Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I'm a newbie. Learning lots on this forum. I thougt (nievely) that this would be a breeze to get an aquaponics...small system...producing with ease. Not so. Lots of challenges. Issue: PLants did not survive. 2 left after transplanting seedlings of basil from a nursery...simply are not growing....certainly not at the rate described in articles I read, or the pictures I have looked at. Why? Looks like seasol might be the answer. I am using clay pellets....the water continually has red in it. I'm thinking of switching to pea gravel. Donated items to create system. one metal cylinder tank, cut vertically to provide plant bed and fish tank. Both are lined with pond liners. Flood and drain system used with sump pump to pump water up to bed. Sump is contained in a large plastic planter and we drilled a hole in it to fill. Sump has float valve. Fish are good, growing, but plants are not. Water is not crystal clear, "black" algae on tank sides...but from what I read that's good algae. Let me know if my own thoughts about gravel and seasol might answer my issue..

Welcome, PM!

Hmm.....what are your system specs? Ammonia, nitrites, nitrates, ph, volume of water, amt of feed per day? Indoor/outdoors? What do the plants look like? Did the dead ones rot off at the ground, yellow up, or wilt?

I don't think the problem would be your gravel: far more likely to be nutrients, light levels (since you probably have it indoors), temperature (if you have it outside), or damping off if the stems are staying too wet. As far as nutrients: they are a problem for everyone at first, I think: it took my first system a few months to start getting fairly stable so I didn't need to give such regular doses of iron etc.

If the water is still red the system has not really cycled, the water should clear very quickly once cycled, especially with clay balls.

A picture, and age of system would be helpfull, but seasol / maxicrop wont hurt. The clay balls are not the problem.

How many fish? My small system has 5 small goldies and no nitrate. The larger has 50 large fish and 80+ nitrate.

approximately 130 gallons of water....cylinder tank laying on it's side measures 6'by 2ft' and water is 18" deep. We are inside a school greenhouse.

Maybe the stems are dappening off. I had not considered that as the issue. I was thinking i'm short nutrients. Either not enough fish, or maybe not feeding them enough?

ph last time I took it....Thurs. was 7.0....nitrate/nitrite/ammonia was 0.....sometimes I think this is the issue....but when should this test show something, if you want your bed to be nurishing to the plants? Or if it's at 0 do I assume the pellets are acting like the bio filter, but maybe I don't have enough fish to create the nurishment that the plants inthe bed need? The pellets and plants do a lot of floating around. Any new sprpouted seed disappears. I've sprouted seeds and those have not come to the top as a plant. Since I'm in a school system, I really wished I would start showing some success.

I have 30 fish...gold and koi, out of those, 5 are 4-5 inches. I'm not sure how to 'measure' my food, so we have been doing Tetra pellets, 3 X's a day 10 whole pellets and 5 crushed for the littler mouths. The system pumps about every 15-20 minutes. The clay pellets do not dry out between but the water does drain out. It's a good possibility that the stems are flat rotting, because they are now brown.


we had some issues with temps in the green house so for a couple of weeks the water temp was at 50 degrees to 55 degrees. that is squared away now and the water is at about 65.

the current system has been in "circulation" since Aug. 15th. Basil seedlings from a nursery with soil washed off added on Aug. 29th. 2 left and the stems are brown, green foilage still green but looking sickly now....and they have not grown beyond the 1/2 inch since August. I did upload a Paint program sketch of the system. I don't know where that might have gone to.

If you plants are doing a lot of floating they could be water logged or the roots are getting moved around too much. My gb's flood and you can't tell by looking at the surface.

Yep, sound like damping off. Try to set your water so it only comes to 1" to 1.5 " below the gravel surface. That should help with the fungus and with floating clay pellets and shifting plants. You could also reduce cycling frequency. For some quick feedback try some radish seeds...

As a nutrient test, you could have some maxicrop mixed up for a foliar feed and give some seedlings a daily spritz.

The nutrients are definitely testing low, but why? Will the fish take more feed? I'm not sure about koi, but rule of thumb I've been going by is feed at least twice a day as much as they will clean up in 20 minutes. My goldies grow far faster than most that are fed normally.
I'm guessing you are feeding two or three grams of feed per day, so getting a max of 1g of nitrates(?) per day, more likely .5g. It has been a few months since you started, so with no plants and no water changes you should have something like .5*90=45 grams in 130 gal=500 liters so 90ppm.
Could your tester be faulty? What are you using? Is 130gal your fish tank or total system volume?

I do a water change every 3 wks. Is that too often? I change 1/3 of the water...vacuum the bottom of the tank..(I use my shop vac)....am I stressing my fish? I use it on my outside pond as well and that is clear as a bell and My fish have gone from 2 inches to 8 inches...looking great....just goldies...

I did medicate my tank for popeye(removed my 6 plants at the time) did a big water change, added good bacteria....water was great the next day. crystal clear, and then went cloudier...lots of particles. maybe more good bacteria...I added an entire 8oz bottle...and part of another one. It's been a month since this scenario.

Iwill play with the flood cycle and try radishes, add seasol...how much for 130 gal tank? So where do the uploads go if I uploaded a jpg from paint that was a scribble drawing of my system? Admins?

Thanks everyone. I'll report later.

my test kit is the nitrate nitrite test kit that has the 3 bottles in it from the local pet store....

Stop doing water changes. Its not required unless there is something seriuosly wrong - do not treat the system like an aquarium.

How high are you flooding the beds?

When it floods, all the pellets are floating and the plant baskets as well. so I will open the valve on the sump, so not as much water goes up. Am I not giving the nutrients time to build?

heh,

You want the water to only get to 1" below the surface of the media. The nutrients will be there, your just killing the plants with water.

Not to mention that the plants have trouble with constantly shifting gravel.

Is it the Master test kit? Your nitrates should still be around 20ppm with tri-weekly 100% water changes, assuming your last change was 3 weeks ago, otherwise 10ppm for 10 days, etc.

+1: definitely stop water changes unless some real problem crops up!

don't get too obessed about rinsing off the roots either, just swish the seedling around in a bucket of water and take off what ever dirt comes off easily. anything else is damaging the roots for no gain. the little dirt that gets into the system will have no effect.