Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

elementary my dear Watson[thats an old saying]

how do you tell if you have a potassium deficiency????

Here's a good reference, with photos of most plant mineral deficiencies...

http://4e.plantphys.net/article.php?ch=t&id=289

Ive been feeding my fish a pretty straight diet of worms from my vermicompost bin and roly polys (pill bugs, wood lice, sow bugs, doodle bugs). We eat a lot of bananas around here and the worms get all the peels. Do ya think the potassium will transfer from peel -> worm -> fish -> plants?

Yes, I think it will. Proof will be in the plants though...or not.

Yor fish eat roly polys! What kind of fish you got? We have tons of roly polys!

On topic a bit of iron deficiency question. Does anybody use iron tanks, not galvanized or lined or coated? Will it cause too much iron oxide in the system? Is the iron from rust beneficial or of no use?

If I remember rightly Charlie, the rust is an insoluble form and can't be taken up by the plants....

An AP system often tends toward acidicy, so an iron tank would probably rust out quite rapidly.

I've got a variety of sunfish. Green sunfish, red spotted sunfish, red breasted sunfish... I was trying to catch bluegill but my fish ID skills are (where) lacking. I think I can tell them apart but now I've got 15 sunfish of various species. All of them are considered tasty, if a bit small. Most of them won't make more then a couple bite fillet. But, they're free and they love roly polies! Warning though: Roly Polies can contain high levels of heavy metals because they aren't effected by them. Apparently they just store them in some part of their body out of the way where it won't interfere with them.

I thought of feeding them roly polies when read that sunfish eat isopods, well, roly polies are terrestrial isopods, related to crabs, lobsters, etc. They even have gills and that's why they're always in areas with moisture. No moisture and roly poly's dry up and die. I've actually started up an roly poly terrarium to see if I can raise some myself without having to worry about the heavy metal content of wild caught ones.