Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Well It got a lot worse than that cause I had a meter that was not for aquarium use and I made it nearly to 012 not 003. Killed all the fish and most of the plants. It is now recovered but the lettuce was from before.

I have another question.. My fish tank is a gray plastic stock tank. The bio slime made it turn to an almost black color for a long time. The water would not clear up so I changed my pump cycle to 30 on 15 off and so on from 15 on and off as I have and indexing valve. The water cleared up and we could see the fish finally. In the last few days the catfish have eaten the bio slime off the sides and bottom of the tank. It went cloudy again so I did not feed for a couple of times yesterday and now it is clear again. That would seem strange as I did not think that Channel Cats would clean the tank sides and bottom so well. I did not think they were doing it because when I got in the tank to work on the pumps it was thick and slick. Where my feet slipped on the bottom the slime was cleaned off so it was not stuck really hard then. I had to change out my pump a couple of weeks ago. I have not yet added worms to the bed but will as soon as they arrive. I am going to order some today.

My water tests have changed a bit as the rates have come up from mostly being 5 to between 40 and 80 now. I could never get it that high before. Plants are looking better than ever also.

am 0.25 or less
rites 0.0
ph 7.8
temp 80oF or 27oC

Temps is probably low due to rain yesterday.

Today I really searched my tomato plants to find out what is eating them. I found some worms or caterpillars on the plants and a couple of Great big green Cut worms or Tomato Worms. I did not get a picture of the Big Green ones but I got some pictures of the other worms that I found on the plants. I wonder if they are the ones that grow up to be the Big Green ones. All the worms when to fish food. HEHEHEHEHHEH. That will show em I mean business. Get OUT OF MY GARDEN YOU BUGGS..

'They really been chewing up my plants see below...............

Hey

you may want to get some BT Bacillus thuringiensis/ Dipel since its not a chemical its ok for AP

JT

While in town today I went by the store that carries Thruicide and got my bottle. When I got home my order for Maxicrop with iron was in the mail box. Was too late to use it tonight so I will do it in the morning. Hope they work quick. I hate catapillars. They are too destructive on my plnatys

Hey Don....if you have the grubs that actually bore into the tomatoes, these are prolly heliothis moth, and an easy way to reduce their presence is put a low wattage light bulb over your fishtank and leave on all nite, will also attract corn borer and a few other moths.

Exactly how are you using Maxicrop. It says use 1 teaspoon to a gallon of water and water the plants basicly, so are you just putting in a teaspoon of Maxicrop in the fish tank or are you mixing it in a gallon of water and then dumping it in or what?

Thanks for the help..........

Hi Bushy A light to feed the fish butterflies at night, OK. I like that, but my cousin had a bug killer over his tank for a while and the problem he had was after the fish ate the bugs they left the legs wings and shells in the bottom of the tank and that started plugging up the supply line end caps so bad he had to give it up. Now he only has night lite out there to tell if the power is still on.

I would think that the supply line end caps have a grid that is too small to let the legs wings etc through. I had a really fine mesh on my slo and it kept blocking so I swapped it for a length of pipe with wider, about 5mm, slits cut in it. This stops the fish but lets most solid stuff through. Could work. I am also keen to get going with a nightlight. I have recently given up on roadkill processing as I really got grossed out by the whole thing. So now I am looking to supplement with insects in a less smelly form.

My end caps are 3/8" holes but his are between 1/2" and 3/4" depending where they are in the line. My pump will pass 1/2" solids so lots of stuff can get through and plug my caps in each bed.

yeah, i had a problem with holes in caps clogging..ended up just putting a reducer on the outlets and dumping the water in a bit faster
regarding the maxicrop, a cap full was fine for 110gal of gb, and stained the water pretty brown for a couple days...

I dont have CHIFT PIST. I have pump in FT. See pic above and see the supply line and end caps.

I dissolved some MaxiCrop in water and poured it in the tank and it did stain the water.

I am going to do the Thuricide in a bit. Found my sprayer and cleaned it up yesterday.

Man that Thuricide really works. I sprayed it on the leaves of my AP Garden and now I cant find any of them rotten bugs any more. I mixed up a gallon of the spray so I sprayed the left overs on my dirt garden to get rid of the excess bugs there and it reduced them a lot.

I think my MaxiCrop works wonders also cause the plants look much better color wise. I think it got rid of the big old tomato worms also.

We ate the first tomato out of the garden also. Tasted great. Like I remember they used to taste when I was a child eating them out of Grandpa's garden.

HI JerryandJulie I just got a response from the indexing valve guy. He says that the valve is having problems with the 2 outlet plate and to put in the three and let the third one dump back to the Fish Tank. They are working on the problem and may have a fix later. I'm thinking that the three hole plate is not going to fix my valve as it just does not move the plate up and down when the pump starts and stops. The water hammer moves the pipes so I am sure the flow should have no problem moving the plate. It just does not move when the pump shuts off to advance to the next position. When it gets stuck I can manually push the stem to get it to cycle. That happens every once in a while.
Yesterday I made it cycle a dozen times before it felt loose inside again. When I take it apart there is nothing in the valve to make it stick. Only once did I find anything and that was the day I took pictures when I took it apart. I found a wood chip in the valve that day.

Hay I might try the 3 cam and send the extra one back to ft, I only have 2,4 and six. Going to the would cut my filtering in half. All it amounts to is it does not work. Jerry

Don, email me... and I'll troubleshoot your problem.... not sure which distributor you got the valve and/or information from.... but the subsequent advice is just not correct... or not to my knowledge anyway...

I'm assuming when they said... "the 2 outlet plate"... they meant the #2 camset...

To my knowledge there is no known problem with that camset... and no "fix" (that I know of) being worked on...

I will contact the manufacturer and confirm...

I have some questions regarding your pump size and flow rates... please email me...