Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hello all! I just found this website and figured I would post some images and some questions about my system.

It consists of four tubs that are filled with water every 3 hours then drain; the drain is relatively quick so the water isn't sitting in there very long. The gravel and hydroton that I have in there soaks up the water and then provides it for the plants. The aquarium is filled with feeder guppies, roughly about 50 of them, they muck up the water quite nicely.

My problem is, I've had this system running now for 4-5 months and my growth is non-existent. In fact I had a strawberry plant in the first tub and it died so I replaced it with a tomato, but its growth is slow in comparison to the plants in my backyard, in dirt, which are already as tall as me!

Everything is stagnant, and looks sickly. Any suggestions? Ideas? Help?

hi Tiznor, firstly you need to turn your water over more often.
Also, how many watts are your lights? everytime i have grown under lights indoors i have used banks of flouro's to achieve decent growth and had to keep the lights just above the plants.



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I was once young and stupid, i'm not so young now

What are the water test results, especially pH? If the pH is too high, plants stop absorbing nutrients.

In AP, you need to make a wonderful environment for the fish (clean, aerated water), the plants (nutrients) AND the bacteria who do all the "work". As Julia mentions, increase the pumping frequency and/or duration to allow the bacteria the access and time to work, and they'll be happy.

What feed are you adding for the fish? Not all fish feeds contain minerals and nutrients required by plants, so a good quality AP feed will help. You could also supplement the feeding regime with some seaweed extract, but if the plants look sickly they are probably lacking iron too, so look for a product like "Maxicrop+iron". Add a small dose once per week to start with and if there is no improvement seen after a week, increase the dosage slightly.

I've never intensively grown plants indoors, but my brother used to grow tomatoes and lettuces indoors and I noticed he had (lots of) lights above each plant? His were height adjustable so they could be raised as the plant grew and lowered when new plants added. I'd start with the pumping and feed first before making wholesale changes and drilling holes in the ceiling to hang more lights!


Scott

I'm only relatively noobish myself, but the first two things that jumped out to me were water turn over and lights, as well.

I'm only just getting my system started, so trying a few different things, but it has been suggested that either a 15on/45off flood n' drain cycle, or going with a constant flow are very effective methods. Maybe you could try one of these too.

My thing has always been aquariums and aquascaping and I can tell you that to grow plants, you will need a lot more light. It looks to me that you have a couple of off the shelf fluro's here...I'd be looking for two light fittings of 2x36W (3ft) T5, at the very least, possibly in 6500 to 10,000K range. If you're not sure, just google those terms. You can get some very cost effective light units on line from Dr's Foster and Smith among others. And if you have the bucks, go LED or Metal halide!

Agree also that your fish and system will benifit from more oxygen in the fishtank. Not only will the fish be happier, but this oxygen will be transported to the plant roots, helping them to grow.

Well, I think this weekend I'm going to be moving the system outside. As the amount of lights it sounds like its going to need is going to be a bit costly. I just got done setting the pump to kick on for 15 every 45 minutes. Lets see if that does any improvements, and I was just feeding them normal cheap gold fish food, but I do believe I might go with something a bit more expensive with iron to see if that helps. Thanks guys for the advise thus far, I will keep everyone up to date on how it works out and what is going on with the system once I move it outside.

As for PH, I will buy a kit tonight and post the results.

What do you mean turn over the water? Changing it? If so, how often? I was considering a reserve tank to maintain balance in the tank which has the guppies.

turn over = pump big enough that it will move the volume of the tank water in the 15 mins that it is on, so if you have a 100 liter tank and the pump is on for 15mins you will need a 400 lph pump

As GBH said, turnover is the amount of times the water passes through your grow beds... In aquarium terms, you basically want to pump as much water through your filter system per given time frame, to keep the water pure and the benificial bacteria fed with oxygen and nutrients. Since AP uses the grow beds as the filtration, you must keep the water flowing, or turning over, through these on a very regular basis. Once an hour is usually sufficient, but others will just let the water flow consatntly through the system.

With the way you are running the system now, your water is spending a lot of time sitting stagnant, doing nothing. There is no oxygen or nutrient flowing into the system and the water is not being purified or filtered properly. This is why you are getting little growth and bad smells. You need to increase the frequency of turnover.

And just with the lights. Keep looking. There are plenty of cheap light fittings avaiable that will work perfectly. You don't have to spend heaps of money...

since you are moving it outside, make sure you keep the fishtank covered or in complete shade. Otherwise you wont be able to see through the algae in a very short time.
Also turn the pump on 100% for a month at least and see how things improve.

Could we have a closer look at your siphon/drain setup?