Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Might not be thrips. Compare to springtails and see if this is what you have.

Springtail or thrips, in any case, it is sucking the juice out of my lettuce! A tiny bit. I will await the arrival of their natural predators.

In a Belgium university a research is on-going to verify the suitability of Jade Perch in aquaculture. Once they have established that it is, the species will hopefully become available here. The species has been baptised Omegabaars. It would make a very good summer season fish for a Dutch system in a green house.

In the article, which is in Dutch, they actually refer to Backyard Aquaponics. Apparently they have been visiting some systems in Australia.

The system is still lacking something, most probable candidate is still iron. Chelated iron is very difficult to find here, any thoughts on iron gluconate?

The water values have been very stable, and are as follows;

Amm: 0
NO2: 0
NO3: 50 mg/l
pH: 7 / 7.5

pH is slowly going down. Temperature is still between 15 / 17 degrees.

The trout behaviour has changed. They used to swim in the upper region of the tank attacking anything, even fingers of children ( )above the water. Now they stay more at the bottom, when feeding the race up towards the food and go down again.

You should be able to get Maxicrop seaweed extract.... look for the Maxicrop+Iron product...

First search shows no supplier/webshop for maxicrop here in Holland . No use shipping it in from the states I think.

How did I miss this thread/system.
You have done some fantastic work and the system is a real credit to you

Thanks!

We are still working on it, planning of strawberry nft and greenhouse construction is now the main focus point and spare time eater.

We have put some wooden cladding around the sump with two polycarbonate plates as a cover. It has made a giant leap in sound reduction, and it looks nice too. All materials second hand/for free.




We made some adjustments, increased the slots of the SLO a bit, as it was tending to clog. One of the siphons refused to kick in for no apparent reason. Fiddled with it and away it goes now again. A bit odd.

Ph has gone down to 7.0, iron deficiency seems to have been tackled, only thing now is the temp, watertemp of 17 degrees at the moment. We do not complain about the weather, but sometimes it sucks .

here is a link to the stuff i use hoeve
works well to replace the missing iron

here is a link to the stuff i use hoeve
works well to replace the missing iron
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Maxicrop-Seawee ... 580&sr=8-5

Thanks for the link. I looked around, but it seems not to be available here in the Netherlands. I am looking for a similar product, but the acuteness has passed.

I got my hands on some chelated iron from a neighbouring university professor working at the "bio-department". Some was added to the system some days ago, the new leafs do not show effects of a iron deficiency.

We actually are growing food, and are monitoring the condition of the produce very thoroughly.

Lol, many hands make light work, as they say Hoeve. Are they your children eagerly awaiting the produce?
Out of curiosity you mentioned tea-egg, what is it?

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You will be able to get the Maxicrop Seaweed + Iron from England. Do you or any one you know travel across to there.

A tea egg is just a small metal container to put the leafs in before dipping it in your cup .

And the kids, well, they ask for lettuce on their sandwich nowadays, to give an idea.


The dodgy siphon was at it again, so I did a tricksky;

I filled up the bed, pulled out the standpipe and let a long piece of string be sucked into the sump. On the end I tied a piece of cloth and pulled it up through the pipes. Although no dirt was on the cloth, the siphon is working again.

We had a very hot day yesterday, which was sufficient to raise the water temp from 18 to 22 degrees. Looking forward to the entire week of hot weather, slowly the concern of hot water temp bubbles up again. The suitable temp bandwidth is pretty small, 18 degrees or lower is less good for the plant growth, 24 degrees or higher is troubling for the trout.

It is time to cover up some bits and pieces. Luckily I am able to stand guard and harvest the trout in case of "temp overdose".

It's going to be very warm couple of days, we've done our best to extract as much heat as possible, as well as covering the GB's. The drain pipe and FT are covered in wet cloth. The water will evaporate and extract heat from the passing water inside. Water is fed from buckets through yet more pieces of wet cloth.





FT temp started from 21.5 degrees today, air temp should reach about 28-29 degrees. I hope our efforts are enough to keep the temp down enough for the fishies. If we do not succeed, the weather is perfect for BBQ-ing .

We all know already, but here is a couple of pics which show the difference in AP or non-Ap on a hot day. The non-AP plant was adequately watered.

Nice Hoeve.....

Hope you can keep the temps low enough for the trout. You're doing all the right things to keep it down to a minimum, only other thing you can do is to start freezing bottles of water... But not a great method for the long term.