Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

so what kind of fish feed do you use? and is your water source rain, RO, or city water? thanks

At this stage (cause the fish are still small) I feed small koi pellets and fish flakes with spirulina and use city water that has been aerated for at least 72 hours to dissipate chlorine.

Willem Bot - Wow. This is a great system. I'm about ready to do a bucket system myself and have some questions.

1. Is something eating all your leaves or are you pruning them that much. Doesn't seem like a lot of leaves for the fruit.

2. Have you done any supplemental light yet? By all accounts you aren't getting enough sun, yet there you are.

3. How are your roots coming? I was going to do a DWC but then decided bucket instead.


vk3laj - are you doing constant flood or flood and drain? I wonder if this makes a difference. Once roots hit the water line, why would the plant send roots further under the water to disrupt the drain pipe, it has all the water it could ever want. Doesn't a plant stop putting down roots unless its hunting for water?

Wouldn't that be nice.

I guess I'm going to try tomato buckets with lots of holes in the bottom and string them up to be 2" submersed in the fish tank. This whey they have plenty of grow room and the fish can keep them trimmed.

1. No I prune them just in the beginning to get as much nutrients to them, in the photos I am posting now you will see a difference in leaves.

2. I only put the covering on today cause the cold are killing my plants so the lights are going up now.

3. The roots are not so bad yet but it's coming .








Lol




The only problem with that is, every root they eat is going to slow down your growth and yield smaller tomato's next time I do this I'll make them all dwc/floating raft in those buckets then dig a hole for a sump would work easier.

Thank you Willem.

I like your flow lines better then my PVC. Do you have a link to those valves?



I have 4 gallons of rock media for the roots to grow in. Only the roots coming out of the holes will be ate. Is that amount of media enough for the plant? Or does the plant need to make new roots due to older roots loosing the ability to uptake water/nutrients? Whats it the difference between the fish eating the roots and cutting them out of the drain on other systems?

Thank you again.

Bump.