Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Do your Silver Perch do this..... sunbake???... These fish were from up the Nth Coast of NSW.... I'm sure they like the warm sun....

As soon as I take the cover off... there they are.... mind you if I leave the cover off at night, and turn the outside light on... they come looking as well ...

Maybe where they were, they got fed when the cover came off the tank? Habit seems to be a big part of fish behavour.

As long as I feed my fish at the same spot every day, they take twice as much food.

Hi RupertofOZ,

I've been reading about your Hydro NFT setup and wanted to ask a few questions if you don't mind.

I want to grow my lettuce in a small NFT 90mm storm pipe system and are not sure how to set it up. I'm going to be using fish tank water to feed the lettuce.

The NFT channels do they need to have gravel in them or is the amount of gravel in the NFT pot enough to convert fish water into plant food?

The NTF channels should they always have a small amount of water in them?

thanks and God bless froggo

NFT, by definition... is nutrient film technique.... i.e a constant supply of a thin film of nutrient water...

Needs/benefits from being oxygenated... and must be pre-filtered, particularly with AP to remove solids....

The way I've been using it so far... is to use the AP water as the base and supplement it with hydro nutrients....

The new tray will use the AP water and just be supplemented with the normal AP supplements such as chelated iron, maxicrop etc.... depending on pH I might add some ecorose (potassium bicarbonate)....

However traditional hydro prefers a pH of 6.5.... so the ecorose might not work... and indeed (depending on the AP water).... I may have to adjust the pH with hydrochloric or phosphoric acid...

Lettuce doesn't have a high potassium demand Froggo... so the addition of maxicrop or seasol might be sufficient in itself...

I wouldn't use gravel in the pipes, although some have done so with varying degrees of success.... I'd just use net pots... directly with seed plugs, or a vermiculite/perlite mix... or straight perlite, or even clay balls... could try other media like rockwool floc of coco-fibres...

Either way, the media in the pots should provide some conversion/supply of nitrates.... but I think most will have already been converted/available by the growbed pre-filtration and/or suspension of nitrates in your system anyway...

Monya has been trialling NFT channels down on the fish farm... perhaps he could outline how he's doing it.... he seems happy enough with growth rates...

Planted out the second hydro tray today.... 200 greenoak lettuce...

those seedlings look magnificent rupert.

we are happy with the growth rates in our nft. Water goes thru the biofilters then thru a mesh filter which screens to 120 microns. I think a slightly lower micron size would be better for cleaner channels.

All we are adding is iron to keep it at about 1 ppm. We should trial using a bit of seasol I suppose. Generally lettuces in our channels are taking 4 weeks to go from seedlings smaller than rupes to somewhere between 50 and 90 grams. Our holes are a lot closer together. After their first 2 weeks, we seperate and plant new seedlings inbetween to allow them room to grow out. that green oak is a winner.

I still dont know why you had so much trouble with the council rupe

Seasol is great Are you guys sort of commercial on the growing side monya?

getting there OBO, just can't grow enough to meet the demand.

Need at least 1000-1200 holes Monya .... 200 lettuce/week.... and that's just a hobby....

That's why I wanted 6 tables OBO .... plenty of room left in the backyard... councils are strange...

yeah, we have 1200 holes at the moment... the 3rd lot of 600 is ready to be built, just a few other things taking up the space at the moment

Council is very strange. Put in a DA for a toilet in the shop, not for the public. They gave us the okay and the DA is good for 5years. But they turned up wanting to see some work started in the next 2 weeks. They really care about us having a toilet that they will withdraw the DA or fine us unless the work gets rushed through.

Rupe - you grew the seedling yourself yeh - in what medium?

Geez I thought they were lings

I wish VB... nah, haven't got the time at the moment... picked them up from my hydro supplier...

Believe they now use "maidenwell" as the grow media....

I've got all the seedling and propagation trays, misters and things... can't find my vacumn seeder though ....

And haven't got the room... or more particularly haven't got around to setting up a nursery area.... a job for later...