Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Sorry to hear about your fish Clovis and yes that classifies as HSM

You shouldn't lose your bacteria unless it was left to dry out...it will recover okay, just keep an eye on the readings

+1 also sorry to hear about your fish!

+1 for tomatoe nutrients, just like thrive

ok. I got a problem, maybe.

one of my beds is flooding. by that I mean over the gravel. is this a problem?
it seems to be draining as well as the other bed, but the gravel level seems as if it have drop. this bed is planted with greens so I don't really want to dig the gravel out of it to see if the pipe in the bottom collapsed.

any ideas?

thanks,
Steve

How do you find that Aerogarden - seen them on TV and wondering if they are any good or just a gimmic?

can cause algal growth on the surface but not a big problem...if the gravel level has dropped, couldn't you add gravel to bring it back up to the norm.

I noticed after a few months that my gravel seemed to settle down, possibly caused by the water moving the gravel around...topped up (with gravel) and all was fine

Should I wait till then greens are taller, or just cover the sprouts?




You could google Aerogarden and probably find all the info you would ever want on them.

When I get everything running well I'll do a side by side, well not really side by side, but you know what I mean, comparasion of it and the aquaponic system.

if I knew then what I know now I would have probably just built my own.

Maybe fill up around them?

...as OBO suggested

So...
Family emergencies had me away from my system for a while, but i'm back.

A catapiller of some sort ate almost all my green leafies, so I pulled them out and now have one grow bed growing nothing. The water was so green I couldn't tell if I had any of my minnows left. I did an almost 100% water change and I think I had three minnows left. Turtle was gone too.

I put three dozen more minnows in saturday when I was working on it, and to date 4 have bit the dust.

I have 5 cucumber plant that are about 4 inches tall now, and I had one arugala plant left in the same bed as the cucs, but all the leafs felt like the were made of wax, not really waxy, but brittle. if you bent them they would just break. Anyideas on why this may be?

Anyway, new water, new minnows, and nothing but cucs growing, and they seem better now.

The issue with one bed filling over the gravel was apparently and issue with the incoming water not getting evenly distributed between beds, but was easily fixed by adjusting the gravel around the inflow pipe.

That is all for now.
I am on the search for a hardier fish the is cheap. Maybe goldfish.

But it is hard to beat the price of minnows @ $1usd/dozen

Little feeder goldfish can be had for $0.12, a bit larger ones at $0.24. I got mine from Petsmart.