Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

My gravel is 5 - 10 mm stuff. No problems with growth. I agree that you should check the nitrate levels and also watch out for insufficient sunlight.

after watching mythbusters the other night i have a new addition to my system. they proved music increased plant growth so i have installed a solar radio!
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... ters&hl=en

Serious?

deadly serious if you watch the vid they do it quite scientificly

Musics been proven to be beneficial for all sorts of things.

With plants though I thought it was a case of misuc aint music....

That plants responded better to some music, like classical, where as heavy rock literally made them shrink/cringe....lol ... (True!)

Recently on the news was a story of Australia largest hothouse tomato growing operation, which has misic piped all through the huge facility.

Probably more for the benefit of the workers, but they do claim some benefit for the plants.... not sure if they've proven anything scientifically though

the tests were interesting, had one small GH setup where they had recordings of them yelling loudly at the plants and another with no noise at all

but the heavy metal went the best! i just have community radio pretty varied mix

You wouldn't want to have the plants subjected to that whinging whining voice of that Camilla bird who was previously on big brother.

Great idea beeso, I'd love to see how your plants will do! Too bad it doesn't play cd's; I wonder what pagan metal or hippie music would do to plants..

Edit: what would music do to the fish? What if you made underwater speakers and played some music to the fish as well?

ok guys i am going to try VB's idea for boosting my ammonia levels to see if its a lack of fish slowing me down, so i better get a test kit .... are the five in one strip tests ok and is $19 fair price?

Beeso - the general consensus has been that the stips are not accurate. I'd get a master test kit if I were you. Look at the link Les provided. They last ages, because once your system settles you test infrequently.

In a word? NO.

A few people have had issues with both accuracy and repeatablility. Go the aquapharm. drops.

alright after adding some "ammonia" over the weekend i got my water tested today and these are the results
PH-7 Ammonia-2ppm nitrate-5 to 10ppm nitrite-2ppm
so i guess i back off on the additives and let it settle back down then do a slow build up to prepare for fish

How much 'additive' did you put in Beeso and how often? The biofilter should deal with that ammonia level fairly quickly, so I would leave it 24 hours and then continue adding at half the rat of what you did previously and see how you go.

7 doses over weekend