Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Happy happy happy! Awesome cookie!

I'm amazed myself as well... so it seems that plants can uptake organic forms of nutrients... because for all its worth... nothing interms of conductivity changes... nor is nitrates begin produced.. still baffles me... but I'm going to do some more testing.. I got a separate system that has no nutrients at all due to a large algae growth... in that system I'm going to only add the MT water alone without any other additions.. and judge and see if calcium and potassium and so on is even needed to be added for plant growth..

If anything I believe the microbiology is doing the job in symbiosis with the plant.

Look forward to your next test.

massive algae growth

I have put my pulled okra plant straight into my MT.. It was eaten down to the core by aphids. Now it's shooting new growth. All though I have no light above the mt It still seem to grow. [WHITE SMILING FACE] I spoke too soon.. The aphids are back shredding it to pieces..

haa haa lol... aphids.. they always a big pain.. neem oil and a drop of dishwashing liquid seem to do the trick for me... but high nitrates really attract them alot

You bet I have high nitrates in my system.. But now the okra is in mt, 0 nitrates and they still attack

well plants accumulate nitrates within itself over time.. and even if your remove it from the system it was in.. it will still be high in nitrates... it takes a while to drop off..

Gotcha. Thanks

ooooooo my tilapia would love that stuff!!

Looks like an abundance of phosphate may have been to blame [WINKING FACE]

Well, today was the first time I cleaned out my Clarifier. There wasn't much in it. I thought maybe cause the fish haven't been feeding much since it's been cooler. Then I pulled out the shade cloth filter from the next filter step. Yea, it was full of it! Seems like my clarifier isn't doing much at all. I'm thinking of just filling the clarifier tank with shade cloth as well. Unless you guys think I should try RFF? I noticed Ryan Chatterson basically used 3 media filter tanks without the use of a clarifier, RFF, or swirl filter. What do you all think?

thanks!

I think from memory Ryans system went from fish tank to a solids settlement bin then bin with bioballs then bin with shade cloth then to DWC.

RFF works wonders... my retention time is 5 mins and still at so small a retention its settling out very fine solids... rule of thumb the deflection pipe in the center that acts as a baffle.. the Dia must be atlest 0.3 the Dia of the container and the length of the pipe should be atleast 0.3 the depth of the container.