Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hmm, most of radish sprouts have burst. During cycling the beds were constant flooded. Maybe the abundance of water has caused them to split the root? Now all is autosiphon, I hope the radish will "repair" itself a bit...

Live and learn. And play.

And shout aloud on moonlit mountaintops.

as soon as the temp go's up at nurseries the increase the oxyen..

i made the nex idea for a system for in my ponds years ago, and i worked,
get a gardenhose, make a lot of holes in the gardenhose.
then buy a airpump, connect the two and put the gardenhose on the bothem off your fishtank. (i added some pieces off stone to the hose so the would stay on the bottom...

Well, adding more trout did not really have an effect on the water values ;

Amm: 0
Ni: 0, or just above zero sometimes
Na: 25 mg/l
Ph: 8

It did have a major effect on our well being, we are having a lot of fun examining and feeding with them.

Plant growth is visible day by day, water temps around 15 degrees, so slowly but surely. We seeded plenty in the beds one month ago, but not all seem to have been succesfull . There are still a lot of empty patches. We checked the sump, no seeds there either. We will wait a little bit, hope to see some higher temperature. If no sprouts come up next week, we will plant some "started upped" baby plants. I would like to know the cause though.

FYI.... Nitrates are represented as NO3.... not Na, which could be read as Sodium...

Nitrites are NO2....

OK,

I was going "fonetic"

Status up-date;

Temps are not moving a lot at the moment, all bit 17-ish. Summer has yet to start here. Some plants have taken off, some are still sprouts, a lot of seeds never replied in a plantwise fashion.




We have radish, which has produced massive leaves, only a few produced a genuine radish root. Something to do with a high nitrogen level perhaps? Trates are at 50 mg/l. Not a problem though, radish leaves make for an excellent soup.

The trout are still very happy and growing so fast. Below some vague pics.




I shot a kazillion pics but the timing was just not spot on. Anyway, feeding trout!

They are massive!

We took out the radish, ate it, found out we should have harvested a bit earlier, sew new seeds, and found them sprouting already this morning.

Its a bit warm for the trout, temp maxing at 24 degrees. We poured water on the cloth around the fishtank last evening and sat in our backyard, listening to the gurgles and water flowing. When it slowly went silent.

The pump had stopped .

The water we had poured over the cloth had gone around the lower curve of the IBC, and had dripped under the tank straight into the sockets of the extention cord. Luckily we noticed it as it happened.

So we took a relieved sigh, mounted a different extension cord and all was well again. Another complete disaster nipped in the bud.

First little pumpkin fruit has been spotted!

The plants are missing something, which I did not expect. The trout are fed with proper aquaculture feed, yet the green guys are apparently not getting all their needs fulfilled.





Amm: 0
NO2: 0
NO3: 50 mg/l

Ph 7.5, started out as 8.

Temp is around 20 degrees C.

I find it difficult to determine what they are missing, best guess is Mg deficiency .

If anyone has some info regarding these symptoms, I would be happy to learn...

that looks like iron deficiency mate, get some cheleted iron supplement from a garden store, crush it to powder form if its in pellet form

I didn't see your earlier posts about having troubles starting seeds. Your water temps are still to low for seeds to start well. The best way to handle this is with some type of propagation system to get your starter plants which can be transferred into the system. When your water temps rise later on you will be able to start seeds directly in the system.

I use a seedling tray and heat mat for my starts but Steve S. designed and made a nice little blue barrel propagator. Just remember you need a way to keep the propagation system warm so the seedlings will get off to a good start.

Even as transplants basil and peppers will probably not do well in your system until the temp gets higher. Peppers seem to be OK later in the year once they are established but don't like the cold as they are getting started.

Hope this helps.

Hey, your system is looking great.
Where did you get the iron you talked about a few posts back? i'm having trouble finding it.

The plants are indeed missing something. I have the same problem.
My system is 1,5 year old, I'm guessing water temperature is the problem in my system.
I'm struggling to get the temp high enough. I'm adding a sump and will put in a water heater by pumping the water through 50m of black pipe, laid out in the sun.

Another problem could be pH.
Having the right pH allows the plant to take up the nutrients better.
Check out this thread:
http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=3526

Ok, thanks for the tips. I added some more iron solution today, chelated iron in powder form is hard to find here. Here is a pic of the bottle for reference;



If this is what the plants are lacking, I should see some improvement the next week.

Today the temp is sitting at 16 degrees, which is not helping the growth. And it's summer...
I was thinking to make heated growbeds(or FT) by rocket mass heater for winter time. As well as putting a greenhouse around the beds. But I need them already!
It was only a couple of days ago that I was worried about temps being too high for the trout. Taking care of the system all newbie-like is proving to be a bit of an emotional roller-coaster .

In search of something that took bites out of our radish leaves(my first time love), we flooded the bed to see what would come up. After having remove one panicked beetle we noticed a few very small insects, jumping. And we suddenly saw that there were with more than a few.

Thrips! Lots of them!

Well, the excitement began after a google search to determine them, we off course did not have a clue what they were at first hand.

We retaliated the un-invited take-over of the growbeds by powdering lavadust through a tea-egg all over the media and plants. That'll teach them! Well maybe.

With thanks to dutchnewbie for the lavadust tip, I should add.