Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Yep the beans totally overshot everything we were eating green beans daily till we got sick of them and I canned up two whole caner loads of them as well as giving lots away. We did get some patty pan squash from the beds but the corn and butternut didn't do much at all.

I've not had much luck here with corn (kinda sad since my Dad used to grow some great sweet corn but we did live in a temperate climate then) and we probably won't put much effort into it in the future since we get really good local sweet corn in season, it doesn't seem worth the effort to grow it when it doesn't seem to want to for us.

I've got yardlong beans growing now and they seem to do well with the heat/humidity. Perhaps I'll have to try a guild with bananas, beans and squash. Oh wait, I guess I kinda got that going already in the back in a few spots.

Sounds like you need a heat loving type of sweet corn. I grew some this year in soil and in AP.

Hey Dandi... can you attach your photos to your posts...

Otherwise nobody can see them when you, or your site is offline...

That'd be his animated "signature" image. (Others came thru OK in his own system post. I would know, I am blocked from most offline photo hosting sites like P'Bucket)

/hijack

Now I know I've already mentioned this but it struck me again today when I ran some water tests.

My system now has reasonably low nitrates!!!!!! The nitrate level tonight when I checked was only 10 ppm.

For like the first two years of my system, the nitrates were generally quite high, like to the point that I would have to dilute the sample to get something readable.

But now the system seems to have matured to the point that even with the pH between 7.2 and 7.6, the plants are still able to thrive and use the nutrients.

I think perhaps the addition of the bamboo screen as well as the use of indexing valves to allow the plants better dry time while still having constant flow and filtration has improved the system too.

Just so everyone knows, this system that started in March 2008 has never had the beds cleaned out. Even when I replaced beds and moved gravel from one place to another, it did not get re-washed. I made a point of leaving all the goodness in there.

At the moment there are 88 catfish fish of varying sizes in my big system (there are another 12 in the tank on the front porch but tonight that tank is running as it's own system with just the towers for filtration.) Anyway, those 88 fish are all different sizes from 6-7 inch small fingerlings all the way up to a few monsters that could probably be approaching 7-8 pounds.

How to get good growth in a high pH system, well so long as the pH isn't too high, 7.6 is what I was dealing with. Just have lots of patients. Two years seems to have made a big difference in my system. We got some great tomatoes this past spring and the Okra (which used to have lots of problems with Iron lock out) is doing too well this year.

Today I have gotten a culture of Gammarus (some people call them water fleas though there are many different types of animals that people call water fleas) they eat detritus and I've added some into the water chestnut bins. We will see what they do in the system. I've heard some people complain about these creatures actually keeping their filter pads too clean so that the filter pads couldn't stop the finer particles from going right back out into the system. I thought that would actually be a beneficial thing for us.

TC, Do you think that over the 2 yrs the extra iron/seasol/supplements that you've added have finally made a difference? Would you suggest to keep adding iron to a system with higher pH? I guess naively I would think that a pH around 7 wouldn't really matter that much to plants.

If plants are still showing signs of Iron deficiency, then add Iron. I only add the iron when I notice signs of need on the new leaves. And I add the seaweed extract even less often. OBO noticed that after a certain amount of time, he didn't need to add supplements anymore on his home system.

Yes, it does have an effect. How much will depend on the system, the source water, the media, the fish food, and the particular plants. My source water is low in iron and high in calcium carbonate so I might need to keep using the chelated iron to my big system with the shells but probably not as often or as much as I did in the beginning.

In the newer system that I started without shells, I've only added iron once and the plants seem fine, the pH in the 300 gallon system is between 6.5 and 6.8 just by adding some chicken grit limestone chunks.

And how bout a Flower Tower picture

them flower towers be lookin' mighty purty...

Other than one papaya keeling over in a constantly flooded bed, the big system has been doing well with little attention.

Been supplementing the fish feed a bit with BSF larva but the chickens and ducks are very into the larva so most of them go to the birds.

So I ran some extra tests today.

Big system water coming out of the fish tank (and through the big long pipe where I suspect there may be some extra mineralization going on) I got

pH 7.2
AM .25
Rite .25
Rate 40+ (I find anything above 40 to be basically unreadable.)

So, since I'm not used to seeing much ammonia or nitrite in the big system (but there are a lot of fish eating big time with the water this warm and the cook has been feeding them extra BSF larva)

Anyway, I decided to run some extra tests to see what it would show, I took samples from different places in the system.

Sump (mix of all filtered water being sent back up to fish tank.)
AM 0
Rite .25

Regular Grow bed outlet
AM 0
Rite .25

Constantly flooded bed outlet
AM 0
Rite 0

Double filtered water coming back from the bamboo barrels
AM 0
Rite 0

I am actually pleased that the constantly flooded beds are showing 0 nitrite because I might have been concerned for annoxic regions perhaps converting nitrate back to nitrite before outgassing it but apparently if that is happening anywhere, it isn't in my constantly flooded beds.

It doesn't really surprise me that the water coming out of the fish tank would have readable ammonia as I've seen this before in a heavily loaded system. As long as it isn't a dangerous amount and that the water coming back into the fish tank is 0 ammonia I'm happy with that.

I am a bit concerned with the niggling nitrite levels because I like those to be below a trace but I'm not quite sure how to get rid of that trace without making major changes. NO BSF larva for the fishes today!!!!!! I guess they will just have to be happy with the normal daily ration.

Keeping in mind that I am probably pushing the stocking at the moment and we should probably try and eat a few more of the biggest fish soon. (Just gotta sort out how to catch the biggest ones without injuring or stressing the rest too much.)

How is all going with your pesky neighbours? Hope they are keeping their noses out of it!!!

Too hot here this time of year for pesky neighbors. They are either at their summer retirement location some where cooler or they are holed up in the air conditioning and not noticing what is going on about the place.

The real complaints always seem to show up in early spring after a hard freeze or two when the yards all look shabby and the foliage is died off and they can see through to whatever it is they want to complain about.

Right now in late summer, I've got too much growing for anyone to see through.

Hey TCL, how are you adding potassium and calcium traces to your plants? Buried in the GBs or can you just chuck them into the ST?