Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Stu, have you found any published info on high nitrates causing lockout of other nutrients? I've seen it bandied around on the forums a bit, though have come up blank when trying to find any documentation that supports this. Just wondering if this is an AP folklore type thing or has some more sturdy scientific basis behind it.

Crickey Mathew that is some pretty good production.

Yes it could be a variety thing in fact I'm sure it is to a degree. The black beans are fruiting and I've been picking them over the last couple of days. While production is ok its certainly not outstanding. Where as the scarlet beans are doing stuff all.

My theory is that the scarlets are more sensitive to the right nutrient mix so I believe its the variety but also because my nutrients are out of whack.

Oh crap!

I was taking peoples word on the nutrient lock out thing. Most of what I know (or should I say believe) of plant nutrition I learnt off the forum because its not something I've devoted myself to. Also text books seem remarkably hard to find. I bought a book on lettuce hydroponics by a world renowned expert and it was crap. I got better information of the Cornell web site

Since then I haven't lashed out on any HP books.

yeah, I think I read it somewhere and may have perpetuated it as well though on further research I could find nothing to back it up!

I so need to get a handle on water parameters, otherwise I'll be chasing my tail with supplementation.

What do you feed your fish mattyoga, just out of curiosity? I'm wondering if I should be looking out for similar issues. I'm feeding the 5mm Nova Floating pellets by Skretting.

Whoops, this was meant to go in the Silverbeet thread, sorry!

Does anyone know why this would be happening?


I think I've had about three leaves do this on different plants.

In other news I think I've got the nutrients working better because more beans are appearing out of the flowers.


Not the best photos I know but I hope you can see the empty flower stalks dead empty flowers and now in the later flowers beans emerging from them until you get to the fresh flowers at the end.

Sarah is already groaning about the flood of beans we are about to have

I may have over done it on the beans