Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

HI HI AM BACK!! and @swed lol that part of my gf was supposed to be a secret

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umm had a lot on my plate and nothing was growing to show off.. However I believe I finally figured out this aquoponics nutrients mineralization.. and if I'm right I'll update you all as the info comes

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umm time to dust out this thread and breathe some new life bac into it.. soo on to it..

Well there is something funny happening in my system which is baffling me to this date.
I got ZERO recordable nitrogen.
ie.
ammonia 0ppm
nitrite 0ppm
nitrate 0ppm

my conductivity is at 200uS/cm3 or 0.2mS/cm3 which is 10x less than the requirements for growing tomatoes.



ph 8

my ph is also very higher than suggested and its to do with my Mineralization tank arrangement within this system.
my filter is producing alkaline instead of acid in everyone else's system.. However deficiencies due to high Ph isn't present current and the lack of soluble nitrogen isn't a big issue as well. if anyone can explain this to me you are more than welcome to do so. well on to some before and after pics.

Before


After


Tomatoes before.


After.



other randoms before.


After.


well that where I am atm.. comment are welcome.. and as always happy growing.

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One comment great keep up the good work

thanks man I plan on doing so.


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Mind you, I know nothing about these mineralization tanks, so the only question I can think of is: How is it possible to get calcium instead of nitrogen? FYI you plants still look better than ours. I am eager to hear what is going on as I need to catch up and get on board.

I think it's just that the ions are becoming chelated with organic matter so they aren't detected in a conductivity test because as chelates they don't have any exposed charge. The nitrogen probably has something similar happening - it's bound up in organic forms and undetectable as ammonia, nitrite or nitrate, but still available.

well funny story I can add Calcium anytime I need.. I got an offline anaerobic MT and if by chance I need calcium and well other nutes that comes with the digestate.. I just need to add something rich in carbon into the MT and the bacteria converts that to organic acids very quickly.. like within a day time.. so to counteract that ph drop I use Ca(OH)2 to buffer the MT and well I decant some of this calcium rich water bac into the system.. hence adding calcium to the system.. but all in all my system ph atm is at 8.. pretty high.

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you may be right.. if thats the case den we should not focus on mineralization in our aquaponics but encourage immoblization ie creation of new microbes and let them do the work of feeding the plants for us.. after all they know the plants needs more than we do!!

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I'm not sure about that, there are a lot of possibilities and you probably need both processes going on, just like in nature .

Maybe your system isn't getting enough nutrients right now but has lots of nutrients stored away in forms that aren't detectable to the conductivity meter but at least some of these are usable by the plants. Maybe the nutrients are used in the order of those that require the least effort from the plant (ions perhaps) to those that are more difficult to obtain (ions >> chelates >>other forms). Maybe once you reach a certain point the only way to obtain more nutrients is to mineralize the compounds they are in. Lots of Maybe's

Hi Scotty,
Do you think chelated ions or whatever would show up on a colormeter?

I was thinking something just a wild though.. for instance animal ingest organic matter and excreted organic waste and inorganic matter.. but bacteria ingest these same organic waste but I highly doubt due to the microscopic nature of bacteria and judging that waste material from an animal does be physically smaller than actually animal hence bacteria aren't able to excrete soild organic waste and can only excrete molecular components such as ammonia and other minerals.. but now the interesting part comes.. there are bacteria that ingest these same molecular nutrients.. so what do they really excrete?!?! and it makes me wonder if chelate components are actually the waste products of bacteria.????

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This is tough, I'll need to reference each term.

Shoot, I don't know if anyone can read this png image?
From http://scifun.chem.wisc.edu/chemweek/chelates/chelates.html
Gotta love the Internet.

I empathize,a lot of this is just written in Mandarin or double Dutch,I do try but after a couple of beers the crtaltdlt button gets pressed...

ahaahaaaaa!!! lol this Aquaponics thing is too confusing!!

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