Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Lost a fish today. Found him floating when I went to feed them. He may have been the jumper, and so already stressed. Regardless, I did tests: 7.0, 0, 0, 0. Since I can't feed them any more than I am now, I pulled some of the cherry tomato plants. I still don't have any fruit of any kind. Basil is doing OK, tomatoes are flowering, zucchini is flowering. Zucchini also seems to have some powdery mildew. I think DDM had some sort of tea spray for that, I'll have to look it up.

I was out of town for the weekend, and came back to a very low water level and the fish flopping around. I ended up losing one. I've raised the pump up off the bottom of the tank, something I have been meaning to do for a while.

I'm losing about 20% of the water in the FT a day to transpiration and evaporation. Also the GB where the zucchini plant sits is now flooding over the gravel when the pump cycle is on. My guess is that the root mass is impeding the flow of water to the drain. I'm not quite sure what to do about it though. In the next few weeks I'm planning to add some worms, and maybe they will help. The surface is pretty well shaded so I'm not getting algae growth.

Still no fruit . The blossoms on the tomatoes and zucchini have not even opened yet, and most of the zucchini blossoms just end up falling off. We're most of the way through summer now, so I think I'm going to have to chalk up the 2 hours of direct light exposure to be a failure. Assuming I win my battle with the apartment leasing office, I'll stick to vegetative growth for my fall and winter garden.

20% of your FT water per day?! Wow! Seems excessive....are you sure you don't have a leak or overflow?

Worms won't help with roots, but sure will help with fish solids. They make an amazing difference in the puddling of water on gravel.

Lack of light is certainly one issue. Another might be potassium (I recall one of those Ps being important for fruit setting) or other nutrient. If you salt, you might get a bag of potassium chloride (sold as an alternative water softener) and toss in a bit of that in place of some of the sodium chloride. I've tossed in about two single handfuls into 800 gallons of system water. Guess I should hit the books and actually learn this stuff.... Too bad my mind seems as lossy as your system.

Yep, I'm sure I don't have any leaks. The percentage is so high because it's such a small system; the FT is only 5 gallons. I have some potassium bicarbonate, and I guess I should put some more in. I have to use a very small amount because it swings my pH a good bit.

Keep an eye on the bags of potassium chloride at the hardware store. When you see a broken bag spilling out ask an employee if you can have a handful.

Actually, you are in the US....I could mail you a pound or so if it is not available in small amts.

I'll take a look around. If I can't find any, I'll let you know. Thanks!

Forgot to add that I put in 5g of the potassium bicarb this morning.

Also I was looking at my MaxiCrop that I add about bi-weekly, and its NPK is listed as 0.1, 0, 1.0. So there is potassium in that.

Not sure what your humidity is but it does play a really big factor in both evaporation as well as the plants ability to respirate the water. Just prior to this little rainy spell I was adding 10 to 15 gallons per day to less than a 100 gallon system. If you have a plant jungle as I do right now you tend to use a lot of water! I thought sure I had a leak a few weeks ago but the ground was dusty underneith the system. I'm thinking of a way to install an auto fill that will work in chift pist, like a small day tank with a float fill valve that empties when sump tank gets too low, and refills the daytank.

Humidity here is generally pretty high. Today is 70%. The air usually feels sticky when you walk out the door .

I've thought about a top-up system, like you. For me it just doesn't make sense for such a small system.

When I have my own AP farm, I'll have large rainwater collection sites to top up with .

We had some mussels for dinner the other night, so I took a few, washed them, pounded them a little, and added the to the tank.

I figure they'll work like any other shell and slowly buffer the system and add to calcium availability.

I was pulling some more of the non-producing tomatoes today. I planted a few onion seeds and a garlic bulb.

I also found a little worm of some kind in the bed that floods.



Definitely not a composting worm! Any ideas what he might be?

And here's my little vid of one of the frogs that were visting:

Foiled by the edit button!

here are the links to the two videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpAELpRXbc4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGZZbt4Ufpw

I took readings today since I added 5g of Potassium Bicarb 5 days ago and the pH is still 7.0, everything else is 0.

Since the last reading, I've added mussel shells, taken out several tomato plants, and still everything is in balance. So that's good.

With only two hours of direct sun, I expect that has a big impact on the fruiting plants. tomatoes are also a tricky one, when it's too hot, they might not bloom or set any fruit but then as it cools off it can quickly get too cold for them. Squash and zucchini are hard ones in humid weather. I always have better luck with those in the spring, now in the late summer going into fall wet season the rain and caterpillars have been doing in most of that family of plants around my garden.

The maxicrop should be taking care of your potassium needs but if you are looking for potassium chloride, you can usually find it as Murate of Potash at Ace Hardware in the red and yellow bags (that is what I used before getting the maxicrop) Also, good sea salt can also help with potassium as well as most trace elements. As for the shells, you can probably get a bag of chicken grit at any feed store or tractor supply. Be sure to get the limestone or shell grit as the granite grit won't help any with pH.