Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Great to see the seedlings come through. They are so much better if you don't have to transplant them. Looks like you balls are quite wet, and water level high. I would recommend dropping the height of the water to a minimum of 25mm below the surface. Other wise you will start to get algea growing on them. Looks like that may have already started.

Thanks, Yeah I'm in 2 minds what to do with the water level, in the middle of the day the top clay pebbles dry right out, is this a problem for the seedlings? How bad is it to have algae in the grow bed?

You want the very surface of the media to STAY dry. Most plants don't like to have water around their stems and flooding over the gravel is not good. The clay media tends to wick water up quite well so you want to drop the flood height so that the moisture just barely gets up close enough to the surface to let the seeds germinate. Many people will actually top water when trying to start new seeds.

Thanks for your help, I have another standpipe that is 10mm shorter and I will swap them over tonight. With the top watering, I watered the seeds in when I sowed them, If I drop the water level do I need to water them say daily?

Yea you might need to water daily till the seedlings seem to be big enough to reach the lower water level. Of course you might just leave the taller stand pipe in until most of the seedling seem to be big enough to reach water and then swap it over.

I have just watered mine each day. The roots shoot down to the moisture very quickly.

Thanks guys, I will water each day as suggested.

As of this morning day 3 there are about 10 seedlings that have sprouted in the grow bed. I didn't water them this morning as the clay pebbles were still quite moist, this is because the auto siphon is taking a long time to start since I lowered the standpipe yesterday. This is probably a blessing until the seedling roots reach the water. Auto siphons can be finicky things at times.

Week 4, 7 days since planting seeds in grow bed

The seedlings are doing well, so far 18 have sprouted in the grow bed. I also planted seeds into the seed raising mix for comparison, they took longer to sprout and I don't think the sprouting rate per seed was as good as the grow bed? I have been watering/wetting the seedlings each morning by adding an extension to the standpipe and flooding the bed for about 15mins.

When I added the main stock of guppies to the the barrel there were babies in the tank that I couldn't catch so I left them there to grow up, they have grown quite big now so I caught them and to my surprise there were 39 of the little suckers.

Week 5, 2 weeks since planting lettuce seeds in grow bed

The auto siphon is working well, the lettuce is growing and the strawberry plant has new growth.

Week 6, 3 weeks since planting lettuce seeds in grow bed

The lettuce is still growing but I have noticed the plants are starting to get yellow edges, from what I have read I believe it is a magnesium deficiency. I'm not sure if this is because the system is still cycling up or if I am struggling to produce enough nutrient for the plant mass. I have started increasing the feed amount and ensuring I get a 2nd feed in each day and hopefully the yellowing will disappear.

The yellowing is most noticeable on the strawberry plant.

All sorts of deficiencies cause yellowing, where and how the yellowing occurs as well as what your water tests say at the time can help distinguish which particular deficiency you are seeing. Now if the Nitrates are basically 0, then you might be suffering just way low nutrient levels in general. If pH is way high then pH is likely the cause of many nutrient problems.

Seaweed extract can help a bunch dealing with getting trace elements and potassium into a new system and you can often help your plants along greatly by adding a cap full of seasol per week to the grow bed and even diluting according to the bottle and spraying the plants.

Thanks,

I will be honest, I have been lazy and haven't purchased a nitrite/nitrate test kit as yet. I tested the PH at 8.0 and the Ammonia at 0 and decided I could increase the fish food a little bit. I will order a full test kit and some aquaponic fish food but most importantly I will go to the hardware tonight and get some seasol, thank you very much for this tip.

Week 7, 4 weeks since planting lettuce seeds in grow bed

I added a twirly fan thingy to scare the birds away as every day one of the lettuces was being unearthed. I added a cap full(10ml) of seasol directly into the grow bed and sprayed a diluted mix onto the plants and they seem to be growing well. Only the strawberry plant seems to be struggling but this may be due to the high PH(8.0)? I added a tomato plant, I know I may be getting way ahead of myself but I was at the market and it was 50c. We had a storm last night and a lot of the lettuces have damaged leaves.

Week 8, 5 weeks since planting lettuce seeds in grow bed

Starting to get some growth going on there!