Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Surprised to see a Cannabis post on an aquaponic forum!! I have been involved in the Cannabis industry for 4 years now in northern California, The home of Chronic. If i was you i would not waste my time with Aquaponic Cannabis because your yields are going to be really low in comparison to just a hydroponic grow. If you want nice big dense nugs you are going to need higher levels of potassium and phosphorus of which to my knowledge fish waste does not have.

I think that it is also important to state that hydroponic growers don't use any more chemicals then that of soil growers. Hydroponic nutrients are simply in a form in which the plant can utilize the nutrients immediately. Organic nutrients on the other hand are not readily available for the plant to use because they have to be broken down in the Rhizosphere. Once the organic nutrients have been broken down they become the same as "hydro" nutrients.

The plants look nice but i bet once they dried those buds shrank quite a bit.

... Finally!... someone that knows what they're talking about!

I am yet to see yields with LEDs that can come anywhere close to a 1000 HPS. I am sure that you can get some chronic buds but i will put money down that they will be small and or fluffy. Honestly if i was growing just for personal i would use CFLs, the bud is small but it will be super triched out.

I honeslty think the shit would be to do outdoor hydroponic with really good genetics. Let me rephrase that. Genetics are the most important part.

There's a lot of evidence in the hydroponics industry that would suggest otherwise.... although it might not be directly related to marijuana, which might benefit from the heat output of HPS lights...

LED's have come a long way in the last few years and you can get comparable results from them, at about half the wattage of HID, when growing leafy greens and most veggies.

On some veggies they still aren't quite there, good results are only achieved when you get close to, or are at watt for watt with HID... so no benefit and much more cost.

They definitely aren't there yet with the wacky tobaccy, they are getting there rapidly, but not quite. I know of a couple of people that are trialling the latest generation LED chips and they are getting close to the same weight at a watt for watt comparison, bud the buds are lighter and fluffier... and they cost 3 to 4 times as much as HID to cover the same area.

What does HPS stand for

High Pressure Sodium? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-vapor_lamp

Correct arbe...

Was just having a conversation about this with my local hydro shop last week when I brought my little 2' 80w home built LED in. Pretty much blinded everyone when it hit 100% output - despite the warning, i.e. "Don't look directly into the trap."

Apparently, the best producing light, at the moment, is a combination of HPS and LED. I've been approached about making a few retrofits for commercial hood units that aren't already equipped with LEDs for supplemental light. I'm testing my LED exclusively on some new tomato cuttings to see what they'll do.

If you've got the electrical/mechanical ability, and want to play with LEDs to see how they'll work, build your own. It's not rocket surgery. Cost me all of $200 for the parts and now that I know what components are used, I can source about half of them cheaper.

He got 170 grams, 'Daybreaker' – (Chem D x Joseph OG), and that was with no added nuts, only Biozome powder added to the growing medium - for extra micro bacteria build.

Your average hydroponic setup, 1m2 tent uses nuts for 2-300$ per harvest. Aquaponics, 30$ for fishfood, tops ? This is with goldfish, if you go a little bigger, and add fish that you can eventually eat and breed. You actually save money.

Sure you can have bigger yield and more percent thc / cbd, but you are spending much more money.

I am positive that with more research and tinkering with AP, it will reach HP in sense of yield and potency.

Any research done on fish feed contra what kind of nutrients / minerals / trace elements the waste would contain ?



Just a couple that springs to mind:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSlVMC1Jvec

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iocHhR5stmk&feature=c4-overview&list=UUxvXihaay3ZE_f5nA_vQC6w
"for anybody that was wondering, I took the 3 nicest led plants and the 3 nicest hps plants. After 7 days drying there was 23.75 oz from the led's and 26.95 oz from the hps plants.Only a 3 oz difference,considering the led's are covering twice the area with only 400 more watts im pretty impressed with them."


And of course the world record yield for one cannabis plant under artificial light source:
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2012/6/prweb9580672.htm

The aquaponics where they remove huge amounts of solids will likely be too high in nitrates and not enough of the phosphorus, potassium or other trace elements. However, people who know how to do hydro organic (using organic nutrient sources and letting a bio-filter and other things mineralize to plant usable form) can probably manage to do that with fish in the tank too if they are so inclined.

Is it worth it? I have no idea, I'm not experimenting there at this point in time, my attention span is already short enough I don't need to artificially reduce it. It also isn't legal in my state AND even if it were, it isn't fully legal in this country. Even in states where it is "legal" the feds can still decide they are gonna come bust you. I'm not interested in taking that risk.

And as noted, there is a huge amount of science and research that would need to be done to even decide what genetic strain of cannabis might be worth while or appropriate to growing in aquaponics and it would probably require some specialized system design to allow for appropriate mineralization and supplements to be added to get premium growth and promote the particular chemicals or compounds that are being targeted for a particular medication.

Some of the uses of medicinal cannabis have little or nothing to do with the compounds that make people high.

Oh well.

WHAT???... absolute B.S... either you're making figures up to suit your argument, or you're using the most expensive nutrients on the planet!

I've owned a Hydro store for 13 years and been involved in the hydro industry for 20... and I can tell you that for a 1sqm grow room (which just happens to be the most popular room we sell) you wouldn't even get close to using $100 worth of nutrients per 9-10 week cycle... and that's if you're buying them in 2Ltr sets... if you bought bulk, which most long term growers do, you can do it for well under $50 per grow.

As far as aquaponics powering the growth in a cannabis grow room, I've had customers try it, it looks fine during the growth period, but very early on into the flowering period they run into deficiency issues with Potassium, Phosphorus and Magnesium... and other trace elements we suspect, but were never able to completely diagnose due to multiple deficiencies showing up at the same time. Even adding these main three elements separately and foliar feeding with a trace element solution, they still don't yield anywhere close to what you get out of a hydroponic system.

As far as LED's v's HID, I've had a number of larger scale growers run experiments with LED's, including Hydro Grow's 3w systems... watt for watt the yield was similar, but the final product wasn't as dense... not an issue for those growing for personal use, but no matter what they say very few cannabis growers are really growing purely for personal consumption. When combined with some supplementary HID lighting the density improved. But when you're paying around 4x times more for LED's per square metre, they're just not a viable option yet, except for those growing purely for Percy. If they were viable the larger scale growers would be all over them by now... but they're not!

For most veggies, especially leafy greens, the Hydro Grow 3w systems are providing excellent results... but then we get back to the cost of initial outlay... up to 4x that of HID.

Might be true for pot growers Yabbies...

But it's not true for commercial hydroponic growers... many of whom have employed supplementary lighting for years... and many of whom are investing/retro-fitting to LED's...

Several have done side by side trials of various lights... even total dark room trials... and the new LED's are beating the rest.. for growth/yield... hands down...

And the new strip batten LED's aren't expensive at all these days...

Sounds like the solution would be to use AP water in a wicking bed set up. Then when heads start to form, more nutrients can be added to ensure healthy and strong development. After all, in a WB the water isn't going back to the FT so no danger to the fish.

Yep!... but the thread is about pot growers Rupe...

...and I did say:From what I've read lately about commercial veggie growers using LED's, they are able to use LED's exclusively on leafy greens, herbs etc, even in entirely enclosed indoor growing environments, but for fruiting plants most are still supplementing with HID or sunlight. I did recently read about one large scale commercial set-up that claimed they were successfully growing tomatoes exclusively with LED's... but when I read through the article and saw the pics... it was in a glasshouse???... so mother nature was picking up the slack.

...and the huge, indoor commercial veggie growing (only leafy greens from the reports I saw) operation in the US that's been all over the TV and interweb growing veggies with LED's exclusively... it's gone broke and closed down.

Did you get a reason why it went broke? It would only reflect on LED's if they spent too much on them or the product was inferior and they couldn't sell it. Many such ventures in AP go belly-up for reasons not to do with growing fish and plants.