Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

75gs and pond pots





and problem in one of the grow beds

while I haven't IDed the mold i know where its coming from.. my pepper seeds! sprouting seeds on paper towels in tuperware (which i do for 90% of my plants) I'm seeing the same mold on the pepper seeds but never seen ti on my otehr plants so the seeds must have gotten wet at some point I'm guessing.

I've moved over the runts from the tomato grow bed to the empty side of the suppose-to-be-pepper grow bed for now. Also had to raise lights for tomatoes as they were already touching them! Hopefully will get tilapia this week *fingers crossed*

Photo of goldies in 40g breeder + pot with chives and scallions next to goldie grow bed.

40g goldfish grow bed, photo from today

75g grow beds today-tomatoes are growing fast!

Fish shipped, said delivery would be Saturday so I fed the 75gs pure ammonia for the plants/beneficial bacteria.. and then the fish showed up today >.< Had to do 100% water change on the tanks. When I opened the box the fingerlings are TINY.. I'm rather disappointed, they're suppose to be 1-3" but only about 2 are actually 1".. rest are 3/4" But at least all of them are alive.
I transferred them from the breather bag from shipping to a clean seal-able storage bag and floated them in a tank, adding water every few minutes with a small mason jar.
I put them all in 1 tank-the one with cucumbers-since they're so tiny and will split the group as they grow.
Will post photos later.

Tilapia are doing well, growing big. Split them into 2 groups several months ago between the 2 75gs.
Have had issues with tomatos growing waaaay too tall-got smallest species I could but its trying to get 2x as big as package says for height.... Thought it was not enough light to puled them out and replanted after getting a 4bulb setup instead of 2 bulb.. still growing tall and lanky.

Have issues with dark/black sort of spider mites and trying to find a way to be rid of them! Lost most of my cucumber plants to them and have issues on my peppers and tomato plants because of them.. hate those things *shake fist at near microscopic pest*.

Will get around to photos eventually.. with photobucket being a [censor] with anti 3rd party site upload sharing (I'm not paying $400 a year for access) I'm not keeping up on photo updates...

Feel free to trim the tomatoes, it's an ongoing weekly chore over here

Hmm, does anyone have any idea of Why can't I see pictures of this thread?

give this a read, it explains it:
https://petapixel.com/2017/07/01/photob ... edded-web/

tldr: photobucket is a greedy [censor] that wants $39 a month or $399 a year to use photos on forums, ebay, cregslist, etc etc etc

Even if I re-upload all my photos to another image hosting site I cannot edit old posts to fix the now disabled images.. you can tediously right click and "view image" to be redirected to photobucket to see but that not really acceptable imo...

Still have mite issue, doing a few days of aggressive tap misting for raised humidity did nothing
So I bough
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007C ... UTF8&psc=1
and
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0032 ... UTF8&psc=1

recommended from:
http://www.farmxchange.org/diy-aquaponi ... e-methods/

Going to try Neem oil tonight-will turn off bulbs after sun goes down. Reading reviews on amazon and looking at direction I'm unsure if I should use every day for a week or one day wait 6 spray again and repeat?

Hoping it works, don't feel like tearing down whole system but about ready to.. fish are only 1/3-1/2 edible size...would have to re-home them because I'm not doing daily-3x a week water changes to make up for lack of plants.


My 40g breeder goldfish aquaponics tank I just pulled all the plants on and re-seeded. We had a real hot day several weeks ago and all the lettuce went to seed. I tried cutting the stocked but new growth kept trying to go to seed so pulled it all. I don't run the heater on the tank anymore either to avoid getting tank too warm.. may raise light a bit as well.
I removed goldfish to a bucket with an airstone before starting then trash bagged all the old growth and pulled out what I could of excess roots. Let filter run for a few minutes to dump all the kicked up debris from the growbed into the tank then did a 100% water change refilled plugged in pump for a few minutes then repeated 1 more time to get the water not so murky.. Hand scooped goldfish back into tank, added Prime (dechlonriator+ bind ammonia and nitrite for up to 48 hours) as I assume there will be an ammonia spike for a while.
I'm willing to redo this grow bed because its only 2 fish and a smaller tank so not as much work/frequency needed for water changes to keep water quality good for fish.
Added blue dwarf kale and mustard to the bed along with the 2 variations of lettuce and spinach.. not sure if there will be enough room.