Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Heres the mockup of mine bottom and old keg barrel a ss tank of a solar hot water top a colonder[ss bowl with lots of holes ] to make rain to fall and hopfully cool whole lot is about 6 ft tall

Kuda,

I hope they hold out for the Melbourne BBQ??
Cooling towers require evaporation to work and a stack load of airflow, on a hot humid day it may struggle a bit, may be an evap cooler pad integrated into FF's cooling tower will increase the surface area therefore increasing the evaporating effect

I have a room ac unit that I began converting into a beer cooler for a friend who pulled the plug on the idea. at that stage I had it cooling water to 2 degrees, and all I did was chop out the evap, dumped it into an eski with a water pump. I'm thinking about adding it to my system next year to extend the trout season from 9 months to say 10 or 11 months.
I guess the only downfall is it if i loose power there goes my trout
I think shade works very well.
goodluck.

Water temp this morning sub 21!
about 20 minutes ago 22.
let's hope for what the morning may bring.

What's up with my carrots?

more

And many of my radish, whilst tasting good, are soft, and hollow.

Hey KP do you add anything to your system water?
They look a bit crook...Like the roots have decided not to go straight down

I add salt, and have recently added seasol

A hint for the twisted on, is that I planted some half dozen carrot tops.
One carrot top grew four carrot like appendages, all others have gone spastic.
I think the rotten carrot was a whole baby carrot I planted that was not cooked that night.
Please note NONE of these carrots pictured were grown from seed.

Thanks for that...
Phew I was starting to get worried

Although we haven't tried growing radishes in our AP system, we do grow them in the dirt gardens. Over winter when we rely only on rain to water the vege-beds we often have this problem, whereas in summer when we use the reticulation, we don't have any hollow radishes.

Spongy, hollow radishes are caused by irregular watering, or irregular access to water. Radishes will grow under a variety of conditions, but once put into a condition, that condition should be maintained. If you plant them in wet soil, the soil must be kept wet; if you put them in dry soil, the soil must be kept relatively dry. Radishes hate being wet, dry, wet, dry etc. How wet is "wet" and how dry is "dry"? I don't know. Allegedly, the key is not to let the moisture of the soil change too much. (How much is too much?)

Does this preclude growing radishes in flood & drain AP? I am going to guess that some people have/do grow them successfully. I wouldn't think the timing would have that much effect, but your photo seems to prove otherwise? I would probably try planting them again in a deeper bed and/or with shallower flood; I guess a wicking / NFT system might have better results? Maybe a different variety?


Sorry I couldn't be of more help.


Scott

I grew heaps of radishes, and currently grow heaps of (awesome) carrots, they both grow fine in AP normally. Dunno whats wrong with yours Kuda

Re radishes: apparently too much heat can cause them to go hollow and woody, so it might just be the onset of hot weather. The other cause is irregular watering, but AP plants wouldn't suffer from that....unless you have cut back on pumping to save the trout?

No, no change... only some are like this.
I think it's the radish that grew 'up' and not 'down' some stick out of the GB by 2 inches.

Water temps are sub 21 again.
and my trout are EATING!!! jumping at the surface!!!!! Yay

What temp did they go off their feed Kuda??

My tanks been sitting 20-22... and I'm still feeding twice a day...