Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

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.

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.

Or.. the cost of electricity... was more than the return from the plants...

Eventually I'm sure we will see more LED technology starting to replace the HID lighting but there are still bleeding edge hurdles that are taking out some of the operations that are going there.

Now you are right when you say it probably isn't the LED's responsible for the business failing.

What I expect more likely is, the business plan may not have been as well thought out as the founders hoped. Costs of electricity AND underestimating the amount of lighting required to get really good growth indoors I expect could easily play into this sort of thing though. (I have seen it happen several times where people learn about aquaponics and get really excited about it being the way to save the world and they jump off the deep end before really learning all that much about the fine details. Aquaponics is so incredibly great and simple in theory and for backyard use even pretty simple in practice but as soon as people try to turn it into a business they often discover the Devil in the Details. And I will point out that much of that may only be marginally related to aquaponics.)

I saw on FB they said they were around 240umol. But when actually tested on the par meter it puts out 270umol@6" and 190@12".

It's been about 19 days since I split the plants under the (2) 3500K and (2) 5000K T5HO's vs. the new Apache LED T8 tubes. Looks like the T5HO's are winning in at least the height department.

T5 = 231w use
T8 LED = 78 use

When I was at the max yield show...
8 bulb T5 was putting out 650umol@6" using 432w(54w*8)
And a 6 bulb apache tube custom fixture did 545umol@6" using 106w (actual measured using watt meter.)

I've used mosquito dunks in aquaponics with no harm to my channel catfish. Challenge is to really effectively drench the media and root mass with the BT from the mosquito dunks you probably have to pulverize it a bit. I haven't personally found a good way to do this.

There is a BT product in liquid form "Gnatrol" for use against fungus gnats but I have only been able to find it in a 5 gallon bucket that costs well over $300 USD here.

mosquito dunks should work well, i have used them before.

Honestly I believe that cannabis is the only plant in which it makes sense to use a HPS because cannabis is the only plant in which the return is great enough to make a profit of it. If i was growing anything else it would be t5's all day or just grow outside.

P.s if you are in the US, most energy companies will give a discounted rate if you make less then a certain amount which depeneds on location and how many people are living in the house and the total house income. But if you qualify then you get like 70% off your electric bill.

Peoples, take a look at Hypoaspis mites. Just had the same issue in my basement system with my tomatoes. $50 w/overnight shipping here in the US. Biobest is Belgium based so maybe a little less costly for you...