Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi East,

It's looking great! I have strawberry plants too and they are good at using up Nitrates.. I can see yours are flowering and once they do that and head towards fruiting they are going to suck up Nitrates.. I will be real surprised if you don't end up with 0 Nitrates soon.
Increasing your feed will help but only if you have enough media to process it, otherwise you will just overload the system and get an ammonia spike. You could also add maxicrop or here we call it Seasol to give extra nutrients if your fish don't want to eat more but this will also overload your media (biofiltration capacity) if you don't have enough of it.
Remember that flowering plants like strawberries and tomatoes use more nutrients than greens like lettuce, cellery etc so keeping that in mind and the fact that your system is relatively new don't be too surprised if your growth may be constrained by lack of Nitrates.. especially in the first year.
Like you I have limited greenhouse space so I added 50 litres of K1 media in laundry baskets submerged in my sumps with airstones to be able to process more ammonia and therefore feed more.. this has helped me... if I had the space though I would just have added more media GBs but that was not possible.

Good to hear your on top of your aphid invasion whish I could say the same.. and I wish I could buy lady bugs for as cheap as you got them but here in Australia I haven't seen any that cheap or even close.. maybe I will start breeding them

If you increase feed then really keep an eye on your ammonia and pH as the pH can drop as quickly as the ammonia can spike..

http://www.earthangroup.com.au/aquacult ... alculator/
that is a link to earthangroup, not sure if you have visited that website but they have some interesting articles on biofiltration which will help you with feed rates... and a calculator you can download to estimate bioltration and feed rates.

Great pics looks awesome

Sent from my SPH-L900 using Tapatalk

Dang Tom, dont make it more complicating than it already is for a newbie

I actually have room for one more grow bed, just been putting it off for now. Need to take a break and let things take its course

after adding 3rd grow bed and onion tower I am still waiting on my water to clear

Well a little update.

The shade cloth came in, in time for Texas heat. You can tell a noticeable difference between outside temp and under the cloth.

Funny looking stuff



I still have to put one on the south wall, but got the roof up for now. Still needs a little work, to make it look better



Plants are doing well, ammonia is staying down, and fish are doing fine. I have added more aeration to the fish tank.



I broke several limbs off putting up the shade cloth so some leaves look pretty weak







Hopefully now that the shade cloth is up all these guys in the tower will make a turn for the better. I was recently using peg board for shade and these guys have been hurting for some sunlight



On a side note, my aphids have returned in full FORCE, triple what I had before. Seems the ladybugs wipe them out and once they are gone, the ladybugs leave. Well fortunately I ordered 3000 more and they are down to be delivered today. So tonight once the sun goes down, I will wage war

Greetings East,

I noticed that you have an Iron deficiency going on in your system. If you look at the pictures online it's pretty obvious. Notice on some of the plants how the leaves are lighter on top than on the bottom. This indicates that the nutrient isn't mobile. Notice also that the veins on the light colored leaves are darker than the spaces between them (Interveinal Chlorosis is the term). Maxicrop plus Iron would help if sprayed on but you'll probably need to keep applying until this goes away.

Mobile and Immobile Nutrients -
Mobile Nutrients - Deficiencies show on old growth first
Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium, Molybdenum, Magnesium and Zinc

Immobile Nutrients - Deficiencies show on new growth first
Iron, Copper, Manganese, Chlorine, Cobalt, Boron, Calcium, Sulfur

You're probably getting Iron in the feed you're using but it may not be available if your water pH is too high. Chelated Iron is helpful for this but you need the right type.

Sorry if this is telling you something you already know, old age has set in

Cheers

Scotty I am a big time Newbie!

Please explain more, but first off are you talking about all pics? or just the plants in the tower?

The tower hasnt had sun in a month, so it looks horrible.

If not, please tell me, what I need to purchase and where? does amazon carry what I need?

Everything is growing great, but I am used to an outdoor garden where thats a normal symptom

The Strawberries show the most obvious symptoms - just on a couple of the plants but very clear (second from the top on the right and fourth from the top on the right). Most of the other Strawberries are lighter on the new growth as well (which isn't what I would expect). My experience has been that lack of light will usually make the plants produce more chlorophyll to catch more light and this will darken the leaves (There may be some exceptions I don't know about). That didn't happen in this case, likely because there wasn't enough iron available.

The lettuce in the pipes also looks like it has an iron deficiency. The ones getting the most sun appear to be the worst off.

The peppers and tomatoes in the beds look fine but the angle of the light could be better for checking these. I haven't looked back over your thread to see if you're pumping to the tower from the sump or from the fish tank (just thinking maybe the tomatoes and peppers get first crack and not enough iron is left for the towers if they are getting fed from the sump )

Got to get going.

Cheers

Scotty the tower is pumped from the fish tank, which is why I assumed it was lack of light, from the peg board being up and blocking the sun.

Is there a way I can test my iron levels, and what should I add if needed

Thanks

East

Some plants just seem to be more sensitive to deficiencies. Kale is one I use to let me know when somethings out of whack. I'm not sure about strawberries since I've never had them in the system.

I don't know if there is an Iron test out there that you can test with at home. You might be able to send a sample to a lab but that gets expensive and probably isn't worth it unless you're commercial.
I'd just treat it and see if the symptoms go away. To do this you have basically two choices.

1. Treat the water - The pH of the water affects the availability of the Iron in solution so you have to know the pH and pick the right form of Iron. Nate Storey's video on YouTube will explain this for you. Most people that I know of wind up using EDDHA iron chelate because of their AP water pH.

2. Spray an iron solution on the plant above the soil line - the pH of your AP water doesn't matter for this so you can use a solution containing something like Maxicrop plus Iron (which has regular iron and also will help potassium levels (another common deficiency in AP)). Or if you happen to have chelated iron use that (doesn't do anything for potassium levels but then they may be OK anyway).

Since you may wind up needing something for Potassium levels anyway, I think the Maxicrop plus Iron might be a good way for you to go at this time but it's a bit easier adding the chelated iron to the sump so you don't have to spray. Let me know if you have any questions.

I usually stop treatment once symptoms have disappeared but your situation may be different.
Maxicrop plus Iron - For foliar feeding 1 Oz per gallon then spray directly on plants.
Chelated Iron - 1 level teaspoon per 1000L every 6 to 8 weeks if iron deficiency is indicated. Chelated Iron can be used as a spray as well and instructions are probably on the container.

Thanks for all the help guys, I have ordered some Maxicrop and should arrive tomorrow.

How wary do I need to be about monitoring my levels after adding Maxicrop? Will to much effect the health of the fish?

Also, one thing I was contemplating was, would having an additional fish tank, like another 330 gal IBC, piped in help with producing more iron and nitrates or would I just be risking not having enough grow bed space to soak up all the ammonia that two tanks would create?

Sounds like you are chasing your tail with the aphid problem. It is easy to get caught in a wipe them out/return with a vengeance cycle. Ideally you want some balance there where a few lady bugs keep the aphids down and both populations stabilize at low levels. If you unleash 3,000 ladybugs in a small area they will simply destroy the population, then leave because they have no food and then any clutch of eggs that survives or any pregnant aphid that finds your system will cause the whole freaking cycle to begin again.

I would suggest that you try to knock down the aphid number some (jets of soapy water) and then unleash a SMALL number of lady bugs to maintain a lower population.

Interesting, makes sense

I only released 1500 the other night, most of hung out for now being there were so many aphids. I was hoping the ones that escaped would wonder over to the outdoor garden, but it doesnt seem to collect aphids like in the green house

i only used maxicrop when my plants were showing signs of deficiency.. in the earlys stages i used a little ever 3 or 4 weeks, now every 3 or 4 months
re:ladybugs..
give your plants a good watering in the early evening, then release the bugs.. they'll stick around for the water first, then feed.. the ladybug larvae will do a number on the aphids when they start to hatch

Thats what I have been doing, spraying the plants down with a water bottle with diluted nectar in it. They hang out pretty well for a few weeks

I have seen them breeding, but havent seen any LB larvae after doing it twice

Population dynamics can be really interesting. I don't know about ladybugs specifically (so don't quote me on this) but what you could be seeing is starvation dynamics (paradoxically). When you unleash lots of bugs they have tons to eat initially, but then the population of aphids drops dramatically. Even if there is a decent population of aphids left the bugs have experienced a massive drop in the food supply and that is stressful, and food stress can negatively influence reproduction in a lot of species (all?).