Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

root blocking in the gravel isn't really the same as a drain getting blocked. If your water flows in say in the back corner and the tomatoes are pushing down a bit on the back side and their roots are also pretty thick in the gravel between the inlet and drain..... It could be possible that you have water flowing over the surface of the gravel in the back part of the bed and dripping out in the low spot where the toms are pushing the bed down.
Can you tell if the water is flooding over the gravel in the problem area or are the plants just way to thick to see anything?

Good luck getting the jungle thinned back out and the problem sorted.

Have you thought about making sun dried tomatoes?

Ron- yes, I plan to dry some once I have made enough sauce for the year, but I use my food dryer rather than in the sun, which turns them very dark. I've still got quite a lot of dried then frozen tomatoes from the dirt garden 2 years ago, but am working my way through them. I had a lot more plants in dirt and didn't get as many toms as I am this season.




I have looked everywhere I can see on the top of the GB but cant see any water flooding over the gravel, and have poked my arm in through the jungle and felt around and not found any either... and I haven't yet figured out exactly where the water is coming from, other than I know it is somewhere along one sde. However, this morning I did manage to remove a ~1 X 0.5 sheet of cotton I had used to shade the media when the tomatoes were small. It was soaking wet and is perhaps related to the water loss.
Root bocking- there sure is some of that! Underneath the piece of poly insulation I had under the water inflow the GB is a solid mass of roots, which were growing up into the insulation- it was attached to the GB very well! The whole GB isnt like that through.
Anyway, today I'll see if I can rig up something to lift and hold some of the stems and hopefully find out what is going on.

I found 3 dead fish floating yesterday morning, all about 40mm long, maybe they weren't eating the pellets. With the fish being so small and always hiding at the bottom, its hard to know if they are eating or not. I don't think I'll get fish this small next time.

A bit cooler over the past few days, but lots of high 30s days are forecast for the next week, so the water will be warming up again. Reduction in salinity is due to the water leak, which will hopefully be sorted out today.



I found one more dead floater yesterday. I'm feeding 15-20g/day of 1.5mm pellets... well thats how much I am throwing in, split morning and late afternoon, but they aren't eating it all, since some of it is still floating hours later, and some must be going into the sump then the GBs. I've scooped a bit from the bottom, but pellets that small are very hard to remove from the bottom of the FT!

Another 4.5kg of tomatoes picked in the past 3 days, total now 27.5kg

There are thousands of pumpkin bettles, many on the fruit fly netting, which they can get through, and some are eating the cucumbers under the tomatoes. What else they are damaging, and what to do about them are both a mystery at this stage!

The tomatoes are still coming on like crazy, total 57kg up to yesterday, I've picked an average of over 3kg/day for the past week, which has meant lots of sauce making and a bit of drying work to do.
There are 8 tomato plants, but the 2 most recently planted are only just about to start yielding ripe fruit, so 57kg from 6 plants in under a month is a result I'm very happy with! I've also been harveting chives, spring onions and capsicums, all going into the tomato sauce mix, plus thyme from the dirt garden. The garlic is all gone, so having to use organic garlic from the market now.



The 3 I planted first in GB#8 have been producing the most, up to 5kg when I went searching with the torch on Saturday.
I've managed to get to the bottom of the overflow problem- it was due to a number of factors. A large G-clamp that was holding the air-cell insulation in place had a huge load of tomato plants on it, and quite a bit of leverage onto the side of the GB, bending it down to cause the overflow. That was compounded by the water level running a bit higher than normal (until I slowed the inflow rate), due to a tangle of roots in the drain pipe, below the stand-pipe in the GB. It pretty well filled the 25mm drain pipe, and was about 40cm long. After tying up some plants, lifting a fair bit of weight off the G-clamp, and removing it, I thought the leak problem was solved... but then I discovered the leak had softened the ground enough that one corner of the GB was about 50mm too low! That is jacked up to approximately the right level now, so I haven't had any more water loss. The GB#8 media is chock full of roots in places, impenetrably so here and there, so the GB will need some work when the tomatoes are finished. I might whack in a few worms, although I know there is at least one in there already, which must have made its way there via the pump, perhaps in egg form.

I pulled the last celery plant recently, I'd left it in to produce some seeds, and now have vastly more than I need



The last of the broccoli have been fed to the chooks, and with only a few fully grown chard plants left, the chooks aren't getting many leaves for now, as we eat most of them. I've planted quite a few chards and beetroots in recent weeks, and a few vines, and now have a ~8cm watermelon in GB#7.
I'm getting a fiar few strawberries now, and most taste good, bu occasionally one is a bit tasteless and soggy. The 4 asparagas plants are putting up a fair few spears, which are all eaten raw.

White flies continue to thrive around the tomatoes and earth apples, the sticky strips hanging nearby certainly catch a lot, but its only a fraction of their total numbers. 28 spotted ladybugs are munching away on the cucumber vine buried under the tomatoes in GB#8, but they have still produced a few apple cucumbers, which taste nice, although they are not very large. Pumpkin beetles continue to do whatever they do in large numbers, mainly on GB #8, and I squash any I can, but it makes little if any difference. There is a pumpkiin vine on the ground near GB#8, but they are ignoring it for the most part, and there's a nice Jap pumpkin growing on it. The button squash next to it havent been producing much in the past 2 weeks- the heat is too much and dries most of the squash out before they get to a decent size.

The temperature logger battery has gone flat again, and I can't afford a $14 battery every week or 2, so whatever data is in it will be there until I rig up power to it in place of the battery, in order to extract the data. In any case, its been 37-38C max. every day for the past week, apart from 32C today, which is a nice change! Water temp maxima, which I've been manaully measuring late each day, have been increasing from 23 to just under 27C over the past 10 days, but should decrease again now with a few cooler days.
The acidity has been pretty steady around pH6.75-6.85, kept there by the shell grit, and no KOH or Ca(OH)2 additions since the trout came out.
I tested the chemistry yesterday:
Ammonia zero
Nitrites zero
Nitrates ~60ppm
Salinity has been in the 800s ppm, apart from a jump to 950ppm when I added 1kg on 17/1, but it dropped to 650ppm when I added water to max level in the sump yesterday. I'll add some more salt to bring it up to about 1ppt soon.
The water is very clear, so it's a bit of a mystery as to why I'm losing Murray Cod. I'm finding one or 2 dead floaters, or on the bottom, every day or 2 for the past couple of weeks.
A few have taken the trip into the sump via the SLO, after the netting over the 10mm holes became partially dislodged, and a couple have been deposited in the GB after a trip through the pump. They try to hide under the pump, which is a dangerous place for such small fish!
I need to get some mesh around the pump intakes.
One of my timers has developed a sticky relay, which a sharp tap fixes if I'm nearby, otherwise I'm missing 1/3 of the pumping time, which isn't really a problem for now, with air running all the time and only a low fish load.

Did you find that your celery tasted salty? I found this in any system that we had salted.

Bloody nice tomato crops.

been trying to germinate some celery seeds without any luck, yours is huge.

Somebody told me you can plant the butt of a celery and it will re-shoot?

Yes if you plant the butt of the cerlery it will re-shoot no need for seeds

Thanks EB:) Yes the celery was saltier than shop bought, and bloody delicious! We had comments from visitors that it was the best celery they had ever tasted.

I've found that both celery and swiss chard take up quite a bit of salt. Last winter I was having problems with elevated Chloride levels in my systems and both tasted really salty. The strawberries also did not thrive for me last year. This year since I got more of my rain water collection going and have been careful not to use anything to increase the chloride levels in my big systems, there has been little/no salty taste to the Celery, I don't have any swiss chard right now though since the caterpillars ate all the seedlings.

Celery likes things cool but not cold for growing but a little bit of minimal warmth for germination can help, the seeds are really tiny and they can take a long time to germinate.

It is interesting which bugs seem to cause damage on different plants sometimes.

Good you found the key to the water loss issue!

I've increased the salinity to around 1.52ppt in the hope that the Murray Cod will survive a bit better. I added another 1kg of salt to bring it to that concentration, and again tipped it in so that the crystals were sitting on the bottom near where they all hide out, so they would have experienced much higher salinity levels for an hour or 2 before all the salt dissolved. I spoke to my supplier last night and it seems that the death rate is quite high for him too. I've only had 2 dead in the past 5 days, so hope the worst is over for them. I'll still have the issue of the big ones eating the smallest, as I have no way to grade them into separate tanks as my supplier does, and catching individuals would be an impossible task anyway.

I'm still busy with sauce production- I've now picked over 75kg of tomatoes from the 8 plants.
Lots of strawberries to eat each day, 1.5ppt salinity doesn't seem to be worrying them so far.

What I was told were Pumpkin Beetles, are actually Red and Blue Beetles, which apparently eat other slow moving inseacts, larvae etc. I was wondering why none seemed to be on the pumpkin and button squashes... I haven't found any around the White Fly, perhaps they are a bit fast for them, but I hope they will eat the eggs and larvae. I've been using eco oil on the White Fly, I'm not sure if it's making much of a difference though.

Since I started feeding Blood Worms to the Murray Cod a week ago, there has been a noticeable increase in their size. There are still a few around 50mm, but now many are in the 60-70mm size range and a few larger, by my estimation- there is no ruler scale at the bottom of the tank. I haven't found any dead ones since a couple of days after I started feeding them Blood Worms.This morning I mixed in 5g of crushed 3mm pellets left over from the trout with the BWs, after having soaked them overnight, and they appear to have eaten most of that, when I checked an hour ago, which makes me very happy
I dropped in 10g of soaked crushed 3mm pellets with some more BWs then, so I'll see how much of a dent they make in that, when I check in a couple of hours.

Acidity continues to be around pH6.8 or a fraction lower, held there by the shell grit buffer. They haven't been eating enough to require any KOH and Ca(OH)2 additions yet.

Judging by the day to day variation in salinity, which increases in between water additions, 100-150 litres of water are being evaporated/transpirated/removed in tomatoes each day in the continuing warm to hot, very dry weather. The next week of forecast mid-high 30s will no doubt see that increase a bit. This is a problem, as we are running out of water, down to under 20000l in our mostly empty tanks, so the prospect of having to buy town water, which tastes disgusting is looming.

The tomatoes continue to ripen, although the rate has slowed a bit, but I've now picked over 87kg of them from the 8 plants.
Here's what I did with 7kg of them yesterday- Salsa.



Corn in GB#4


General view of the greenhouse 2 days ago


The strawberries continue to thrive at around 1.5ppt salinity. I think I need to try a different variety though, these Red Gauntlets are not very large, and there are quite a few small misshapen ones- sort of hollow on the end, where they should be pointy.

Late afternoon water temperature peaks have been in the range of 21-24C, thanks to the pleasantly cool morning minima recently.

I've been spraying Dipel every week or two, and have suffered only minimal losses of tomatoes to grubs. The chooks get the ocassional tomato with a grub in it. I sprayed Dipel again yesterday, after finding a grub munching on the corn.
The ants are busy moving White Fly eggs/larvae around, and I've been trying to control them with Eco Oil, but with not much luck. There are a few Red and Blue Beetles around inside the GH, but I don't think enough to make much of an impact on White Fly numbers.

I would guess your strawberries struggling could be due to the hot weather. I know where I live, we grow short day strawberries through our mild winters since summer here is too hot/humid to allow the everbearing varieties to thrive. As a kid growing up in a cold climate we could have everbearing strawberries all summer long but most years only saw occasional high temperatures over 30 C, and night time usually cooled off well enough.

It doesn't look like the pollinators have much chance to get to the Strawberries and that could also have something to do with the misshapen fruit and small size fruit.

http://ncsmallfruitsipm.blogspot.com/2012/04/what-causes-misshapen-strawberries.html

Oh good point.