Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

how long does it take after you have added nutrients to you system do you start to see results? Its been almost two weeks and the plants don't seem to be improving much

Hi LED,

What kind of nutrients have you added? And how did you add them? Are you testing your water? Some nutrients can be essentially unavailable because of things like too high or too low pH or other characteristics that are out of whack... For example, check out this Nutrient availability in relation to pH chart:



Knowing your water characteristics could help determine the problem...

--
Sam

Nos is on point, If you pH and water conditions are within the parameters, then it can take a few days depending on what you use.

THe only supplement I use is by Maxicrop.

http://www.amazon.com/Maxicrop-1001-Liq ... ge_o01_s00

I have used a tablespoon each of potassium sulfate, magnesium sulfate , triple super phosphate ,calcium chloride about week and half ago. ph is 6.6-8. since then my ammonia has risen to 1 and nitrite to 5

do you have fish in the system ?

if in doubt try foliar feeding rather than adding too much to the AP system.
You can pretty much use any trace/multi element plus product suitable for foliar feeding (with a spray bottle) as not much will go into the AP.
But be careful not to go overboard on phosphorous or nitrogen....

not sure why you added Phosphate - not usually good idea (as above).

your ammonia suggests you may have added urea or something similar.
and the prolonged presence of nitrites may suggest system has not cycled.

plants (especially leafy greens) need nitrates - so you need to test for those.

pH at 6.6 to 6.8+ is OK.

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the safest things to be adding are seaweed extract (potassium and trace elements but low/no Nitrogen and phosphorous). If nitrates are needed then low doses of seaweed extract or similar with added nitrogen (but don't go for high nitrogen products). Added iron products are a bonus. *BUT* you must read the labels....

In a new system you can put a small amount of blood&bone into the grow bed if you have a product like it.
(in Aust there is a product that is blood&bone with added potash).
It adds a bit of solid into the grow bed that the plants can access.

I put directly on grow beds rather than in the fish tank.

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finally plants may not respond if your media is too shallow or water level is too high.
water needs to be 2 inches (5cm) below media surface and grow bed ideally 250-300mm (10-12 inches deep)

is this the same system as you had issues with before in your system post ?
if case then maybe there are other issues at play that are systemic of the system/water/setup etc.


re: original question, usually a few days to a week but depends a bit on sunlight and temperature.

Looking at the system in the address listed on your first post to this thread I can tell you that you probably have a really bad iron deficiency. None of the chemicals you added will add any iron and the symptoms will remain or get worse because of this. I also recommend that you don't add a lot of sulfate ions to your system (as you have with some of these chemicals). I could be wrong about this but I don't think plants use much sulfate and if there are anaerobic areas in your system the sulfates along with hydrogen can become Hydrogen Sulfide which is a gas and is toxic to fish. I doubt you added enough to make much difference so no real harm at this point.

The two main deficiencies you will most likely see in AP are Iron and Potassium. Iron is not mobile within a plant so what you will see with an iron deficiency is the new growth looks much yellower than the old. Potassium is mobile within a plant so Potassium deficiency shows up as a yellow or dead margin along the edges of the older leaves on a plant (because it's been transported to the new growth and away from the old). If you let things go really long all the growth can look bad and can start dying - it gets harder to figure out what's going on at this point.

What you should do is get some Fe-DTPA (this is a specific type of iron chelate that works at fairly high pH (iron is bound within the DTPA complex but is available to the plants) and spray at the recommended rate on the container. If you have Maxicrop plus Iron already this will work also as long as you are spray applying (this isn't chelated iron but because pH is not super important when spray applying it doesn't matter). I suggested the DTPA version because it gives you more options if your pH is above 7.0.

Based on what I see looking at your system, it's going to take several applications for this to be totally taken care of but you should start to see results within a few days. Don't add anymore of the other stuff without posting some pics back.

Cheers

dlf_perth yes it is the same system. I will try to get some updated pictures tomorrow for you guys.

as for the Phosphate , one of the aquaponics guys I talked to suggested that you do it every couple of weeks. does rain water have anything in it?

>> does rain water have anything in it?

not really (technically yes but see below) - no in terms of what plants need.

mainly carbonic acid (from CO2 in form H2CO3) hence acidic pH, bit of seas salt if near the coast and particulate matter from the crap that is floating around in the air depending on where you are (which is mostly not good).
Maybe sulfuric/sulfurous acid if your area is subject to industrial pollution (acid rain)

sorry it took so long , but here are some recent pictures of the plants and what I used. I did flush the beds to try to remove some extra solids build up and did a 50 percent water change from a well instead of rain water.

some more pictures

I'm interested to see how things work for you. The leaf on the squash plant looks a bit like my squash and my cucumbers, although mine hasn't fruited yet and looks worse than yours.

I know I have plenty of calcium, phosphorus, nitrate because I can measure those and adjust as needed. In the past I've added potassium nitrate and iron chelate (Fe-EDDHA). I've added small amounts of epsom salt (Mg sulfate) but hesitate to add more because I can't measure how much is really there.

Please update the post on what you do and how things turn out.

sure will hopefully I can figure this out