Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Test 3: Bed only

I finally got seedlings that grew enough that I thought it was time to transplant them to larger quarters. For me this part of the project was insane. To take 100 seedling out of the seed trays and move them was almost impossible for this city boy. They broke apart Ok since they were in gravel. The hard part was pulling the roots apart without breaking them. Well, some went on to plant heaven to visit Mother Nature and most of them got moved. I doubt if they will make the move to the new home and re-root. My City thumb needs greening on this section. I would much rather just move net cups with 3 or 4 per cup so that is a change I need. I can still start them the same way. It should give me a faster and safer transplant in moments rather in hours. Revision again for me.

Test 2:
Now I don't know if I want to move the Cherry tomatoes over to Test 2 or not. The entire AP is up and running waiting for plants. It is powered by 15 or so small mountain shrimp. As the plants grow I can add more shrimp as I catch them. Both take a lot of time to do. Most of the Cherry seedlings are ready. The regular tomatoes are also ready but they will go in another pot I worked on this morning. That will need to go outside where I can string it up with ease. The Cherry ones will be in the house. I am hoping they will cascade and bunch out. Not up. Just need to trim them from getting to the floor.

Gday Deuem
Progress is progress & good to see
Seedling transplantation is some times hit & miss, the older they are the easier it is to transplant them. I always water them well before washing there roots in a separate bucket of AP water. But if you can avoid transplantation the better ie: grow directly in GBs, net pots. Which is fine if there is abundant seed, I've had problems with seedlings damping off in the past which can be very frustrating when buying small amounts of seed.

Cherry tomatoes like all tomatoes are very robust & easy to transplant, if you can get one growing well in a dirt garden it is easy enough to take cuttings by removing side shoots & placing the shoots straight into the AP GBs. This also means the cuttings grow true to type ( clones ) then it is just a matter of keeping them young & vigorous removing older plants as the yield slows.

Hey there GTK,

After this ordeal I really want to find net cups somewhere here. Even if I have to take plastic flower pots and cut them some how.

What does damping off mean?

The Tomatoes I grew are clones of a different type. I took several Cherry Tomatoes that were getting old and headed for the trash bin and sliced them up and put them in the seed tray cups I have. Every cup grew. 3 of them with at least 8 or more plants. And in a nice round circle. Today I took the best cup, 12 seedlings and moved them to groups of 2 plants in a 6 plant circle. So they are now in a real AP system. Lets see how they do from here. The roots will need to grow at least another 6 inches to hit the water table so for now they are being drip watered till they take off.

The pumpkins are still far in the lead with root and leaf growth and they are in the third transplant. They were from the supper garbage also. The seeds we all toss away. Like you said, easy to transfer larger plants. The stems on them are at least 1/8 inch right now. My final build test will be a vertical system with 40+ stations and it will fit cups of some sort so I can pull and replace at will. Even move around if needed.

I have no dirt except in the wives house plants and all of the new ones we are changing over to clay balls. They seem to be good for large root systems but poor for seedlings. One must be too careful around clay ball seedlings. It is like a bag of marbles. Just touch the bed and the balls cut off the stems. Not exactly the material to use when pulling one and planting another. I want my unit to be like an Indy pit stop changing a tire. Plant it once, move it once, eat it once.

Man, I can't imagine not being able to set tap water in the sun to make it good to put fish in.
I mean some communities in the States are experiencing loss of safe tap water, but those instances are few and far between.
Although they are with increasing frequency...

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When I was a kid in New England I could stick my head in any stream and have a drink. Many places here if I put my foot in a stream I need to count the toes on the way out. Pollution is taking away 90% of the water here. Do you need to buy your drinking water? If so what do you think is next.

There will be water wars someday if we all don't fix this. I feel AP is a good start at solving a big problem with water usage and fertilizer pollution. It also will assist on a lot less big trucks on the road delivering goods. With some very large cities here there are thousands of food trucks entering daily.

So we need to dampen the amount of transportation used to get our food. We all need to grow where we live. It can be done. It needs to be done. I will do my best to get something ready for the every day person that works and is small enough for every household to handle. We have 3 million people just in the next city. Over 100 Million in the capitol city for this province. I have my work cut out.

Gday Deuem

From Wikipedia
Damping off (or damping-off) is a horticultural disease or condition, caused by a number of different pathogens that kill or weaken seeds or seedlings before or after they germinate. It is most prevalent in wet and cool conditions.


I try to use new seed raising mix every time for new expensive/rare seed.

Thanks for the feed back GTK. To my knowledge I have never had this yet. I do a good enough job of breaking them myself.

Question: It read like you are using some seed mix like potting mix and tossing it out afterwards. Then want to do with AP media. I use gravel and clay balls. That might get rather expensive over time. Do you think a rinse would do or is the infection in the balls once and for all. Maybe boil them?

On a Happy Note:
Today I finally found someone that sold net cups. I think they are rather expensive at a buck and a half each but it is what I want. That's local bucks. About 23 cents USD How does that compare to anyone else. I would have liked them to be a bit deeper but they will work. They are 4.5cm deep. I think these are made for ornamental displays over a vase. They are made of clear plastic and have a scalloped edge. They only had 10 and I will need to order more. My test 4 will need 100 of them in rotation.

The tap here in Arizona isn't as good canadian tap, but it's safe to drink if you don't. Mind the
flourine, flouride, cholrine and mineral content in it. Most of us buy our drinking water 5 gallons or 19 liters at a time from a dispenser at the store usually between 75 cents usd and one dollar usd
For my net cups I take small cups and pastic bottle and drill lotsa holes in 'em
Here is a DWC bucket with cantelop on the way

Water is clean today, wheat filters more than what it needs i think, cause everytime I see it it has water beads at the tips. Good clean water beads.


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Here in Costa Rica I've found 3" Net Cups, a bag of 100: $32.40 USD



--
Sam

Well I just learned the hard way that if I change tabs while waiting for the letter to post, it deletes that page. So all my answers went away. This new windows 10 browser has many problems.

The last windows I liked was xp
Never touched windows 10, but my phone browser does that too so I use tapatalk app.


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give me xp3 any time

Yesterday, late afternoon we managed to catch a few more of the Alien minnows and right out of the water the males have the red strips and the females none. With the late sun and the water all in the shade we only got a small amount of fish and my friend took half to setup in his home or eat them. I am not 100% sure yet. The amount of males to females is about 1 in 10 or more. The females are all larger then the males. About 20% so far larger. The people I went with yesterday said they had no idea what the fish were either and had never seen them before in any paid fishing hole or store. So they might just be all natural. I hope they grow large enough to eat.

Is this close?
This is a bleeding heart tetra.

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