Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Looks like if I quote you I can get part of the YT link so I am off to try getting that vid.

As far as what school I want to be in old or new. I have no idea yet. I do know that I am not going to add any chemicals what so ever. Either natural stuff to raise a number or live with out it. If one bed can't be run right off the FT. So be it. I want to eat. I do hope that most will be able to direct run of the FT water. That is the goal. Another goal is to eat. What's more important? Being 100% AP or eating. Just today we bought Bananas and someone had needled them with water to make them heavy and cost more.

They often do this even with Beef and pork. Needless to say I am not happy biting into a banana and having it squirt water all over me. Some ones Butt will be chewed off for sure. like I have mentioned before this place is a dangerous place to buy food. You never know what you get. Just 2 weeks ago they shut down another factory for making regular salt out of discarded chemicals. Salt is 1 local buck a bag. Just about the cheapest thing I can buy at a food store and they fake that. What do you think they are going to do with meats that cost 50 local dollars a pound. They make beef out of discarded old pork with chemicals. I don't want any pork fried rice any more. Veggies are now 8 to 10 dollars a pound, local money. They used to be 50 cents. Thank you inflation. We are all starting to reach the breaking point and everyone is complaining about food costs.

When I first came here a 100 dollars could last a month for food. Now it lasts a day and still climbing. In the long run maybe it will help me sell AP units.

Just guessing but if you don't pre filter then do you have to have worms. I still can't find any. I think they ate them all. I am thinking if one can turn the poo to a soluble solution it would be much better for the plants and the beds. If I let my poo juice settle out I have powder at the bottom. So probably a bio bubbler would do a better job if I took water out of a swirl filter and ran it off line until it was all in solution. I did build a DIY swirl filter but have not put it on line yet. It is/will be a sealed unit in line with the pump. I made it for just a couple of bucks so if it does not work, then I didn't break the AP bank.

On the green minnows. The fish are starting to get their colors back. I just saw half of them with red stripes and others with the green sides. maybe in another couple of days they will calm down and go back to full color. The best thing is that they are all eating and none have passed on to fish heaven. I have no idea on what they are but I hope they don't grow much larger. I want to use them for the AP test 3.

At my wives home town they have a small fish like this that you need to pay 4 to 600 dollars a pound for them dried and dead. You get about 70 to a 100 of them per pound and most people buy them by the gram. I had one of them live in my FT for over a year but I could not get my hands on enough of them to count. I was told that everyone there had tried and failed to FT these fish. There are no breeding facilities for them. All wild fish. No one believed me that mine was in the tank for 18 months. That's OK, no one is believing us on the green wild minnows either until they see them.

So can you use something like a URL shortener?

https://goo.gl/
https://bitly.com/

What about a Youtube Video downloader service like:

http://keepvid.com/

There are so many useful things to be found in the open Internet, it sucks to be sheltered from it...

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Sam

I can gt to the keepvid site. I don't know if it will DL or not yet without a link in hand.
Got to Bity and it just stalled
The goo site was rejected instantly.

I did get into YT last night very late and watched several of the vids Charlie mentioned. I got as far as the beginning of the Nitrogen cycle and called it a night. 2am or so. The best thing I can do is to get the link to the vid. It goes on my must watch list for the future. The more he talked the more my eyes glazed over. But I can see he wants the poo in solution also so it seems I am on the same track. He is very informative and seems to hold nothing back. The only problem so far is that he posts the longer better vids on his blog and I can't get to them. Oh well.

Last night we moved 100% of the small minnows from the shrimp tank to the shark infested gold fish tank and the shrimp are very happy now. They all relaxed and are moving on with life. On the other hand with the introduction of another 30 fish to the GF tank, any fish that were getting their color back went straight to silver again. So they do have panic camo. And maybe only the males or females have the color. So I am still waiting to take some photos of them in full color bloom.

I am very surprised that my larger white carp koi looking fish has not decimated the minnow schools yet. He has to be over 100 x the weight of the smallest ones and hundreds of times faster on the swimming end. He could pick off every minnow in the tank if he wanted too. So far nothing gone, even the smallest ones of 1/4 inch long. if I had another tank they would be in their own tank. For now it is fun to see the schools do patrols. It is like I got a new TV channel. lol

Now I am really confused on these fish. The tiger barbed ones have now turned on a red stripe also but not all of them. I don't know if I have 2 species or just males and females. So I have some that have 5 colors so far. Green, red, yellow/brown, blackish vertical stripes and silver bellies. And a red dot over the eye. Alien fish for sure. All the vertical stripes on the fish seem to have their own pattern per fish. Some are full stripes and some are morse code. It is raining hard today so I doubt if there is another fishing trip planned.

The K in NPK 4 part video by Dr. Nate Storey.

In the Dr Nate Storey vid #4 About the K values he clearly states that all AP systems are low on this number and have to have it added. Cal and Mag can hinder the uptake of calcium so one has to be careful with those 2. Other then that he seems very welcome to the idea of adding K. Seaweed was first out of his mouth with a NPK of 0-0-10 He never really mentioned how much or how often or I missed that part. He said he has a chart in his blog. Vertical food blog Nutrient Chart. He is a big advocate of NPK and getting it all up to speed. Micros are next on the list.

I can't get there from here so maybe one of you could email a copy to me.

I can get dried seaweed here. They eat it all the time for soup. I guess I would need to grind it up and steep it for a few days and then use the water. I don't know if seaweed is old or new school but the Doc says use it if you want healthy plants. Ok Doc. It is on the shopping list.

not all seaweeds are created equal.

its highly unlikely that the seaweed people eat is the same nutrient wise as the giant kelps which get made into seasol.

The seaweed I was thinking about looks like kelp to me and comes from korea or japan. It is about 3 to 4 inches wide and folded in length. I will need to go to the fish market to find it but I am almost positive I can get kept there. They must have over 50 - 100 types of seaweed in like 25 stores that sell nothing but.

So I will try for kept first. If not make a list of what they have for sale and look it up. I looked for seasol. NOTHING!

SEASOL - the seaweed solution

BTW, Deuem, I looked for the Vertical Food Blog Nutrient Chart you mentioned, but they've let the "verticalfoodblog.com" domain registration lapse. The domain is still within the redemption period so they can pay a little extra and still renew the domain, but if anyone knows a buddy at Bright Agrotech, they might want to tell them they're about to lose the domain completely...

Domain Name: VERTICALFOODBLOG.COM
Registrar: GODADDY.COM, LLC
Sponsoring Registrar IANA ID: 146
Whois Server: whois.godaddy.com
Referral URL: http://www.godaddy.com
Name Server: No nameserver
Status: redemptionPeriod https://www.icann.org/epp#redemptionPeriod
Updated Date: 22-mar-2016
Creation Date: 09-feb-2013
Expiration Date: 09-feb-2016

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Sam

I use a product called eco seaweed it comes in powder form and I use half of the supplied teaspoon per 2 litres sprayed on per week. Works well.


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Thanks nosliwmas.
Thanks Muttwuff.

I got on to the eco website and poked around this item. It is very safe. Even if you drink it. So it is Ok to have around kids and pets. But according to the mix it seems you are dosing at more then double you need. So does it smell at all, like low tide at the beach or is it order less? I will check out the seaweed stores and see what they sell there. There are at least 25 of them in the fish market and I want to check out the craw fish also.

Seaweed should be at least 0-0-10 so it should be the additive I am looking for to bump the K. Farmers have been putting seaweed on farms for thousands of years so I guess we can call it old school. In New England USA at one time they used to add lobster also when thousands of them washed up on the shore. They never ate them, just used them for fertilizer. Ouch, what a waste.

Now I have to figure out how to turn dry seaweed into a soluable mixture.

My wife says it has a smell but I don't notice it. As to the dosage it probably is a bit much but it is applied very finely and doesn't seem to be causing any issues.


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Yes, All wives have superwoman smelling powers. Mine seems to be able to tell what I had to eat for lunch even if she was not here, just by the smell of things being different to her cooking. Even hours later. Either way smell or no smell I want to still try the seaweed. I will dilute it to the water so it probably will either not smell as much as spraying or it will be worse because it is every where. Time will tell on this one. The K value is what I am looking for. I need to add at least 3 to the fish poo 5-2-2 to bring it up to 5-2-5 so working out the proportions is next. It is not going to take a lot for my small tanks.

For what its worth; I live on rain water as I have no ground water or "town water". While that is not the same as RO water it is fairly close.
I grow great veggies and fish as my thread shows.

Recently Dasboot asked what was my dosing regime, which is similar to your original question; and this is my response.

The nutrient dosing regime for the system depends on the crop and time of year but generally half a cup of seaweed extract each week or 2, nitrates are not a problem (too high if anything - 400+ppm during trout season) weekly to 2 weekly 4 or 5 teaspoons of iron chelates and potassium bicarbonate, 10 or more teaspoons of dolomite lime and 10 of calcium hydroxide weekly. All chemicals applied to the growbeds except for the dolomite lime and calcium hydroxide which I apply direct to the tanks.
The same type of plant can show deficiencies in one bed but not in another so there is more going on that simple application of trace and micro elements.

If I take out 2000l of water to put on my soil vegies and fruit trees (to keep the nitrates down) then I have to up the dose rate.

Occasionally I stop altogether in case the levels are getting too high for the fish and then keep an eye out for signs of deficiencies in the plants and then start dosing again.

The hardest crop to keep the deficiencies at bay is broccoli over winter but that has probably more to do with missing applications than any real problem.

Not real precise but it works for me.

I could test all i like but tests cost a lot and would need to be undertaken frequently. I don't test my dirt for my dirt grown vegies and apply nutrients in a similar manner to my aquaponics but not such a careful way as I don't have fish to kill.

To me its not rocket science and let the plants inform you when you need to do a little more. You will lean those veggies that show certain deficiencies first.

Can you test the 3? NPK? 400ppm N is pretty high and over the human healthy level. Hum. Need to think on this one. How much water is that number in? all the water in that system not just the FT

That's in 7000l in two joined tanks and the N gets higher. i've had it up to approx 700ppm at then end of the trout season. Fine for the plants and as i don't drink it, it is not a human health issue. My silvers have lived in it for 5 years and the only losses were from one event where the Ph dropped.
I could test all three and a number of the micro nutrients but why? the cost is high and the plants take it out at varying levels depending on the stage they are at and the type of plant and the fish and growbeds add it in.
I would suggest you don't over think it.