Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

some of the problems I have noticed here, is rapid evaporation, certain plants just bolting, some plants not growing at a decent rate, and tomatoes booming out of proportion. Its a hard situation, just been walking around the system for the last hour in contemplation and something just isnt quiet right, but i can't put my finger on it.

Broome tafe is supplying me with 200 barra fingerlings middle of september, so that will be good, cause I just dont have the fish stocks in the tank at the moment

ok so you're "loosing" 300L per day................let me go back through your thread...............

that is an approximation, I have just had a HSM and way over filled the tank, had to head back out onto site with the damn master key to let a git into a restricted place, came home to find that I hadn't turned the tap off so will be able to give an exact water loss over the next fortnight. frustration

ok, read all your thread and checked the current weather at onslow.

looks like your tank is under cover in a shed? so lets discount that as a huge source of evap.....

I assume there are no tell-tail drips anywhere? i was loosing a HUGE amount of water at one stage from an intermittent "spurt" out of the GB's

you had 27.9C and 21% RH at 12:00 today....... Thats might warm and DRY..............

You know what? after seeing the amount of foliage and your temp + humidity i recon that your water usage might be just about right

all that green is going to be "breathing" lot of water away at 22% RH and 28C

i bet the water usage increase co-insided with the max temps and max plant size?

put it another way 300L is one and a half 44gal drums......... would you say that you'd be using WAY more than that to water the plants if they were in the ground and spaced out as per a dirt garden? like maybe 7 drums worth of water? if you say yes (any you'd know becasue you live there! ) then 1) your water usage is about right and 2) its nearly 10x less than what you'd use in the dirt

always seems like more when you see a 3000L tank empty over 10 days. generally people have no idea how much water comes out of a hose in an hour........i know i was surprised when i measured it!

Tell me more about the nutes you're adding..........have you measured very low nitrates?

I'd probably NOT add nutes on every water top up, but do it say every 2 weeks........dont forget that the nute level will be increasing every day due to the water transpiration........

anyone else like to comment?

What he said

thanks gilly

Jessy, at least you have a reason! many of us have had the same HSM...did you do the

relaxing.......... "oh CRAP".............run

I have 0 nitrates
0 nitrites
minimal ammonia

and after that flush out more than likely all 0.

I prunned a heap of tomato leaf off of the plants to try and slow the process of water loss, but some of the other plants seem sluggish, and really slow to grow, might be a pH thing

well, if you have zero nitrates then that will be your growth problem. you really need to have a good number of fish and be hitting the food sorta hard to support those levels of plants IMO.

The reason you're doing so well with the tomatoes is probably because you've been using nute supplements.

Thanks steve, will see how it looks at the end of next month with the barra in the system. Muchly appre ciated

300ltr a day from a 3000ltr system... sounds a bit high, even for those sorts of temps...

But in other ways suspiciously consistent... think there's a thread back somewhere where the question of loss from a system was discussed....

From memory most people (in the height of summer) were quoting 10-15%... but I think that was per week....

I think Les was measuring his system through last summer... in the greenhouse... ring a bell Steve...

Here I am

as I said on the potassium thread, my max usage was an average of 50l/day in the GH and temps over 30C
my water volume is around 2,500l and GBs around 3,000l - so 300l/day is a huge amount...I would definitely be looking for leaks if it continues

les keep in mind that the green house humidity is going to be HUGE

30C at 22% humidity is going to transpire a LOT more than 30C at 88% humidity.

i quickly looked up a calculator for evaporation potential (prbably not the right one, and i put the water temps in as the same as the air temps, and its not going to be technically correct for plant transpiration, BUT it will give an IDEA of the difference)

les's conditions equate to an evaporation potential of 0.07

Jessy's conditions equate to an evaporation potential of 0.44

about what I calculated too

Geeze you guys are good, i have sooo much to learn, thankyou for enlightening me

And what does that equate to in real terms? What are the units?

.44cm/day?