Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

PROBLEM! All was great, I thought I had it all down. Cukes and okra were growing great. Picked about 8 cukes, and bam. I checked the levels, and Ammonia was about a tint of yellow between 0 and .25. Nitrites 0. Nitrates are around 80, as they've always been. PH was a 7.2, which was higher than normal (it's usually between 6.8 & 7.0). I did a couple partial filter flushes last night, shaking up the bird netting as the filter drained. What I add to the system: 2tbsp iron on Sundays, I alternate between 1tbsp of KOH & Calcuim hydroxide every 2-3 days, and 1 tbs epsom salts on Saturdays. I also spray a capful Maxi Crop with iron / liter at least once a week, and 1 tbsp of dipel / liter when I spot caterpillars (a few days ago). See photos below. PLEASE HELP!

"Straight 8" Cucumbers: two normal ones...



clean roots on one of the cukes (The larger one is in gravel), but they're both displaying the same problems:



Tomato seems to be ok:



I think this is the best photo to describe the problem. The new growth is losing color, fruit is shriveling up.



Whatever is going on, the strawberries are loving it, as they're greener than ever:



Leaves yellowing and dying. At first I thought it was normal, thinking that it was normal for older leaves to die & fall off.

.....I am curious how your water temps will work out!

The tube/NTF system looks great - my concern would be temp and water clean enough to not start plugging up the 1/4" feeder tubes.
I don't really know HOW to calculate it, but I believe you will also spend more on pumping water through NTF than DWC.

Besides copying a running system - what are your reasons for doing NTF versus DWC?

[I am sitting in Panama and still "thinking over my system" - Puerto Rico should get about the same climate as we do - so whatever works for you, is VERY interesting for me!]


Cheers,

thjakits

Reason for the NFT is mainly the weight, and the ability to seal the roof when the time comes (every few years we have to power wash the roof and apply some type of roof sealer) This is going on the roof of my house. Building an 20' NFT table I can just pick it up and move it while I seal that section of the roof.

Hi again guys. After doing (2) partial water changes, the ammonia is still between 0 and .25, and the nitrites are .25. Ph is still 7.2, nitrates 80. Could anyone please give me some input as to what may be going wrong with my plants? Clearly the water is out of whack, but I'm hoping someone could identify specific deficiency / toxicity. Thanks, Felix

...did you check for something "deceased" in the system?

Definitely NO expert here - but that is frequently the cause (just reading through loads of threads...)

Dead Fish trapped somewhere, or Frog or Mouse or Rat or ???


thjakits

No dead stuff. I feel the spike is due to the filter being full of gunk. I hadn't cleaned it in a while. Just wasn't sure if there could be another cause for the plants to start acting weird.

This is a tough one. First off cucumbers are really picky - at least for me since my climate isn't as warm. Secondly it looks like there might be more than one thing going on. I'm going to throw out some ideas for you to check.

Look to see if you have any cucumber beetles. The holes in the large cucumber leaves look similar to the damage they would cause. They also like to feed around the new growth.

I would also look for spider mites up near the flower buds that are being lost. They are tough to see but could cause the fruit to abort.

The flowers may not be getting pollinated or other conditions aren't right so they fall off - this would be considered normal. You could try hand pollinating them. You may want to look at the current temps and humidity to see if this is having an affect on the pollination and fruit growth.

Is it my imagination or are the lower leaves turning yellow from the base of the leaf going toward the tip in places? They actually may have a deficiency or toxicity reaction going on but could be something else as well.

It looks like a bacterial soft rot on the leaf near the flower bud and maybe on some of the flower buds themselves. A pest like cucumber beetles could be spreading this. Rain also is important, have you been getting lots of rain? Try sprinkling cinnamon on the area it has antibacterial properties and works on top rot in orchids.

I guess that's a start. Let me know what you find.

Scotty seeing that cucumbers are such heavy feeders could this be a Phosphate deficiency were seeing in the dying leaves and with the new growth dying back maybe calcium,but i would have thought it would be showing in the Tomatoes as well,if it was me i would spray with MKP to see if it improved the plant.I got to be honest my cucumbers have looked like this and i never really got to the bottom of it......

I suppose phosphate could be a possibility but like you say, it isn't showing in the tomato

The big leaves that are having problems look to be in an area that won't get very good air circulation so some type of fungal infection could be the cause.

My cucumbers did the same thing. I'm starting new ones, the self pollinating type. Scotty, what do Cucumber beetles look like?

These are the ones I've seen - I suppose other countries might have their own version

http://www2.ca.uky.edu/entomology/entfacts/ef311.asp

I had exactly the same problems as mwdesign and all the same simptons with 80ppm nitrates, my system sat on 80ppm because of no CO plus a large build up of fish solids in one of the MBBF's.

I thoroughly cleaned all the filters and washed the K1 bio media, did many partial water changes and still the nitrates would not drop, I stopped feeding the fish and added more plants and still saw no difference, it still stayed at 80ppm.

Armed with a list of the heavy feeding plants, celery, melons, tomatoes, corn, peppers, cucumbers, pumpkins, eggplant, spinach and cabbage and put them all in only to find most died and some within half an hour of planting. I was adding plants every few days and losing most of them, the high nitrates was now also affecting most of the established plants in the GB's except for the lettuce it didn't seem the bother them all that much but any new seedlings had an uphill battle to survive.

Any plant with large soft leaves died within 30 minutes of planting, cucumbers, pumpkins, melons would all wither and die almost immediately they had contact with the water, the corn did a little better it lasted just over a week and a half before it died.

The peppers dropped their leaves and tomatoes didn't do very well or flower but both survived, the celery, cabbage and spinach all grew quite well, the celery did very well followed by the cabbage but the spinach started to hang after 2 - 3 weeks and hasn't gone all that well since with very poor growth and stunted plants.

During one of the water changes I used the fish water to water 20 small Chilli seedlings I had growing in pots and it killed them all within 24 hours of being watered.

After a very large water change and not feeding the fish for over a week I managed to drop the nitrates to zero only to find it was back to 5.0ppm the next day, the following day it was 20ppm and then it shot straight up to 80ppm after that so I'd given up hope of it staying low again and was prepared for a life of high nitrates.

BuiDoi was using Zeolite quite successfully in his RAS to keep his nitrates under control so I tried the Zeolite and put 4kgs in my GB's and it dropped the nitrates back to zero overnight, the plants have now all taken off and everything in the GB's is back to normal, the fish aren't smashing their feed yet but they are eating and I suppose having high nitrates for so long might be the reason for their slow feeding.

With the pump sitting on the milk crate how are you getting the solids off the tank bottom

After the nitrates dropped the difference in plant growth in 3 - 4 weeks

Milk crates:

The photo of the pump in the milk crates has an elbow and a return tube that circulates a high volume of water right back into the tank. Bottom is clean of solids, water is clear. I do have some PVC tubes for the fish to hide in, I'm going to remove them to make absolutely sure there's nothing holding solids in the bottom of the tank.