Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

We finally have temps above 70F, which caused the fish to eat much better than before. It's nice to see them really hitting the food I throw in. I filmed a short clip of them eating the pellets because I was curious what it looked like underwater. Here is the clip I filmed a short while ago.

The pH is sitting right around 7 and no ammonia or nitrite. Since I've pulled the plants and coupled with the fish eating a lot more I have nitrate around 20-40. I have my tomatoes/cucumbers started a couple weeks ago. I just need to finish hardening them off and then outside they go.

Does anyone have a good method for hardening the plants to make sure they survive? This is my first time starting from seed and would like to do it right.

Thanks!

Nice vid

A bit more progress on the wicking barrels. Thanks to Rob Bob for the video on how to make this up.

Looks good Kalarr

Your AP tomatoes may lag behind those in the buckets. That's what happens for me because the buckets heat up faster which the tomatoes like. I like to do cool weather crops in AP early on and then put in some tomato cuttings part way into Summer because of this. We have to work at it a bit, to get good growth on warm weather crops in the maritime climate here.

Thanks for the advice! This is the first year I'm starting both together. I'm interested to see how they both do and will be able to compare both.

I've been shooting a few clips to document how my plants are growing. It's hard to tell if plants grow when you see them every day. I just recently got back from a hunting trip and it feels like the plants decided to grow like crazy since I left.

I had to order some nutrient supplements that Mr. Damage has posted about. I need some time of carbonate to raise the pH. I went with potassium bicarbonate, magnesium sulphate and calcium hydroxide. I'll dose these every 2 weeks or so and see how it goes.

I have about 300 gallons of water volume. What dose should I use. I believe I read that its about a teaspoon per 1000L, so that is a bit less than the volume I have. I was thinking of starting to dose at the 1000L rate and see how the plants and pH react.

Short clip to show how things are moving along.

Auto-top off wicking barrels and my aquaponics setup.

I've been posting weekly videos of my plants in the aquaponics and wicking barrels. I started doing this since it took forever to take a picture of each part and then dl them to the computer to see how they look week to week. It has been awesome to see the growth I'm getting and I am very excited to see how the beds will produce.

I have been happy with how the fish have been eating, but I need to make sure my pH doesn't go to low. I bought some potassium bicarb to make sure the pH stays up and able to feed the tomatoes.

I added some worms the other day, and when I planted the beds I found a bunch of the worms. I hope they still make the worm tea in the beds and it may account for some of the growth I'm getting now compared to last time.

It's been a while since I've updated so here goes. I have been happy with the growth within the aquaponics. Everything in the system is doing substantially better than anything else I have. The regular wicking barrels aren't doing as well as the auto-top off system. I think this has to do with the fact that I used a lot of horse manure in the autotop off system. The jalepenos and banana peppers are doing great. If anyone has any recipes that use these, please give me suggestions on what to do with these.


I've had trouble with the bean plant leaves curling and turning a bit yellow. I think its magnesium deficiency, but if anyone knows please let me know.