Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I didn't say I don't care about the plants. I can live with losing a few plants versus losing a bunch of fish.
Attending to the plants is easy and if I kill a few no big deal - killing all the fish is a whole other matter.

What do you mean AP should be 50/50? Not following you on that one. Again its easy to re-plant a few plants you might kill VS the fish...

When I posted that pic I had "3 so far" but I can't remember the total count.

Ive got more pics..





I know your point though, conventional gardening is a big tick for me, especially now Im in a location with great soil and rain fall. With some good home seasoned compost I don't do anything to my new garden and its production is far beyond anything I grew in AP.

Ok, AP is half plants and half fish. so 50/50 attention. After sleeping on it I will move the number to more like 30/70. Place more attention on keeping the fish alive. I do read about complete fish kills all the time so many people seem to forget them for too long of a time. If they were pet fish I would put the ratio even higher.20/80

OK Charlie, I'll buy that. Nice chains of tomatoes there. I really don't understand yet on how to manage the NPK for them. It needs to change as they flower and fruit up and most of all as they eat it up. So that alone seems to tell me that certain plants need to be separated to do their best as Yavimaya mentioned. Ryan has all sorts of tanks systems set up. The number was like 14 FTs so I presume he is maintaining the best mix he can get for what he wants to grow and holds onto that knowledge.

Fertilizer: On strange or a bit upsetting thing I read about dirt fertilizer was what's in it. If you buy 5-5-5 then that is 15%, ok then what is the other 85%. Most of the time it is dirt or sand but sometimes it isn't and one should read it very well. Then the Organic people went after the 5-5-5. How was it made and another true ghost story comes out with some of them being made from poisons and waste garbage. In the AP world it seems that we can go even one step further and 100% control what we use for NPK and get it right.

If fish poo water is really 5-2-2 and I use it as a starter then I only need to figure out what to use to bump it where a certain plant wants it to be to have a good harvest. I would think it should be a lot easier for AP since there is no leaching away into the soil like what happens in an organic farm.

I will say that the deeper I get into this the less I know. Seems that every page I read either has a different story on how to do this or a GB that does something. Then there are the monster plants. So someone out here knows what the best NPK values are for them. Probably going to keep that info close to the chest. If it took them years to figure it out they are not going to just give it away for free. No different then award winning farmers. They are never going to tell anyone why they have the best or biggest plants. They would lose the edge.

So Charlie, is this a nutrient problem with AP? It seems that in the ground you can what you need for maybe up to 20+ years but in AP maybe a couple of weeks. I am guessing it is probably a micronutrient problem in AP since most rich FT water should supply at least the basic NPK values for a plant to grow somewhat. They do grow and I see this everyday but not as good as dirt yet. So something is missing in AP as a standard add.

It has been a good lesson to me to do my testing in clear containers so I can watch the plant grow thru the side. I am growing everything from seed so far except the carrot tops. By far the plants that are doing the best are the ones from the garbage. The sliced over ripe tomatoes and the pride so far the garbage squash pumpkin seed mess. All of these had Mother Natures food mix to start with. She knows what they need for sure.

I planted slices of tomatoes at the same time I did seeds and the seed are still on their seed leaves while the slices are on their 4th set of leaves. GARBAGE WORKS. The pumpkins are still in the lead with 4th leaves also but they are getting larger by the day.

Breaking News for us: We were out walking around the forest last week and my wife spotted a small bush flower that went to seed and we brought home a branch and planted the seeds in a wicking setup. Well, this morning they started to grow and we have at least 50 small plants starting out of what may be several hundred. The only thing I know about this plant so far is that the flower is very small and a great looking pink/purple color. So the wife is very happy about this. Yeah! If we do it right, it is a house plant we could sell. Time will tell on this one.

Back to the wild flower seeds for a moment. I did not know that the wife had also planted about 50 seeds in dirt right next to the AP style wick bed and she has no growth at all so far. The 50 seeds that sprouted are at least 1/4 in tall as of this afternoon. City Boy 1, Country Girl. 0 lol That water concoction is about 5-3-5. Working on the middle number next.

AP originally for me was a water saving method for growing veg as I lived in a very dry, arid region of Australia where it was very difficult and expensive to grow anything. It was amazing how my backyard production changed when I got the AP going so it was an easy no-brainer. I was also 400km from the sea so fish in the backyard was an added bonus.

I rarely added or monitored anything in my AP. Just the main ones like amm, ites, ates, ph and salinity. I did the occasional addition of iron chelates but other than that it did its thing and produced well. Now years on that I have read and learnt a lot more, it could have done better and produced better but I was happy at the time. How could it have done better? By manipulating the nutrient profile and perfecting the system design. Many are doing these things nowadays as AP has advanced.

Ryan is always a good one to mention as he has and is perfecting commercial AP, but he won't let his secrets out easily and I don't blame him. But there are many other members here that are doing the ground work that Ryan has done in the past and their systems are proof that AP can produce amazing things. If you want a headache spend an afternoon with a beer and read through some of the mineralisation threads.

Agro and Hydro have been around for a dam long time and requirements for plants are well known from these industries, unfortunately not having 'Google' makes it a little more difficult for you so Id suggest looking up some good books. But I think this thread has merit and I think if members want to get on board and do some googling for you we could probably come up with a list we can post here of requirements for certain species of fruit and veg. The fish themselves always need to be considered when messing with the water parameters so this sometimes can be a restriction.

AP like any growing method has its limitations. All walks of farming add fertilisers and things to support crops, Hydro is a constant manipulation of the solution and lighting to support crops. AP can grow great food without anything, but it can do better when perfected. The biggest difference with AP is i only gets better with age, unlike conventional gardening.

Charlie, your post came right from the heart. I could feel it as I read it. Good post. I have touched on some of the mineralization threads and the brain fried over and said. learn more first then get back to it. Which I will.

In the meantime I have just recently met up with a long time friend who we lost touch with for years that has now moved his fresh water bottling plant into the mountains. He no longer does RO on the water. He has a complete lab and tests his own water. I will be working on him to do some water tests for me and maybe Some kind of AP project. He has a field I have my eyes on. hehe. And all the mountain water I could ever use. I asked him for a spec list on his water and we need to wait till the Engineer comes back in.

There is also a large mountain pond right near the site with fish in it already. I want my mask and fins. It's crystal clear. I want some of those fish for my FT and AP. They are very hardy fish, what ever they are. Maybe some type of mountain blue gill. I had them in our stores pond and they lived thru every climate with no heat or cooling and they can get big enough to eat in a few months.

We went mountain shrimping up stream from the pond today and got 6 shrimps today. More to come. I need about 90 more for that real small size for them to produce enough waste for just for one plant. I am hoping we can raise/breed them again. That is fun to do. They are so small you can't even see them when they are in clear mode.

Why is Miracle Grow for tomatoes 18-18-21 and fish poo 5-2-2 What do they know that we are not doing. Do you or any one have any idea on what NPK numbers fish can live in? Most of you raise Tilapia, when would high NPK numbers give them a problem or if ever? I have read a lot of 0-0-0 numbers on FT water. I have not yet seen any data for NPK numbers on fish. Still looking.

Book importing is also basically banned unless it goes thru an intensive security check by the gov. I can bring in anything I want if it is on my person or luggage. But only one copy of anything so I can't sell it. So best for me is to download PDFs if I can get to them and print them myself. I make up my own books.

I still need to find the ratios for dirt to fertilizer on the 5-5-5 and back calculate it to a GB to see what is going on. Yesterday I did an experiment and last night I pumped up my Fish water from maybe 5-2-2 to what I think might be 5-5-5 and the seedlings grew about 1/4 inch over night. I just checked and measured a bunch and that is about the average number. Some even pushed out another set of leaves. About 500 seedlings were all just sitting there at the same height for a week. They must of run out of food. All the seedlings are off line of the fish so I can manipulate them as I please.

I have about 100 carrots seedling and over 50% of them pushed out the first carrot leaf last night. They too were just sitting there until I used the new Deuem water on them. Powerful water. Gotta bottle that stuff. lol.
BTW I have the same plant in the same setup and I only watered/fertilized one of them yesterday. The non watered one did nothing. So I consider it a fair test so far.

My wife looked at how I am doing with her wild flower seeds in the AP seedling setup vs her dirt setup and shakes her head. She can't believe I have plants 1/4" and up and she has nothing. They too were hit with a taste of the special Deuem water last night and more shoots came up. Still a very long way to go but it is looking promising so far.

All of this is bringing me closer to never returning the plant water to the FT. Maybe it is best to calculate what your loss is in evaporation and plant usage and base the FT size on that number. Using it as the 10% water change every week. In my case I would have a minimum of 30 liters of water to play with. Even the best systems in the world lose about 10% or so. So why risk the fish, just use the water at the loss/toss out rate. And then pump it up to what ever that plant bed needs with 100% safe items, no chemicals. 30 liters in wicking beds filled with clay balls is a lot of water. It comes out to about 6 beds for me. And if needed I can always take more out of the FT.

That 10% water change used to go right down the drain so now I use it a second time. And maybe a third time from the GBs drainage water. I need to see what I get out of them after a week and full plants. each Bed will have a fill and empty ball valve. So the work load should go down to about 5 minutes a bed each week. And if life gets in the way they should have no problems for up to 3 weeks on their own. If this all works as the testing is showing me, then I can do more work with the fish and shrimp. Get back into breeding them.

I suppose another reason there is no one magic number is because the NPK will change during different stages of plant growth.

Have you seen any of Nates (Brightagrotech) videos on youtube about nutrients in AP, Deuem?

No I have not seen him on YT. YT is banned here and very difficult to get on without a link. If I have links to things it makes the up front time shorter and opens the door right to the link. Oh and forget any blogs. No matter what I have never even seen one. All the news is happy here.

The changes needed by different plants at different times is the one main reason for looking for the right water. Hopefully I can get away with a good average mix and use 1 tank for all. The P+K from Fish Poo is too low to start with so that needs to be bumped for sure even to get to low standards. The new Deuem water with the steeped Egg shell powder and steeped rice water mixed with a concentrated fish poo juice is doing wonders at the moment. I don't know what it will do to the PH or fish yet. In about 3 days the tomatoes grew an inch more from stagnant. I really need a NPK test kit to see what I really did. Cant find one yet, may have to go to the internet to find one in this country.

Getting back to Ryan for a moment, why would he have 14 FTs at the last count. He had 5 or 6 fish species so he must be re-mastering each tank set up or just has a lot of them every where. And he never gave an overall view or sketch of any setups. Secrets are ok if it gives him the advantage.

Our 80+ new Chinese minnows all made it thru the night alive, I don't know if the Gold fish had a snack or not. Hard to count them. They re-school all the time. There are 3 types of fish we got and the odd ones are not allowed to join the schools of the green minnows. The Tiger Barb looking fish have their own school and the few odd balls stay by them selves. Not enough to school up. It is fun to watch them school up and take a trip around the tank.

Changing Fish Poo into a solution is a key factor here, not removing it. IMO if you remove it you are removing all the good stuff you want.

Wow, you can't access google or youtube? I see no reason to live Deuem haha

Can you play the vid I posted up?

100% of the social foreign sites are off limits to us here. No Face B, No tweety bird, no blogs. No outside interference at all.

On the other hand there are more web sites in China then there are people in the states. Just harder to read for me but I get by. If I have a link, sometimes I can do a download of the video if they are sleeping at the switch or a holiday and they are off work. lol As long as they leave me alone, I do the same to them and we have a happy time here. There is more to life then YT. I am surprised that this web site is in the open. Many forums are also blocked. I guess they like fish and plants and are also learning by lurking. So this is where I say "Hi" to them because I know they have to read every letter I type. It is a good way of teaching them English for free.

And if one thinks the USA doesn't spy on things. Every time I ping the states it goes right to CIA headquarters and out again in Washington DC. So, "Hi" to you all there also and I feel sorry that you had to go to University just to sit in a concrete bunker reading my stupid posts about fish water. I guess a job is a job.

Charlie, it is not a life and death issue, just a PITA one. As far as your post of the video, all I get to see is a nice clean blank area where the video would be. If and when the YT Gods are nice to us it might be opened up by accident from time to time. If I can get on I will watch it till I fall asleep at the keyboard, like I did with the Ryan videos. But I had a link to get by the standard web search entry point. So I can never just type in w w w.youtube.com I have to get by that page. and then it is a big maybe even with a VPN, paid or free.

One thing that is nice is, that because of this, you always see good news on the TV. In the states most of it is bad news. If a kid makes honors in a good school he/she can make it to the TV. In the states if you kill people you make it to TV. Which one is better? I Imagine a mix of the 2 along with many good AP videos would be OK. lol

Nate is great at explaining the science of AP, much better than the simple backyarder like myself. Although some of his/their info is slightly questionable, it is very good and easy for everyone to understand.

I could summarise his videos for you in text. If anything, it may outline the basics for you to build on, which is the general flow of his videos anyways.

As always with AP, it has many variables so there is never any cut and paste information that will resinate through every situation and system. Unlike HP where full control of the nutrient solution dictates profiles for growth, AP is more natural in essence where biological processes lay the foundation for healthy plant growth.. which is the attraction in comparison to chemical or forced processes relevant to farming or HP.

But, this is not to say that the world of AP isn't changing and Ive seen it shift from all natural to a more laboratory experience, not one Im too interested in, but many are and are doing interesting things in playing with nature. If this is the path you want to take then that is for you but sorry it is not for me. Im not even on board with pre-filtration methods yet, maybe Im old school but hey, I like the way it all was before it was tampered with.