.

New pics from tonight. The temp here was 106F and i was worried about the fish. the water was 96F a couple days ago when the temp was 98F

so i found a small fan and faced it towards the FT. dropped the temp to 88 today with the 106F outside. i am happy with that but i want to get it even lower. I would be happy with 80-82F. i am planning on adding a shade cover that I can also use to support my plants to grow vertically as well as add some towers and maybe in the cooler days of our year round summer i may use it to throw up some plastic and wrap it all up like a make shift greenhouse. here in southern california where i live... we get summer year round, just different shades of it except for our 3 days of winter.

well, the plants are not BOOMING because the fish are not eatting a lot which i am sure is from them being so hot. but there is some growth.

i am happy that the cantaloupes are starting to pop. i love it! i could not get ANYTHING to grow in the dirt or in those little greenhouse seed starter deals... but in AP... whole different story! the pic with the 2 little pots shows the cantaloupes popping up. 2 at the moment and hopefully more to follow

i see the tepin and scorpion pepper plants have nice dark green new growth, the mint is shooting up (as expected from all the lurking i have done on here and youtube over the past few years). we r gonna have to clip it, use it, whatever and keep it small so it doesnt explode and take over like i have seen it do to others many many times.

i am letting the green beans and cucumbers that got hit with the heat last week just try to recover. i am curious to see if they can. some look ok but others not so much. hehe.

so i have some more questions, i still could use some answers on the previous ones... maybe my title "new here" is not very inviting xD lol. total fail! i shoulda known better.

i am thinking about adding red wigglers to grow beds. how many should i buy? do they multiply like crazy? do they leave the growbeds? i am thinking about spending $15 or less so i dont throw away money xD i AM cheap!!
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will worms somehow help with iron deficiencies? i see some yellowing of leaves but i dont think it can be iron deficiency yet as the plants are in pots with soil. but who knows! it is a question i have had. i dont want to buy chelated iron. i would like to keep the system simple - feed fish and top up with water as needed - as the only inputs from me. possible?

well, thats enough for now... thank you for looking and any help you can provide is appreciated! any comments/questions/ even insults! are totally welcomed xD

picked up some new barrels. cleaned them and they have a strong smell to them. they had some kind of liquid flavoring in them. they smell like candy canes

i think we can chop 1 in half hot dog style and do constant flood grow beds with duckweed. 1 cut in half the other way and put 2 trees. 1 avacado, 1 not sure yet. i am thinking of saving 1 barrel for water storage. which leaves me with 1 more... not sure yet.

i have a question and couldnt find the answer online, maybe i can get help here. i have some material left over from when i replaced evaporative cooler pads. this stuff came in a roll, its dark green, and it looks like the insides to cardboard. i would like to know what the material is and if i can use it in AP system or not. (if it is inert or not basically) any help is appreciated, thanks!

made some changes. added a swirl filter and a fish tank for the smaller fish.

and took a good pic of the larger golden tilapia.

a short video of my system in its current state. i decided to make a small home for the small tilapia. just put it on top of the swirl filter.

https://youtu.be/kkiQ64e-fF0

For what it's worth, you are going to have a difficult time growing all those fruiting plants in your newly cycled system. The ones that have fruit already will finish fine but your plants will start to struggle to produce anything further because the fruiting plants will have sucked up any nutrients available. This is why it is highly recommended that you start with leafy greens and herbs when first starting a system.

In addition, without adequate water testing, it will be difficult for anyone to provide recommendations since it's important to monitor pH, ammonia, nitrites, nitrates etc. of your source water as well as your system water.

Just my .02

I am loving the excitement though - just don't forget that you are raising animals and plants and they depend on you for their survival.

Eddie