Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

White curly lines on the lettuce sounds like a leaf miner (insect).

I agree that warm weather makes lettuce difficult.

HN, I don't know if you already have done this but make sure your pump is raised off of the tank floor a bit. Several folks (me too) have had accidents happen and if the pump is on the floor it will run the tank dry and kill the fish.

I have another question. I have a shade cloth over my system because I thought there was too much sunlight since my plants were bolting. Is this the case? Should I remove the shade cloth and allow as much sun as possible to hit my GBs? I would say my system gets 6 hours of direct sunlight. This is Hawaii so its pretty intense. Any suggestions?

HN

HN, I have shadecloth over all of my beds because the plants were getting fried before they had a chance to grow.
We get about 6-7 hours of direct light too. We're at about the same latitude as you.

What grade of shade cloth do you use? I am having problems with seedlings sprouting and then being burned by the gravel.

dt I am not sure what the grade is. I smell an experiment here...

I'm using 70%, sprouting most stuff from seed.
Without shadecloth seedlings fried before they could get above the gravel.

I read something the other day about growing lettuce. You need to give them plenty of sun the the first stages of growth ie Seedling - medium sized. Then they will grow low sunlight and not bolt like they usually do.

Ok did some tests and stuff.
Nutes:
Ammonia: 0.25-1.0 ppm
Nitrates: 100 ppm
I can't find my nitirite kit.

I had some water plants in the pond and I took them out to see if the veggies will grow better. I also did a 10% water change.

The water is crystal clear and the fish are very healthy. In fact I think 2 of the tiliapia are preggos. FAT suckers.

What do you guys think?

HN

One more question. I want to split my pump flow into 3 outs. Anyone have suggestions on how to do so to create an even or somewhat even flow between the 3 outs?

Sounds like you're cycling.

To split flow evenly into 3, you could use 2 T's and 3 valves. Install each valve to control one of the 3 outputs. I actually have a 4-way split constructed similarly.

cool dude. I will pick some valves up today.

Like this HN....

aww sweet. Thanks for the pics! Its worth a thousand words

OK next question: My pump is running 15 mins on, then an hour off from 6 am to 10 pm. Does this sound OK? Or should I flood the GB longer than 15 mins? This morning at 5 am the plants looked a bit shriveled but not much.