Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Makes perfect sense.

I have tried researching raising them in an aquarium, and from what I have read its a big PITA, and almost impossible

Well I think I am going to have to temporarily shut down this system for a while. After some further inspection the gravity filter I used for solids doesnt seem to be working at all. The roots are covered in a muddy looking slime, I presume to be fish waste.



Some options I have are trying to make a swirl filter in between pump and towers, or I could reroute and move the pump into sump tank

The sump tank being the easier option, and most solids are filtered out by then, is there any reason, other than maybe slower growth, that I should think about before doing this?

As far as the plants that are in there, will they be okay if I gentle wash the roots off? Or am I better off starting over

If the roots are like mush and have rotted then I'd probably start over otherwise you can try planting them and they may be OK elsewhere. Clean them up well if you're going to do this. Watch the light levels with new transplants.

Not like mush, just covered in the stuff

Pumping from the sump seem acceptable?

Yeah, that seems reasonable but keep your eyes on the growth, it may be slow if there aren't enough nutrients left after the first pass through the beds.

Cheers

Yeah my towers and NFT have always been fed from the sump (and I still get a little bit of fine particle build up), I definitely wouldn't feed mine from the FT after seeing the amount of gunk that can build up in my RFF (and thats just the stuff that gets caught)
In fact one of my things on the 'to do list' is a bit of fine particle filtration after the GBs where the water runs back into the sumps… for the moment this may just be a sock with some sponge material attached to the GB output pipe (since there is just fine particles it won't gunk up quickly)
I think that 'mushy' gunk on the roots would be bad… sounds like concentrated fish poop? thats what I get from time to time in my distribution pipes around the GBs.
Even if it doesn't kill your plants it will stunt growth eventually and also result in too much maintenance.

Well a little update. After removing plants from the towers I disconnected it, and flushed the entire system. Everything seems to be doing fine now, with all roots staying white, growth seems to be about the same as before pumping from the sump.



Other grow beds seems to be doing well, and are gaining some color back in the leaves after spraying on some iron. I dont think it penetrates with the PH levels in the system through the sump. I did burn a few leaves, and will dilute more next time













I removed the strawberry towers and made 3 small grow beds. The strawberry towers were just taking constant attention. It was interesting trying to get siphons to work with 1/2" down pipes.



Not quite sure what the deal is with the merrigolds not blooming and just shooting up



And here is one question I have, I am only getting about 1-2 toms per every cluster of flowers. Is this a pollination issue on my part?

Maybe some other more experienced members will chime in but it sounds like you are dealing with lack of other nutrients vs nitrogen. Your system is high in nitrogen so plant/leaf growth is good but flowering/fruiting is stunted. The same thing happened in my system last year: http://www.whatisaquaponics.co/cucumber ... nutrients/

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Where you just adding maxicrop to your system? I have been adding once a week, but I dont know how much the system is absorbing because of the high PH of the well water I use

It hasnt budged of 8.2 since day one

When I realized the issue I dosed heavily with maxicrop and also started manually picking off some of the flowers from the cucumber plants so the vines would focus on feeding the remaining fruits. This worked for my cucumbers though I was only able to harvest 1 tomato the whole season so it must have not worked enough to recover the tomato plants. I think this may be from the imbalance of nitrogen vs other nutrients more than from a lack of other nutrients. Not sure how to fix this issue except maybe time... this year my strawberries have been fruiting consistently but I dont have any cucumbers sucking nutrients from the system. Hope this helps?

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Oh actually I did get lots of cherry tomatoes but only 1 big sandwich style tomato.

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Things I learned from my NEW system last year.

Lots of tomato's in a bed will fizzle out. Pole beans and cucs did the same thing. I cut back and went with less bushy plants and fewer per bed. Tap them daily to pollinate. When it starts getting hot they drop but came back after it cooled down. Try trimming out the foilage below fruit.
Plants that stretch are being robbed of sun/nutrients. Try different spots.
Don't let droplets of maxicrop/water sit on leaves-rub them in. I seem to do better with just pouring a little maxi at base of plant and letting it soak into gravel. Kinda time releases.
Peppers take off slow but kick in. Yours look pretty good.

Everything did much better for me this year. Peppers are struggling but they should finish strong.

Thanks guys, my cucumbers havent started to bloom yet, so we will see what happens with them.

Rairdog, when you poured it at the base of the plant did you dilute with water first?

Nope. When I first planted it out this season I poured a strip of maxi down the middle of my spinach rows(3 to 4 in from base. They took off and blew the others away. I got closer to the base of the peppers and they didn't mind. It takes a few weeks to really kick in IMO. I also pour in where the water comes into the bed. I try and make it seep in slowly. It doesn't turn the water as brown and if there is dried up brown media from maxi staining I can stir it in later. My fish seem to slow down eating when I mixed it into the water and it turned brown so I just experimented with ways to slowly release it. I only use about a capful between 10 plants or so. I plan on getting and eye dropper to make it easier to distribute.

Rairdog I added a cap full to each grow bed today at lunch. I just poured it slowly where the water goes in, hopefully we will see some good results in the next couple weeks.

I have also been feeding more to see if I can get my nitrates back up with out spiking ammonia. The fish are loving it, feeding almost two handfuls of food a day for last 1.5 weeks. Ammonia hasnt come up at all, but I think nitrates are finally starting to climb



Soon I will be done with the trellis on the inside for climbing plants, then I plan on just sitting back and waiting on results.