Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Fish will be fine with PH 6, however the bacteria prefer a higher ph.

Hey Mark:
Do you have a high pH test kit too? Or is the regular kit pegged out. It might be higher than 7.6 if that is the highest the kit will go.

I grew cucumbers in the dirt garden until I realized I don't like them that much. Maybe try them in AP next time!

Have you ever had a cucumber salad with vinegar and sugar and onions? That is good stuff..

Yes I do have a high PH test. They pretty much agree with each other around 7.6.

Is your water ph actually 6.0?

Mine was definitely 6.4 for almost a year, now it is 7.6 or higher not sure. Dan's may very well be 6.0. Joel's old system apparently ran at 6.4 for years with no ill effects on the plants. After hearing about that, I am not going to try to manipulate pH except to make sure it has some buffering in there. Definitely needed to add chelated iron, that helped. Also added some multivitamin tablets (for humans), potassium supplement tablets, and epsom salt which is magnesium sulfate, as well as the baking soda which was already in the water. Oh and some crushed shells on the surface of the gravel and I add egg shells from breakfast to the sump. I'm paranoid about calcium deficiency because last year I grew a tomato plant in a container on the deck and it had fruit but they all got blossom end rot (from calcium deficiency) instead of ripening properly.

http://ohioline.osu.edu/hyg-fact/3000/3117.html

90% of plants are happiest at 6.5 PH.
Calcium"availability"is the solution rather than just adding calcium. If you've got high levels of Potassium,salt,manganese or nitrogen then calcium uptake is restricted.

Hmm, thanks for that Chappo

Yes, my ph is ~6. My digital pH meter is broken so I can not be more precise than to say the yellow color is 6. I am slowly adding pickling lime to raise the pH. I also have crushed oyster shell in the sump. The fish are fine and eat like mad.

I bought my soil test kit online. Its not perfect. Instead of adding little spoons of soil for extraction I just added that amount of tank water.

Another disaster

Me or one of the kids left the water hose running and it changed the system water again and soaked the ground. It could have been running two days for all I know. Well, the ground got saturated and when the pump took the water out of the sum the sump floated up out of the ground a bit and the ground caved in under the tank. So now I must dig out the slop and reset the tank. I pumped the remaining sump water into the grow beds and raised the loops to prevent draining and pulled the sump tank. After digging in the knee deep sloppy clay for hours, I finally had to give up for the day so I dropped the sump tank back in the ground without the pond liner and released the grow bed water. The tank is zinc coated so I hope I will not have fish issues with that for a couple days. I have lowered the flood level in the grow beds to keep the system running in hopes that the roots are long enough to get water and that the bacteria will stay alive. Best of all, I go out of town for a few days in two more days. So, I have to fix this and have it all automated again in two days... Gee no pressure...

heh, you love it!

My AP refill tap is on a timer

+1 for the timer, I have done that at least a couple of times myself.

The worst part, I have a timer for the host. I have just never installed it But thats because I use the same tap for watering the livestock.

No excuse Dan, how many more times do you think you can do the same thing! Waving finger

Well, my zucchini squash have taken off and are producing. They are starting to look like trees and Im a little concerned that they will be hard to remove.

Anything that gets difficult to remove from my beds has its head cut off, then left for a few weeks. After that the roots come out easily.

Dan... That is Ocra, the main ingredient in Gumbo. It's what makes gumbo gummy or slimey. I love that stuff. It's the edible member of the hibiscus family orignially from africa. I usually grow what is called cowhorn variety. They are great batterfried also! How did you guys make out with the storm???